Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1899, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, 1 
Six Months, ( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE lO, 1899. 
i vol.. LI I. -No. 23. 
J No. 848 Bkoaowat, Nbw Vork 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
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^Tack and he out of this forthwith! 
lyyou know you have no business here?" 
*'No; we haint gfot/^ said Samuel Smithy 
'^No business to be any where*'' 
So wearily they went away; 
Yet soon were camped in t'other lane; 
And soon they laughed as wild and gay, 
And soon the kettle boiled again* 
Rhymes of the Gypsies. 
EXTERMINATORY PEREGRIN ATORS. 
Whatever may be thought of non-resident shooting re- 
strictions, we must all rejoice at the adoption of repressive 
laws designed to reach individuals of the type described 
by our Florida correspondent, Didymus, in his comments 
upon what he aptly terms the "exterminatory peregrina- 
tions" of one class of traveling game destroyers. It is 
manifest, however, that to effect a cure of this "thirst 
for 'gator blood," this mania for inhuman butchery of 
living creatures whether game or not, we must have re- 
course to something more reaching than non-resident 
legislation. Enjoyment of indiscriminate torture of ani- 
mal life finds its instigation in a depraved nature. The 
real cure for it is to be found in humane education, not 
in game laws. We must begin with the training of the 
child, not wait for the reform of the man. It is a ques- 
tion of the heart, not of the trigger finger. 
There is nothing antagonistic between humanity and 
sport, between humane instincts with their promptings 
and the impulses and practices of field sports. While in 
specific cases it may not always be practicable to draw the 
precise line where humanity leaves off and cruelty begins, 
the distinction is one which is real, and is readily recog- 
nized in the consciousness of every right-minded person 
of mature years. One may be a humane man and yet a 
sportsman; nay, the sportsman is a humane man. What 
is a sportsman, the "true" sportsman? That is a question 
we have been threshing over for these many years. May 
we not say at least, as for our ideal type, that he must 
possess with other attributes of manhood the quality of 
mercy which "is not strain'd" ; that he must have an ear 
and an eye for 
All sweet sounds and all sweet things, 
Whatever shines, whatever sings; 
that in short he must see in the wild creatures which are 
put on this earth to inhabit it with him something more 
than mere bundles of flesh and bone and muscles and 
nerves, to writhe and squirm and twist when wounded 
by his ammunition? 
Our correspondent does well to disclaim any purpose of 
confounding the average sportsman who visits Florida 
with the mere game butcher. It would be a gross wrong 
put upon hundreds and thousands of sportsmen who have 
found their way to that State, to charge them with the 
spirit of cruelty and its practice as illustrated in certain 
isolated individual cases. The great majority of us who 
take our guns and rods to Florida or Michigan or else- 
where feel the same indignation as that expressed by 
Didymus whenever we discover that the excesses com- 
mitted by the few are mistakenly accepted as characteris- 
tic o£ the many; that the game butchers are looked upon 
as in any degree representative of the great guild of 
sportsmen. There could not be.a grosser error. As we have 
pointed out before, the difference between the moderate 
shooter and the exterminatory peregrinator — if Didymus 
will permit us — who is consumed with an inordinate thirst 
for blood and impelled by a mad craze to pile up the count 
of fish and game, and of creatures not game, slain by him, 
is the difference between the rational and the insane. The 
typical sportsman of this country is not a peripatetic 
bloody-bones crazed by lust of blood. 
THE PASSING OF SPRING, 
It is only a little while since all the gi^s we saw was 
the dead, dun herbage of last year, and all the leafag« 
the dark verdure of the evergreens looking as old as the 
trees themselves, and the nearest semblance to" a bird 
song that greeted our ears was the drumming of the 
woodpecker. Now meadows and pastures unfold their 
living green far around us, and woods are full clad in 
fresh, new leafage, and many spring flowers are bygone, 
and the air is vibrant with the songs of summer residents 
and the notes of many migrants have drifted past to be 
heard no more for months. It is all more like the dim 
memory of those unhappened things which we call 
dreams than a recorded reality. Yet so it is and has 
been. . j i 
Under the green grass the last year's aftermath is bare- 
ly hidden. The misty globes of the dandelion are like 
bubbles on the rippled green ;^ the withered blossoms of 
elm and maple clog the rivulets the passing shower 
makes; dots of tenderest green show on the tips of ever- 
greens; children gather the first buttercups and grope for 
the earliest strawberry; the songs of the robins are 
changed to notes of anxiety over their callow broods; the 
hammock of the oriole is swung on the elm branch; in 
the wide ramage of the butternut the cuckoo blows his 
flute to tell that all the summer birds have come, and as 
he skulks in the thickening copses the catbird mocks them 
all. , . . u. _J 
It is but a little while since the angler was weary with 
waiting for iceless streams, yet even now he counts 
many a goodly catch, and his nerves tingle yet with 
recent victories. As he steals upon the pools of the 
embowered brook he is startled by a fluttering grouse 
and her vanishing brood of downy chicks. Perhaps it 
seems long to wait until these mites that a wild ginger 
leaf now will cover, shall be fair prey to the gun, where 
only the quickest eye shall follow their hurtling flight 
and the readiest hand serve to stop it. But he will not 
have to wait longer than he has for the bass, for as 
swiftly as the spring has gone, so the summer will go, 
marking its passage with earliest fruitage and latest 
bloom, linking" its last days to glorious autumn with 
blossoms of golden-rod and aster and gentian. 
Why not enjoy the present that so swiftly passes? 
