Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1899, bv Forest and Stream Pubushing Co. 
TeRMSi $4 A Ybvr. 10 Cts. a Cofy. 1 
Sia Months, $i. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL IB, 1899. 
J vol.. I II. No. 16. 
fNo. 8441 UCOAUWAV, N»W \ ORK. 
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Wc commonly refram from killing swallows, 
and esteem it unlucky to destroy them t -whether 
herein there be not a Pagan relick, we have some 
reason to doubt. For we read in Aelion that 
these birds were sacred unto the Penates or house- 
hold gods of the ancients, and therefore were pre- 
served. The same they also honored as the 
unncios of the spring; and we find in Athenalus 
that the Rhodions had a solemn song to welcome 
in the swallow. Sir Thomas Browne* 
NOTICE. 
The New York Clearing House has adopted new regulations 
governing the collection of checks and draffs on banks outside of 
ihe city. This entails a collection expense on those who receive 
such checks. Our patrons are requested, therefore, in making 
their remittances to send postal or express money order, postage 
stamps, or check or draft on a New York city bank, or other New 
York current funds. 
MOUNDS AND ANIMAL EFFIGIES. 
In his interesting work on the mounds and earthwork 
of the Mississippi Valley, the second volume of the Pre- 
historic America, Mr. Stephen D. Peet, gives a vast 
amount of interesting material, which he considers as 
bearing directly on the hunting methods of the ancient 
people who occupied the region where they constructed 
those gigantic earthworks, which have so long- been the 
wonder of all students of American ethnology. The 
primitive American was largely a flesh eater, and almost 
all the old-time tribes of this continent were hunters and 
depended in large measure on the animal food which they 
captured in various ways. 
These people, as is well understood, were poorly armed, 
and to be successful it was necessary that they should 
creep close to the animal which they wished to destroy 
and should shoot at it, perhaps over and over again, with 
the stone headed arrow. Among all tribes traditions are 
handed down telling of the danger to man in primitive 
days from the animals on which in our time he subsisted, 
and telling too how in ancient times the moose, the deer, 
the antelope and the buffalo did not serve as food for the 
people, but instead devoured the people as their food. 
Father Marquette, the noble missionary who was the first 
to voyage on the waters of the upper Mississippi says: 
"The Indians hide themselves when they shoot at them 
(the buffalo), otherwise they would be in great danger of 
losing their lives. They follow them at a great distance, 
but for loss of blood they are unable to follow them. 
They graze upon the banks of the rivers." 
Many of these earthworks so carefully studied by Mr. 
Peet consist of ridges built either parallel or converging, 
and often near some steep high bluff. The author be- 
lieves that it was the practice to drive the game into such 
narrow passageways and so to get near to them and to 
slaughter them with the primitive weapons; and while 
this may haye been often the case, it is also probably true 
that in other instances these passageways led to pens and 
corrals into which the game was driven and in which it 
might he confined while the operations of slaughtering 
il went forward. These ancient hunters were, of course, 
as familiar with the ways and the habits -of the animals on 
which tiiey fed as our modern Indians have been. They 
knew all their haunts and runways, and understood precise- 
ly how a herd of animals of any sort would act under a 
given set of conditions. They knew, for example, precise- 
ly where they would find a certain sort of game at any 
particular season of the year, and when their crops had 
been gathered in the late summer, they traveled to their 
hunting grounds, where they found the game fat and 
abundant. 
Mr. Peet has pointed out that the country where these 
mounds are found was in these ancient times a real para- 
dise for the hunter, for game was enormously abundant; 
not only elk, deer, buffalo, moose, and all kinds of birds, 
but also the carnivores, bear, wolf, panther, fox and lynx. 
It is not difficult to believe this, and indeed authors who 
wrote of it in colonial: times, picture the Mississippi Val- 
ley as abounding in game.' Mr. Peet believes many of the 
animals whose figures he sees represented in these 
mounds to \t in fact effigies of certain animal gods which 
had the power to assist the hunter in his chase, and that 
these mounds are analogous to the pictured figures which 
used tp be found on blitffs and in caves. In other words, 
he looks, on them as bearing to .the mound builders a rela- 
tion somewhat similar to the pictures of saints and angels 
with which we adorn our churches. 
If, as t>t. Peet believes,, these mounds possessing ani- 
mal shapes are indeed game gods or gods of the chase, 
they might vsrell enough be situated near to the drives 
where the chase was carried on. They would thus be 
more constantly in the sight of the people and more con- 
venient to be addressed in prayer. Also, they might more 
readily be dreamed of if they were where' they were easily 
and often seen. 
It must be acknowledged that the question as to who 
built these mounds and why they built them have not yet 
been satisfactorily answered. The probabilities all seem 
to indicate that the mound builders were no more than 
the predecessors, and probably the progenitors of the In- 
dians found in the country Avhen the white man came. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
In the April session of the Rhode Island Legislature 
Hon. N. F. Reiner will introduce a measure to provide 
a game commissioii for the State, and to shorten the 
open season .so that it shall, be for all game birds Oct. 
15 to Dec* T5 . In view of the decrease of game, due in 
large measure to snaring for the market, there is urgent 
necessity of amending-4h,e statute, which now permits 
owners to snare on their own land. This is virtually 
giving Hcerise to all snarers, for experience has proved 
the difficulty of suppressing the industry of snaring by 
professional market hunters on the farms of others, so 
long as any snaring is permitted. As so many of the 
members of the General Assembly are in sympathy widi 
the snaring eleinent, any change in the present law 
would be difficult of achievement; but we are advised that 
Senator Reiner will make the attempt to abolish snar- 
ing; and if the sportsmen of the- State will lend their as- 
sistance the end may be accoihplished. ' The practical 
way to work is for each sportsman who is interested to 
see his Senator or Representative and secure his sup- 
port of the measure. Now that they are assured of rep- 
resentation by one who appreciates the situation so thor- 
oughly as does Mr. Reiner, the citizens of Rhode Island 
should improve the opportunity to correct this long- 
standing abuse. 
