Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. , ' 
CopvBiGHT, 1899, BY Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, |4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 2 9, 1899. 
f VOL. LIII.-No. 5. 
\No. 84G Broadway, New York. 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications oii the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be 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 tuU 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract the pleasure 
of slaying deer through as many seasons as possible, obj'ect to the 
practice of the hunters who make it their chief business to 
slaughter as many deer in a camping season as they can. Their 
own rule, they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison 
to eat. Their excuse is specious. What right have these sophists 
to put themselves into a desert place, out of the reach of provisions, 
and then ground a right to slay deer on their own improvidence? 
If it is necessary for these people to have anything to eat, which 
I doubt, it is not necessary that they should have the luxury of 
venison. Chas. Dudley Warner. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Charles Dudley Warner says that the sportsman's plea 
that when in the woods he must have venison to live on 
is specious, inasmuch as the sportsman need not put him- 
self in a place where he must depend on the game for sub- 
sistence. There is just enough plausibility in that proposi- 
tion to give it ready unthinking acceptance ; but as a matter 
of fact the teachings both of the necessities of man and 
the provisions of nature are against it. 
It is necessary for some men to go into the woods, to 
travel far into the wilderness, to penetrate to remote 
regions, where for sustenance they must depend on what 
they pack in with them, or else upon what the country 
itself supplies. It is necessary for them to go into the 
wilds for sport. Sport is just as much a necessity to some 
men as is music or the play or a ride awheel or a trip to 
the seashore or a weekly half-holiday to others. The 
necessities of a human being mean more than food and 
raiment and a roof to sleep under. Man is higher than 
the brute ; his necessities are something more in scope than 
those of other animals. If one have a taste for 
woods life and hunting it is a reasonable necessity with 
him to gratify it. And venison in the woods is to him 
quite as much an essential as beefsteak at home. 
Consideration of the provisions of nature leads to a like 
conclusion. Deer meat is food for man. The deer dwells 
in the wildernes. If in the wilderness there is a food 
supply adapted to the use of man, it is logical to reason 
that man may go irito the wilderness and use the food 
there supplied for him. This is in keeping with the rules 
of that adaptation of means to ends which has enabled the 
human race to people the earth. Is haunch of venison, 
wild deer, good to eat, eat it. Is breast of partridge food 
for man, let man use it. Is salmon, trout or bass good for 
the table, or for camp use where the table is the ground, 
,catch the fish and eat it. This is what nature tells us. It 
is only when we get so far away from nature that senti- 
nientalisms take the place of common sense, and artificial 
aberrations blind us to the truth of things, that we begin 
to question the propriety of going into the woods to get 
the good things whiclt were put there expressly for the 
purpose. 
We have said that it is a necessity for the individual to 
go into the woods; in a larger sense and not less truly it 
is essential to the community, the state, society, that 
its members, or some proportion of them, should by such 
contact with mother earth, reinvigorate, renew, recreate 
the stamina of the race. 
A bird in the bush is worth two in the hand, for it 
lifords not only the food but the opportunity, the reason, 
:he excuse for shouldering one's gun and going out to 
secure it. And even then by eluding pursuit it may give 
:his same opportunity, another time. The smallest buck 
:hat entices the tovvn dweller into the deer forest may in 
:bis sense be more in worth than the prize steer butchered 
n the shambles. 
More game killing by Indians is reported from the Jack- 
son's Hole country in Wyoming, where Bannocks from 
?ort Hall are said to be slaughtering elk. We shall in all 
irobability hear excited denunciations of the Indian, and 
n due course of time there will be a conflict between reds 
md whites and bloodshedding. The blame for it all, 
vhether simple game killing or human killing, must be put 
where it belongs, upon the agent who gave the marauding 
Indians their passes. It is said that the permission to leave 
the agency was granted that the Bannocks might visit 
the Shoshones at Fort Washakie ; but after all these years of 
recurring troubles, growing out of depredations of Indian 
hunting parties, an agent may be assumed to know what 
giving passes means. This Bannock raid is precisely the 
occurrence which was foretold by one of our correspond- 
ents on the ground some weeks ago; it might have been 
prevented had the warning then given been heeded. Gov. 
Richards is perfectly reasonable in his request that no 
more passes be issued. 
An extraordinary report came from Debeque, Colo- 
rado, last Sunday saying that Governor Tanner of Illinois 
had got "safely out of the State, despite efforts on the 
part of game wardens to detain him for violation of the 
game law." It was charged that he had killed a deer, the 
close season extending to Aug. 15, and that the local war- 
den had hesitated to arrest him because he was the 
Governor of Illinois. If Mr. Tanner killed his deer out 
of season his official dignity furnished an added reason 
for his prompt arrest. The spectacle of the chief executive 
of one State openly violating the game laws of a sister 
State is intolerable. If the Illinois Governor was guilty 
of the act with which he was charged, it is to be hoped 
that the wardens will intercept him upon his return from 
the Pacific Coast, and improve the opportunity here af- 
forded to make a game law case which shall attract all the 
more attention and teach all the more useful public lesson 
because of the prominence of the culprit. 
There are entirely too many folks who imagine that 
their place in the community gives them warrant to snap 
their fingers at the game laws. They share something of 
the old world notion that game protection is a class 
interest, for the peculiar benefit of a favored part of the 
community ; and take it for granted that they belong to the 
favored part. Some years ago we had the case of a Con- 
necticut Adjutant-General who imagined that he was a 
big enough man to kill Maine deer in the water; but 
eventually he paid his fine just as any plain private in the 
ranks. There have been governors and judges and divines 
who have held these mistaken notions, but they are not in 
the least difficult to deal with unless, as in the Colorado 
case, the wardens themselves fall into the same delusion. 
