Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
COPVKIGHT, 1899, BY FoREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1899. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
( 
( VOL. LII.-No. T. 
( No. 846 Broadwav, Now York. 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not bt re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of' 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
Cbe forest ana Stream Platform PlatiK. 
'■'^The sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons.''* 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
This digression up the Kansas was undertaken by Lisa to form- 
new connections with the Indians, to trade and take game, in all 
which he succeeded to his expectations. During this trip I wit- 
nessed, for the first time in my life, with painful sensations the 
wide and wanton destruction of game merely to procure skins; 
and so much disgusted was I, on seeing the buffalo carcasses 
strewed over the ground in a half-putrified state, that my reluc- 
tance to fulfill my engagements was so much increased as to 
occasion me to reflect seriously on absconding from the party. 
—John D. Hunter, "Manners and Customs of Several Indian 
Tribes Located west of the Mississippi." PKiladelphia, 1S23. 
THE BIRDS AND THE STORM. 
The great storm of last Sunday and Monday was the 
fiercest and coldest with which the Atlantic States have 
been afflicted since that of 1888. It was terrific both in 
its force and volume. For a week previous the thermom- 
eter dallied near the zero point, and there were a few 
snowstorms, thought to be so at the time at least, bur 
which, compared with the blizzard of Sunday and Mon- 
day, were mere mild weather disturbances. The bliz- 
zard raged steadily for hours, and gradually conquered 
all the efforts of the world of commerce to prevail against 
it. The heavy snowfall, driven with stinging force before 
the gale, seemed to fly parallel with the earth's surface 
where there were no obstacles in its course; in other 
places it swirled about swiftly in fantastic eddies, chased 
up the sides of high buildings, or settled into deep drifts 
wherever the wind would let it rest. With it came un- 
told hardship and suffering to men on sea and land. 
Great ships came in with such cloaks of ice that their 
lines and appearance were more those of an iceberg than 
of a graceful, shapely craft designed by man. The traffic 
of the great railroads was either partially or wholly sus- 
pended. The commerce of New York for a time was 
little short of complete inaction. The food and fuel sup- 
ply was seriously cut off fcr a time, which brought want 
to the doors of the great class of workers whose means 
permit them to live only from day to day. Truckmen 
and many others dependent on traffic for their employ- 
ment could not work, though willing to do so. In con- 
sequence the charity organizations were overwhelmed 
-with applications from the needy; and sadder still, many, 
who could not adequately protect themselves from the 
fury of the storm, perished. And doubtless, too, there 
was relatively the same amount of suffering everywhere 
within the area of the storm. It could not be otherwise 
with such fierce gales and steady snowfall and deadly cold 
in earth and air. Humanity, however, set its forces in 
action to relieve the distress of the suffering and needy. 
But in the woods and fields, exposed to all the incle- 
mency of the storm, are the game birds. To them a cer- 
tain degree of cold is endurable and they can also with- 
stand the pangs of hunger to a certain degree; but, as 
with man, there is a limit to their endurance. In such 
a storm, shelter and a food supply are essential to their 
existence. In ordinary winter weather they can care for 
themselves. The struggle for existence has many more 
serious problems for them than it has for mankind. To 
them, now, one practical act of assistance is worth all 
the theorizing in the world. He who, with some old 
rails or limbs of trees, hay, brush, or rubbish, makes a 
good tight lean-to or any kind of snug-harbor within 
which they can find shelter, and therein leaves some corn, 
oats, wheat, buckwheat, or other grain for food, is more 
of a real game protector than are all the others who can 
do some practical good, but who do not do it. Sports- 
rnen in the city, who have favorite nooks and corners 
wherein they are wont to seek the quail and ruffed grouse 
in proper season, have farmer friends who would be glad 
for a small consideration to put some food in the haunts 
of the birds, the aforesaid nooks and corners, and thereby 
aid in their preservation as much as lies within the pow- 
ers of man. The practical game preserver at this season 
is far ahead of the theoretical one. A sheaf of grain is 
worth a whole haystack of talk. 