We print to-day the first part of Mr. Harry E. Lee's 
story of his hunting experiences in Alaska. The con- 
cluding portion will be given next week, and will relate 
to the moose and caribou country. Mr. Lee is now 
planning another trip to Alaska, this time going in 
quest of the musk-ox, the wood bison and the bear. 
It gives us pleasure to correct a misapprehension or a 
slip of the pen by Mr. Fred Mather in his notes last week, 
when he spoke of the late Theodore Morford; for Mr. 
Morford is living at his New Jersey home, and is in 
no sense late. Mr. Rowland E. Robinson asks after the 
veteran poet-sportsman, Isaac McLellan; and a wide 
circle will be pleased to learn that Mr. McLellan is living, 
still hale and hearty, in his ninety-third year, at .Green- 
port, Long Island. By the way, we wonder if the school 
children of to-day number among the bits of verse made 
familiar by their school readers, Mr. McLellan's poem, 
so well known and so often declaimed by the boys of 
long ago: 
Wild was the night, yet a wilder night 
Hung 'round the soldier's pillow; 
In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight 
Than the fight on the wrathful billow. 
Here once more is the old question of the apprentices 
who made it a condition of their articles of indenture 
that they should not be required to eat salmon or shad 
or canvasback duck more than six days in the week; and 
we are asked for references to the documents in, the 
case as applying to the shad of the Connecticut River. 
We cannot give any light on tUe subject. No authentic 
data have ever been discovered, though in past years 
we have not infrequently requested those who made ref- 
erence to such ' Stipulations to show the papers. The 
myth, if myth it be, is an ancient one. Here is a para- 
graph bearing on it from the autobiography of the artist 
Thomas Bewick, more than a hundred years ago: 
"From about the year 1760 to '67, when a boy, I was 
frequently sent by my parents to purchase a salrnon from 
the fishers of the 'strike' at Eltringham Ford. At that 
time, I never, paid more, and often less, than three half- 
pence per pound (mostly a heavy, guessed weight, about 
which they were not exact). Before, or perhaps about 
this tiriae, there had always been an article inserted in 
every indenture in Newcastle that the apprentice was not 
to be obliged to eat salmon above twice a week, and thj 
like bargain was made upon hiring ordinary servants." 
The story of an Adirondack moose hunt, as told in our 
pages the other day by Mr. Peter Flint, has attracted 
much deserved attention in the northern part of the State, 
where the moose is now but a memory with some of the 
oldest inhabitants. Another interesting occurrence in 
the history of the moose in its old stamping grounds was 
referred to in a note last week from Commissioner Jno. 
W. Titcomb, of Vermont, recording the killing of a moose 
near Island Pond, in that State. This was probably the 
first moose killed in Vermont for twenty-five or thirty 
years; at least it is the first during that period made 
known to the public. Mr. Titcomb sends us a photo- 
graph of the unlovely head with its ridiculous spike-, 
horns. 
This Vermont moose incident gives admirable point to 
the plea which our Mississippi contributor, Coahoma, 
makes for immunity in behalf of the stray remnants of 
peirshing species. Let such a creature show its head, as 
did this moose, in a region where it is a rarity, and as 
certain as fate the human kind will set upon it to do it to 
death. An entire village, men, boys and women with 
children in arms will join in the pursuit of a chance doe or 
fawn. Let a pestiferous bird "collector" catch sight of 
the bright plumage of a rare bird, and he is on the in- 
stant aroused to destroy it in the name of what he calls 
science. 
We congratulate Mr, D. C. Beaman, of Denver, and 
those who have labored with him to secure the enactment 
of the game bill to which we have already devoted at- 
tention in these columns. In its original form the meas- 
ure provided for a hunting and guiding license, but this 
feature was elimiirated in the discussion. Another change 
made was respecting the limitation of the bag; Mr. 
Beaman's draft put the limit of ducks lawfidly killed in 
a day at twenty-five, and the number in possession at 
fifty, but these numbers were raised to fifty and one hun- 
dred respectively, and a lawful fifty pounds of fish was 
made seventy-five pounds. The old provision is retained 
that game may be killed for food purposes only, and a 
decided step in advance is a further limitation of the in- 
dividual to one elk, one antelope and one deer (or in- 
stead of one antelope and one deer, two of either) in a 
season. When it is remembered that the mountain ranch- 
men of Colorado have been accustomed to kill these 
species by the cord pile of stacked carcasses, the effect 
of the new rule may be realized. That effect, of course, 
depends upon how the new statute shall be enforced. For 
the executive service, there have been provided a com- 
missioner, five chief wardens constantly in service, and 
ten deputies when required. If the people of Colorado 
will give the new game protective system a fair trial, we 
are convinced that the results of the test will be to estab- 
lish the system in the support of public opinion. 
The sportsmen of Illinois are bestirring themselves to 
prevent the passage through the Legislature of Senate 
Bill number 43, an act to amend the game law. In its 
original form Bill 43 was a vicious measure clearly 
framed in the- interest of the game dealers of Chicago, 
who, if the bill should' become a law, would have an open 
market for venison and grouse. 
Dr. Tarleton H. Bean has been appointed to the charge 
of the Fisheries Department of the American exhibit at 
Paris in 1900. The appointment is an excellent one; Dr. 
Bean has had extended experience in this field, and under 
his direction the United States display at Paris will be a 
creditable showing of our fishery resources, appliances 
and methods. 
