Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal OF the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1899, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co, 
TPerms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. | 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1899. 
f VOL. LIII 
\No. 'i 
No. 6. 
846 Broadway, New 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 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 full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
He who hath no jovissance hot in cnjoyingf, 
who shootes not but to hit the marfce, who loves 
hunting: l>t*t for the prey, it belongs not to him to 
enter medle with our schoole* 
Montaigne (^580). 
ON THE HEIGHTS. 
With this number is given a full page supplement illus- 
tration of the mountain sheep, forming one of our series of 
portraits of American game animals. 
THE ERA OF THE PRESERVE. 
In the mutations of all the institutions and the evolu- 
tion of new ones incident to civilization, there are many 
people who deplore the passing away of all that is old 
and the adoption of whatever is new. In the realm of 
sport, the spirit of conservatism is specially persistent. 
However readily men may accept innovations which have 
a significance of commercial progress, they are slow to 
give up the beliefs, usages and- freedom of action which 
governed their pleasurable sport afield and afloat in the 
years of not so long ago. Then there was an "open door" 
policy in sport which added a charm to it. The hills and 
valleys and plains, with the waters which rested in or 
coursed through them, were open to the sportsman in» 
every direction as he chose to select. Those days are 
gone forever. The needs of man had not then required 
more than a relatively small portion of the land for his 
sustenance. For every acre in cultivation there were many 
more but partially in use or left entirely wild. But, with 
the wonderful increase in population, the good old days 
and ways have necessarily been abandoned by him who 
hunts and fishes. 
For the future there will be greater restrictions. No 
more will there be square miles unused in every section 
as in the years agone. The demands of a teeming popula- 
tion have changed all that. The necessities of the people 
must dominate the sport of the few who seek sport. 
Population has -increased, wealth has increased, shooters 
and anglers have increased correspondingly, yet the area 
which affords sport has steadily decreased and will con- 
tinue to decrease under the same conditions which have 
caused the changes. 
In the old days there was more than sport enough for 
all. No man then needed to invoke his property rights and 
prerogatives to secure his share. But the times have 
changed. It is useless now to make the standards of the 
good old days of sport the standards of the present. There 
was in the old daj^s a surplus of hunting territory and 
game in the good old days, which was not impaired in the 
least by the "open door" policy; instead of a surplus, there 
is hardly enough of game now, with all the restrictive 
measures in force, to meet the restricted desires of shooters 
and anglers. It is useless, in the face of the needs of the 
hour, and the recognition of them by practical men, to 
invoke the usages and beliefs of the past as the correct 
limitations of the present. They were appropriate to the 
conditions of that time; but the conditions then and now 
are as wide apart as are the years. Game laws have multi- 
plied, the rights of land owners have been asserted, the 
available area for sport has constantly diminished, and 
from those conditions have evolved the fish and game 
preserve, east and west, north and south, securing to the 
individual what was once free to all. 
The sportsman who dwells on the past is prone to 
think that the freedom which he had then in shooting- or 
fishing where he listed w^as his right. In this he was 
wrong, for the same property rights existed then as now ; 
what was conceded in a spirit of tolerance or indifference 
should not be misunderstood as a recognition of right. 
The transitions from the old to the new are sweeping 
and radical. The game preserve is coming into being 
everywhere. The laws guard against excessive and in- 
discriminate killing. The rights of the land owner are 
more and more effectually safeguarded. The national 
Government is rescuing land for parks for public use 
while there is still' something left to rescue, and public 
sentiment throughout the land is upholding all this action 
of the new formative era as it is proper it should. It 
is wise, therefore, to recognize and support the needs of 
the present instead of the memories of the past. What 
was good and pleasurable then may be now out of place 
under the radically changed conditions. The property 
right of the individual, or an aggregate of individuals, is 
no greater now than it was in the good old days, but it is 
more assertive. Once asserted it should be respected ac- 
cordingly. Let each one who loves sport secure for the 
future such, property rights as he best can, for sport on 
land and water some time in the future will be a matter of 
property throughout the land as it is now a matter of 
property In part. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Some years ago a correspondent of an esteemed con- 
temporary expressed himself as much troubled in his mind 
because of the waywardness of Forest and Stream con- 
tributors. These people, he pointed out, were of the sort 
of folks who are forever wandering around through all 
outdoors and seeing things and writing about them, but 
never killing any game, at least it did not appear from 
their writings that they got any game, and as for him he 
was quite assured that they could not be classed as 
sportsmen. This was the conclusion of an outsider, an 
alien; and it was accepted for what it was worth, and no 
hard feelings ensued. But now comes one Ransacker, of 
the household, sheltered beneath the home rooftree, kith 
and kin of the family, who proclaims that after diligent 
and prolonged study of these same Forest and StbeaIvi 
folk he too has come to the conclusion that they are not 
sportsmen. 
It is a delightfully simple proposition, as they say out on 
the mountains where Ransacker makes his habitat; define 
"sportsman" to fit your case, and then show that the so- 
caJled "sportsmen" under consideration do not fit the 
definition. But on the other hand, if our definition of the 
title "sportsman," or our conception of it, be somewhat 
loose and vague, , will it not then be found to fit the 
thousand and one variations and diversities of taste and 
practice which are characteristic of the followers of rod 
and gun? The term sportsman is useful in default of a 
better one. It means many things; but accepting the 
definition submitted by Ransacker may we not still apply 
it with perfect propriety to these very folk to whom he 
would deny it? Frankly conceding that sport is a vague 
expression, that what is sport for one is not what is sport 
for another, is it yet not the best word we have to ex- 
press the idea? 
