Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
J Cop-miGHT, 1899, BY Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
^^.jKA.^^^^ NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 26, 1899. Uo. sl'fJd'^k^Xl yo.^ 
tU forest ana Stream Platform PlanK. 
'^TAe sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons." 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
In these forests I was struck, as I often have been, by seeing 
Jying on the ground numerous decayed trunks of trees of the 
•same species which belonged to a former generation. Some of 
ithese decayed trees had been lying there nearly a century. While 
■walking amid majestic living trees one actually walks over the 
igraves of trees. Many of these remains have so shrunk by age 
.as, to be no higher than the little mounds in an old church yard. 
The presence in a pine forest of such remains, together with a 
:young growtli, as can be seen in so many instances Dy anyone 
-ivho cares to see, abundantly refutes the error which obtains to 
some extent that there is not a second growth of pine on the same 
land. Keep out the fires, and the natural reproduction from seed 
will be perpetual.— C. C. Andrews, Chief Fire Warden of Min- 
nesota. 
CONCERNING PEN-NAMES, 
It has been the custom from time immemorial for 
contributors to sportsmen's journals to write over pen- 
narnes instead of using their own signatures. Most of 
the writers who have attained popularity and fame in the 
past have done so over their pseudonjaiis. To go back no 
further, Frank Forester may be cited as one of the best 
known examples. All of his contributions to the old 
Spirit of the Times, Porter's Spirit and other publica- 
tions in which he dealt with field subjects, were signed 
Frank Forester. His novels and historical works were 
given to the public with his own name, Henry William 
Herbert; and as a commentary upon their slight vogue at 
the present day may be cited the fact that nine persons out 
of ten who know Frank Forester would, if asked, be 
unable to tell whether he was Henry William Herbert 
or William Henry Herbert. For Forester has proved far 
more successful than Herbert as an author, and this in 
direct contradiction of Herbert's own ambition and con- 
viction. Forester was the pseudonym signed to writings 
which were regarded by their author as ephemeral; 
Herbert was the name on the title pages of works which 
he fondly imagined would be long remembered and 
cherished. There may have been also in this something 
of a pride not less mistaken than was the literary judg- 
ment evinced ; for Herbert the scholar doubtless con- 
' sidered that his heavy volumes were more creditable than 
the random sketches Forester the sportsman threw off for 
the entertainment of his sporting clientele. It is certain 
that he believed that his fame as a writer rested upon 
these other works rather than upon his stories of the 
fields and woodlands. 
There was, by the way, another Forrester pen-name 
known to the readers of a generation ago, that of Fanny 
Forrester. The real name was Emily C. Chubbuck, and 
this was the signature appended to the earlier effusions 
of verse, which did not take so well with the public as 
their author thought they should. Upon her complaining 
to N. P. Willis, it is recorded, the poet said to her : "How 
can you expect anything better?' Your genius is not of a 
kind tq affiliate with your name. Who will read a poem 
signed Chubbuck? Sign yourself Fanny Forrester and 
you will see the change." His literary acumen appears 
to have been justified by the event; Fanny Forrester 
achieved wide popularity; had she followed Frank 
Forester into the topics of the field and woodland she 
might be known even to-day. 
But what we set out to say was that writers who con- 
tribute to the Forest and Stream over fanciful pen- 
names have good and sufficient precedent. The example 
set by the earlier writers has been followed to the present 
day. Our files testify to the fact that in largely pre- 
ponderating majority contributors to our columns have 
made use of pseudonyms instead of their own proper 
names, and arrlong those who have thus veiled their 
identitj"- are numbered many who have found lasting 
popularity with their readers. Of the various reasons 
which might be given for adopting a pen-name rather 
than using one's own signature many are good ones; and 
no sound criticism may be made Upon th§ custom, pro- 
vided only the signature chosen be one which is not 
lacking in dignity, and the writing to which it is appended 
be not unworthy. One's pen-nanje is not unlike his 
fishing togs or his hunting rig ; in the old clothes he feels 
more at ease and with the pen-name less of restraint. 
When we go into the woods we leave our titles and 
dignities behind us and are no longer on parade with eyes 
front and attention on the alert to catch conventionality's 
sharp order to "Dress right" ; so when we come to write 
of woods themes the recourse to a pen-name gives to 
some of us a grateful sense of freedom. 
There are, we repeat, so many good reasons for using 
a pseudonym under these circumstances that the custom 
is by common consent approved. Nor is the one who 
uses a pen-name to be accounted an anonymous writer in 
the usually accepted invidious significance of the term. 