This suffering of the game birds is not confined to any 
locality. From Texas and Louisiana and Florida on the 
south, to the Canadian boundary on the north, the same 
conditions prevail, the same suffering is inevitable and 
the same loss probable. The only encouraging fact in 
connection with the heavy snowfall is that, in most local- 
ities, the snow was light and powdery instead of being 
wet and heavy, as was the case in the memorable bliz- 
zard of 1888. On the other hand, the furious wind which 
blew for days pounded and packed the drifts into masses 
more or less cohesive, through which the birds can 
make their way to the surface, if at all, only with diffi- 
culty, slowly and by continued effort. Even after they 
have freed themselves from their prison, the danger of 
starvation must yet be faced. 
Sportsmen have therefore every reason to fear a very 
great diminution in the country's supply of quail next 
season. This is likely to be much greater in the South 
than in the North, for the Southern birds know little of 
cold or snow such as they have experienced this season. 
They are much less hardy than our Northern birds, and 
succumb much more easily to rigors of climate to which 
they are unaccustomed. 
WINTER. 
When the fire of youth has burned out and the ashes 
of age lie in a gray drift on the smoldering embers, one 
shivers instinctively at the name of winter. In imagina- 
tion we already see the dreary desolation of the earth, 
stripped of its mantle of greenness and bloom and ripe 
fruitage, ready to don the white robe for dreamless sleep. 
Gradually the change comes, the glory of autumn passes 
away, the brown leaves drift and waver to the earth, the- 
summer birds fly southward to lands of perennial leaf 
and blossom, and leave to us but the memory of song 
in a desolate silent land, when the brooks must sing only 
to themselves under crystal roofs, and you only know 
they are singing by the beads of elastic pearl that round 
and lengthen and break into many beads as they slip along 
the braided current. 
There are only the moaning of tlie wind among the 
hills and the rustle of withered leaves along the dun 
earth. A week ago it was full of life — now there is only 
desolation and death, yet so imperceptibly have these come 
that we know not when the other ceased, and we are not 
appalled. Then comes the miracle of snow, the gray sky 
blossoms into a white shower of celestial petals, that 
bloom again on withered stem and bough and shrub until 
the gray and tawny world is transformed to imiversal 
purity, and behold another miracle. Where there was no 
life are now abundant signs of it, the silent record of 
many things. Mouse, weasel and squirrel, hare, skunk 
and fox have written the plain story of their nightly 
wanderings; red-poll, bunting, crow and grouse have 
embroidered the history of their alighting and their 
terrestrial journeying on the same white page. And lo, 
the jay of many voices proclaims his presence, the chicka- 
dee lisps his brief song, the nuthatch blows his reedy 
clarionet, a white flock of snow buntings drift by with a 
creaking twitter like the sound of floating ice, a crow 
sounds his raucous trumpet, the ruffed grouse thunders 
his swift departure in a shower of dislodged snow, the 
woodpecker drums a merry tattoo, a fox barks huskily 
among the rugged defiles of the hills, and far away is 
sounded the answering challenge of a hound, and under 
the stars the screech owl's quavering call is heard and 
the storm-boding, sonorous warning of his solemn big 
brother of the double crest, punctuated by the resonant 
crack of frost-strained trees. 
What beauty that lies hidden under summer leaves is 
revealed now in the graceful tracery of pearl enameled 
branch and twig, on gray trunks embossed with moss and 
lichen, on bent stems of tawny grass and frond of 
withered fern, how the uncouth ruggedness of common 
things is clothed and beautified by the charitable mantle of 
the snow, what curves and shadows in the immaculate 
folds. 
By day and by night, in sunlight and in moonlight, a 
dome of purest azure, now pale, now dark, canopies a 
world of purest white and purest shadow, or earth and 
sky are blurred in the wild grandeur of a winter storm. 