FIELD TRIALS. 
The field trial interests of America are thriving to a 
gratifying degree at present, with a prospective per- 
manency which did not exist two or more years ago. 
This is evidenced by the staunch support given to the 
Derby competition of the different clubs in the way of 
entries; by the number of local clubs which have sprung 
up in several of the different States, and by the contem- 
plated organization of others. The entries to the Derby 
events this year have reached quite as high an average 
numerically as' could reasonably be expected in the new 
order of things, though they fall short of the large entry 
which was expected and given some years ago. There is, 
however, a wide difference in the motive of field trials of 
the present and those of the past, the one having been an 
era of the commercial development of the dog world on 
an ostensible sporting basis; the other being on a basis 
which is nearer what it truly represents — that is, a trial of 
dogs in competition for the sake of the sport itself. This 
is much more wholesome in itself and sounder in its prin- 
ciple, for business which is masquerading in the garb of 
sport has a false foundation and little hope of being a 
permanent institution. 
The commercial era of the setter and pointer has been 
referred to by writers as an era of the development of 
great dogs. This is true in a qualified way, for it also 
was an era of the development of poor dogs as well, the 
good and bad being perpetuated alike when there was but a 
catchy pedigree to be established and a market to be met. 
Had the commercial era been more of sport and less of 
the commercial breeding and marketing of dogs, there is 
nothing to show that the dogs of to-day would not have 
been equally as good or better than they are. Forest and 
Stream years ago pointed out the inherent weakness of 
the field trial support which had its source in commercial 
purposes, and the undue zeal displayed in catering to the 
commercial while neglecting the element which supported 
the sport for its own sake. This was at a time too when 
it was considered as being both unwise and hurtful to 
him who disagreed with the established order o£ things. 
Years ago we also pointed out and advocated the forma- 
tion of State field trial clubs, which are now finding 
favor and which have so large possibilities for good if 
rightly handled. 
The hard times made a sharp turn in the transitional 
stage of field trials, and for a time the prospects were 
that the turn was more toward their decline than good 
progress. The sporting interest had been so neglected 
and discouraged that when the commercial support 
dropped out there was but little of the sporting element^ 
left But this element rallied and by good and persistent 
work trials have again been put in a flourishing way, 
though when a setter or pointer is, at the present day, sold 
at a large price there are those who exclaim that it is a 
sure sign of the returning glory of field trials, as if 
dollars and cents were the standard of measurement to- 
day as they were at a time in the past. Wifh field trials 
at present as a sport, there will always be given to them 
a staunch support from those who take delight in behold- 
ing the work of dogs afield ; with field trials as a com- 
mercial outlet for stock for sale, as they were years ago, 
and as a manufactory for stud dogs and a means of 
revenue, they are of uncertain existence. 
THE DEFINITE ARTICLE. 
In its issue of July 23 the New York Herald disposes 
very summarily of the question of the propriety of using 
the definite article in speaking of a yacht, as follows : 
"Now that the yachting season is at hand a majority of 
the yachting writers seem to feel it necessary to drop 
the definite article before the name of a yacht. This is a 
silly Anglicism that has no reason and is decidedly bad 
grammar. To speak of the yacht Defender as 'Defender,' 
and not 'the Defender,' is ridiculous." 
The above editorial is emphasized in the same issue by a 
new departure in the news columns, the definite article pre- 
ceding every name of a yacht in the tables of times. 
In spite of the Herald's positive statements and silly 
practice, the question is still as much of an open one as it 
has always been. So' far from the non-use of the article 
being an Anglicism, there is no uniformity of usage on the 
part of English yachting writers. Some use the article 
and some do not. In the Field, which certainly may be 
taken as an authority in such matters, one may read in dne ■ 
paragraph of "the Shamrock" and in another of plain 
'"Shamrock"; and the same is found in the other yachting 
journals. In this country there is no uniform practice; in 
fact, expert writers use and discard the article almost 
in the same line. 
The Forest and Stream has for a number of years fol- 
lowed a practice of its own, which it does not propose 
to abandon until it is shown to be wrong. In speaking of 
a sailing yacht the definite article is not used; but it is 
always used in connection with a steam yacht. In the 
case of a sailing yacht, she (not it) is of all inanimate 
objects the nearest to a thing of life, and if at all famous 
she has a distinct identity which justifies a slight departure 
from the rigid rules of grammar. It is, in our opinion, a 
fitting recognition of the nature of the object to thus 
personify it by the use of the feminine pronoun and the 
omission of the definite article, and it is certainly more 
euphonious to speak of Vigilant, Colonia, Mischief, 
Minerva, Britannia, Thistle and Priscilla than of the Vigi- 
lant, the Colonia, etc. The former method is permissible 
by the rules of rhetoric; it gives rise to no confusion of 
meaning ; and it is in harmony with the established custom 
of the sea by which a vessel is always spoken of as a being 
of the female gender. 
In the case of steam yachts we prefer to use the definite 
article, as they are more machine-like by nature, and they 
do not possess the individuality of a racing yacht ; falling 
into the same category as merchant and war vessels, with 
which it is always customary to use the definite article. 
After the Herald has been successful in this proposed 
reform and compelled all yachtsmen to bow to the rules 
of grammar in prefixing the article, it may find a field for 
a new crusade in the almost universal use of the pronoun 
"she" instead of "it" among seamen and yachtsmen. To 
our minds the writers, and they abound in the West, who 
speak of a yacht as "it" are but the veriest landlubbers, but 
the Herald may be able to show that they are right, and 
that the poetic usage of the sea, sanctioned by Unknown 
years of use, must give way to strict grammatical accuracy 
of expression. 