Why long for the future that so swiftly comes? 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The fishing letters which are printed from week to 
week in our angling columns show that the season of 1899 
is to be counted, as Mr. Chambers puts it, a banner year 
for fish. The good word comes not from any one section 
alone, but from many ; even Fred Mather out in Wiscon- 
sin is so busy fishing that he cannot make time to write 
about it. For everyone but the unfortunate who is 
"chained to business," with the padlock key thrown down 
the well, these rosy reports of trout galore make the most 
acceptable kind of reading. The opportunity* should be 
improved by those who can get away, and here is a 
wish of good luck to every happy angler. • 
That is a very interesting case which is reported this 
week from Pennsylvania, as having to do with the right 
of fishing in posted streams. As a matter of fact, the 
principle enunciated by the court is so well established 
and so familiar that the finding of the jury was precisely 
what would have been expected. This principle is in eft'ect 
that a stream is the exclusive privilege of the owner or 
owners, or those who lease it, whether the control be in 
the hands of a single individual, of a number of owners of 
adjoining lands or of a corporation owning or leasing the 
stream ; and that the exclusive privilege extends through- 
out the entire course of the stream which is thus controlled, 
whether it be for a hundred feet or for miles. This is, as 
we have said, a familiar principle, but the peculiar cir- 
cumstance of the case determined in Pennsylvania was 
that there exists there a prevailing popular sentiment 
questioning the right of stream owners to forbid outsiders 
from trespassing for fishing. The feeling was so strong 
that certain of the defendants, as they testified, had been 
advised by lawyers that they might fish in the posted 
streams with impunity. The ground for the opinion ap- 
pears to have been the fact that the waters had been 
stocked by the State. In some States provision is made in 
the statutes that waters so stocked at the public ex- 
pense must be kept open for public use. 
This problem of protected streams is one of growing 
magnitude in Pennsylvania, where each year sees a de- 
crease in the number of waters open to the public. The 
expedient of leasing and protecting and shutting out 
others from the fishing is continually resorted to by those 
who seek in this way to insure good fishing for them- 
selves, until it has become a puzzling question in Pennsyl- 
vania where one may go without being confronted by a 
trespass notice. Many thoughtful anglers, who cannot 
be .accused of harboring any disregard for the law or the 
legal rights of their fellows, declare that such posting of 
streams has gone to an extent beyond public interest. 
They ask with alarm what is to become of the unattached 
angler, the town dweller \yho must depend for his fishing 
on open streams. The problem is one which is likely to 
find its own solution. We can hardly hope for a change 
of public sentiment which will make those who are not 
directly concerned with fishing sensitive as to the preser- 
vation of fish ; and under these conditions it will be left 
for the fisherman himself to restock, preserve and defend 
his fishing right. . In Pennsylvania as elsewhere the fishing 
of the future will be done for the most part in streams 
which are maintained and controlled by private enter- 
prise. 
We again invite attention to Mr. T. S. Palmer's paper 
on the introduction of exotic species of animal life. Mr. 
Palmer has brought together a vast collection of facts 
which are instructive and full of warning. The conclu- 
sions drawn by him from the evidence here produced will 
form the subject of the concluding portion of his paper to 
be given in our next issue. In collecting this material and 
tutting it into shape for such clear presentation to the 
1 ublic, Mr. Palmer has done a valuable service. 
The New York Fisheries, Game and Forest Commis- 
sion has performed a useful work by supplying for dis- 
tribution cloth posters calling attention to the penalty for 
killing song birds or injuring their nests. The posters 
will be sent on application. They should be tacked up in 
the village post-office and at the cross-roads and four- 
corners. The Commission may be addressed at Albany. 
The biggest thing yet in the way of game and fish pre- 
serve projects is the one reported in our angling columns 
to fence in the Lake St. John district and adjoining terri- 
tory in the Province of Quebec for a private preserve of 
thousands of square miles. The scheme at first sight ap- 
pears a bit top-heavy, but the fence will stand up if the 
posts are set closely enough together and the trees don't 
fall on them. 
As a pleasing supplement to the story of the expedition 
among the Florida Seminoles told last week by Mrs. J. M. 
Willson, Jr., we find in the Valley Gazette of Kissimmee 
note of a visit paid by the Chiefs Tallahassee and Billy 
Bowlegs to the Willsons there. Mr. Willson is secretary 
pf the Friends of the Florida Seminoles, an association of 
those who are interested in securing to the Indians a 
reservation in the Everglades, of which they shall enjoy 
permanent tenure, and in advancing the social condition of 
the tribe. Tallahassee is now eighty years old, and he 
came up from Indian Town constumed in the full regalia 
of his rank. It is interesting to note how these Florida 
Indians have preserved in a wonderful degree the man- 
ners and customs of the Southern tribes as first known 
to the discoverers. Old Tallahassee's turban, for in- 
stance, might have been one of those shown in the delinea- 
tions of Florida life in 1563 by the French artist Le 
Moyne. 
More suggestive than this is a fact which is recorded hf 
Mrs, Willson in the "Indian Friend." At a Fourth of 
July celebration at Im-mo-kah-Iee, on the western edge 
of the Everglades, when Rt. Rev. Wm. Crane Gray was 
present, he recognized, as the Indians chanted a hymn in 
their native tongue, in the Seminole word Yah-vet the 
Hebrew Yehovah or Jehovah, From the use of this word 
in the depths of the Everglades, as Mrs. Willson suggests, 
one may work back to the prehistoric ruined temples 01 
Mexico and Yucatan, so similar to those of Egypt; and 
thus may find in Seminole speech a language link to con- 
nect the new word with the old. 