We question if any word ever could be hit upon or in- 
vented that would answer the purpose any more satis- 
factorily than sportsman. There are so many diversities 
of sentiment and practice that it would be impossible to 
class them together under one designation. Of the many 
men of many minds who now constitute the ranks of 
sportsmen, each is a sportsman in his own understanding 
or interpretation or acceptation of the term and not neces- 
sarily less a sportsman because his sportsmanship is not 
that of another. 
The Itaska preserve reservation scheme has now fairly 
been launched by the formation of an association to put 
the matter before Congress, as reported in our news 
columns. The far-reaching effects of the beneficent 
scheme challenge imagination and admiration. It is doing 
on a magnificent scale, and at a time while yet it may 
■be done, a service of incalculable benefit to those who 
are to come after us. It is improving an opportunity to 
provide a priceless heritage for a whole people. The 
region the Itasca reserve projectors are asking the Gov- 
ernment to set aside, to be kept forever intact, is the great 
watershe^d of the sources of the Mississippi River; and in 
the preservation of that watershed not only are the people 
of the Mississippi River Valley concerned, but in a larger 
sense the people of the entire continent. The national 
park will be national in effect as well as national in name. 
It will' reserve for and preserve to the people 
of the United States what of right belongs to them and 
should of right belong to their descendants. If Congress 
shall set apart this great preserve it will be simply^ to 
keep for the people, the whole people, what belongs to 
them. 
The character of the individuals whose public spirit has 
prompted them to take the initiative in this doing, and the 
character of the support they are meeting, afford abundant 
testimony that the Itasca Park project will be presented to 
Congress in a way which must command respectful atten- 
tion. 
Now perhaps you do not believe in luck, the luck of an 
hour, of a day, of a series of years. Then are you no 
angler. A fisherman is one Of the last persons to scoff at 
luck, to deny its part and place in bestowing or with- 
holding the prizes. Here is an example: Among the 
cottagers of the Thousand Islands is a certain well-known 
angler who has for twenty years past been fishing in the 
St. Lawrance waters for muscalonge, and for all the 
twenty years of patient endeavor has had not a fin to 
show. Neither he nor his man-servant nor his maid- 
servant nor the stranger within his gates has ever suc- 
ceeded in taking a muscalonge, though in the same waters 
and at the same time others have been rewarded. It is 
one of the most extraordinary runs of luck on record in 
the annals of fishing. 
The Harriman Alaska expedition's return to Seattle was 
reported on July 30. The party had left that city on May 
31, and in the intervening time made a trip of more than 
9,000 miles. Calling at Victoria, Wrangel and Juneau, they 
reached Skaguay on June 6, and some of the members of 
the party crossed the White Pass to the Yukon. From 
Skaguay the route was to Glacier Bay, Sitka, Yakutat 
Bay, Prince William Sound, Cook Inlet, Kadiak, Wood 
Island and as far as Plover Bay in Siberia. Side trips 
were made by different members to explore little known 
or new districts, and valuable collections were made in 
zoologj^ botany, geology and ethnology. In all these 
respects the expedition is reported to have been most suc- 
cessful, and admirably to have fulfilled its purposes. 
Tennessee is one of this latest among States which have 
adopted our Platform Plank that the sale of game should 
be forbidden at all time's. The last Legislature enacted 
a law forbidding the sale of quail in the open season in 
Shelby county, which includes Memphis. This city has 
long been one of the chief game markets in the South ; it 
has been glutted with quail year after year, the game 
coming largdy from Arkansas and Mississippi, two of the 
best quail States in the Union. The new statute, if the 
authorities will enforce it, will thus have a salutary in- 
fluence not only for the Tennessee quail supply but for 
those of the adjoining States as well. 
The Prince of Wales has just presented to the Natural 
History branch of the British Museum a specimen of the 
Florida tarpon, which Mr. O. H. Mygatt, of this city, who 
captured it, pronounces to be the finest fish he has seen in 
his ten years, of tarpon fishing. It is seven feet in length ; 
weighed one hundred and seventy pounds ; and needless to 
say the British Museum does not contain a handsomer 
fish than this silver king from Florida. 
By courtesy of Dr. R. W. Rajmiond, Secretary of the 
American Institute of Mining Engineers, we are enabled 
to reprint from the Transactions of the Society Prof. 
Snow's excellent paper on the "Equipment of Camps and 
Expeditions." In it will be found many valuable hints 
which are particularly pertinent to pleasure outings. The 
paper will be continued in our next issue. 
We are advised that the Canadian Parliament has made 
material modification of the game export regulations, giv- 
ing the non-resident sportsmen more liberal privileges 
than those formerly enjoyed. At this writing the details 
of the new law have not come to hand ; we expect to 
have them for our next issue. 
It was reported that Baltimore will have an inclosed 
shooting park. This is a form of sport which has now- 
secured lodgment in the East, although numerous enter- 
prises of the sort have been launched; and we shall be 
surprised if it finds an acceptable place in Baltimore. 