Surely the beauty of the world lives even amid the death 
of winter — it is not death, but beautiful sleep, broken at 
times by spasms of terrified dreams, followed by pro- 
founder sleep. 
SKYLARKS. 
Mr. Edmund Orgill, of Tennessee, whom many of the 
field sportsmen of the eighties will remember as the owner 
of Orgill's Rush, has an ambition to introduce into his 
part of the Union the English skylark. His home is in the 
western part of the State, so convenient to Mississippi that 
"it's all one" ; and the presumption is that the birds would 
thrive there. Can Mr. Alex. Starbuck or other member of 
the Cnvier Club tell us what became of the skylarks im- 
ported some years ago by German-American citizens of 
that city? and can Mr. Horace Kephart, of St. Louis, give 
information about the birds put out there? 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The bird belongs to a past age, and it is a trifle 
late in the day to discuss its name. Those who prefer 
the designation of "passenger pigeon" might make out 
a good case by citing the fathers and quoting from the 
dead languages. Audubon, Wilson, Nuttall, Coues and 
others describe the bird under the name of "passenger 
pigeon;" and as we have said, it was this name Audubon 
gave to his charming portrait of the species; although he 
does say that it was in his day more commonly called 
"wild pigeon." The scientific name in the books is 
Ectopistes fnigratorius, and in this nomenclature is em- 
bodied a recognition of the passenger characteristics of 
the bird rather than of its wild nature. Ectopistes is 
from the Greek £Kro7rz(jr7/? (ektopestes), "a wanderer" or "pas- 
senger;" from eKToiti^w, "I wander," ''change place;" from 
ui, ''out of," and totto'}, "place," "out of place." Surely 
there is "passenger" enough here. 
The Latin of the name, migratorius, "migratory," re- 
peats the suggestion of passing, wandering; and taking 
the entire designation, then, it may be said that the use 
of the term "passenger pigeon" is abundantly justified. 
Thus as to the authorities. But despite all the writers 
and all the books, they to whom the bird is a memory — 
a memory linked with the old days and ways of tender 
recollection — will remember it and call it by the name 
they had for it then; and whether this be wild or passen- 
ger matters little. 
Governor Roosevelt has signed the Button bill, which 
repeals absolutely the law providing a bounty for illegal 
nets in inland waters. The fault with the law was that 
the bounties offered were not judiciously graded; they, 
were on such scale as to encourage dishonesty and as 
to make possible the mulcting of the State treasury. If 
the scale of rewards originally proposed by Mr. Henry 
Loftie, of Syracuse, had been adhered to, the purpose of 
the bounty law might have been attained and its abuses 
avoided. The public-spirited citizens who have been 
fighting the netters and fish-pirates of the lakes of cen- 
tral New York will not permit this outcome of the bounty- 
law of 1898 to be the ending of the struggle. If nets 
can be legislated against, they can be suppressed, and a 
way will yet be found to take them out of the waters and 
keep them out. 
The attention of Pennsylvania sportsmen is invited to a 
bill introduced into the Senate (File of the Senate 61) 
by Mr. Hardenburgh, of Wayne county, and favorably- 
reported from committee by Mr. Scott, of Luzerne 
county, to permit the sale of grouse, quail and wood- 
cock, and to permit their shipment out of the State, both 
being now forbidden by law. By a change of the squir- 
rel season to open Sept. i, a time when game birds are 
young, it makes their killing easy, and destroys the sys- 
tem of an uniform game season for all species, a system 
which in Pennsylvania, as elsewhere, is wisest and most 
satisfactory in its workings. It is gratifying to note, too, 
that the Board of Game Commissioners is alive to the 
retrograde nature of the measure and is opposing it. The 
Board should have the prompt and active co-operation of 
all citizens of the State who are interested in game pres- 
ervation. 