No one would have regarded as anonymous an ai'ticle 
signed "Frank Forester" in the old Spirit of the Times, 
nor one signed "Nesmuk" in the Forest and Stream, 
though both might have been engaged in heated con- 
troversies with other writers either signing their own 
names or themselves using pseudonjmis. 
DON'T SHOOT UNTIL YOU KNOW. 
The deer hunting season' in the Adirondacks opened on 
Aug. 15. Four days. later followed a tragedy. Two 
brothers were camping on the Eighth Lake of the Fulton 
Chain. For the younger, a youth of seventeen years, it 
was the first season of camp life, and like all youngsters 
in the woods in their initial experience he was aglow 
with ardor to get his first deer. About sundown last 
Saturday this 3'ounger brother left the camp alone and 
shortly after was followed by the other. When the elder 
of the two came to the Durant road, he saw a movement 
of the brush such as is caused by a deer. On the instant 
he raised his rifle, took quick aim at the moving brush, 
fired, then rushed in to see' what he had shot at, ,and 
found his brother, who had been killed instantaneously by 
a shot through the breast. 
A human life cut .short in the flower of youth. An- 
other life clouded by the anguish of the hour and by life- 
long regret and self-reproach. A home desolated. And 
all as the fruit of one foolish moment with a deadly 
weapon in the woods. 
If we did not read the stories of stich accidents, year 
after year, and from time to time meet the bereaved 
fathers and mothers and wives and children of the vic- 
tims, it would be impossible to conceive that grown men 
could be found to bring this woe upon themselves and 
upon their fellows. And yet season after season the 
record grows. Now it is a farmer who shoots a neighbor 
by mistake for a groundhog, now a Maine moose hunter 
who kills his guide for big game, and now the Adiron- 
dack camper who does to death his brother for a deer. 
Before the season shall be over and the rifles put away 
we shall hear probably of a score of such tragedies. 
And it is all so cruelly heartrending because so un- 
necessary. The observance of one simple rule would 
have saved this young life, as it would have saved the 
scores of lives sacrificed in the past — Don't shoot until you 
know what you are shooting at. 
It is a good rule for the old to preach to the young, the 
young to the old, and all of us one to another. There is 
at this . hour in the whole realm of the teachings of 
sportsmanship no other injunction approaching it in im- 
portance. 
ISAAC McLELLAN. 
The placid life of Isaac McLellan drew to its close on 
Monday of this Aveek, Aug. 21, at his home in Greenport, 
Long Island. Of him it might, have been said as his 
friend and angling companion, Daniel Webster, said of the 
Revolutionary veterans of Bunker Hill, that he had come 
down to us from a former generation. Born at Portland, 
Me., in 1806, he had attained the ripe age of ninety- 
three years, and his long life was a connecting link be- 
tween the present and a past which because of the 
developments and changes of modern times was very 
remote. In his later j^ears the venerable sportsman poet 
was fond of reviewing the distant years and recalling 
the comrades and companionships of earlier life. There 
were numbered among these friends many who in after 
years attained fame in varied fields. Among schoolboy 
friends were Charles Sumner,^ Horatio Greenough, 
Lothrop Motley and Wendell Phillips; at Andover Phil- 
lips Academy he knew N. P. Willis and Oliver Wendell 
Holmes ; and at Bowdoin College his associates were 
Henry W. Longfellow, George B. Cheever, J. S. C. Ab- 
bott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franklin Pierce and S. S. 
Prentiss. Shooting and fishing comrades were Daniel 
Webster, Frank Forester, Genio C. Scott, Porter, 
Wilkes, Skinner, Benson, S. C. Clarke and Charles 
Hallock* . ...^ J ' 
He was a sportsman from early boyhood, his first ex- 
perience in the field being with the wild pigeon at that 
time abundant throughout New England. When at col- 
lege, he has told us, Stephen Longfellow (a brother of 
the poet) and S. S. Prentiss were his companions in 
pursuit of the pigeon, and the trio would tramp for hours 
in the woods about Brunswick. In later years he spent 
some seasons on the Massachusetts coast at Marshfield, 
the home of Webster, with whom he fished for cod and 
haddock and bluefish ; and of whose famous chowders he 
made test. It is a testimony to the lovable nature of the 
man that these early friendships matured and strengthened 
and were abiding through life. 
Mr. McLellan developed in early life that facility of 
writing verse which has given him a place among the 
poets of America. His earlier published collections were 
"The Fall of the Indian," "The Year" and "Mount 
Auburn," slender volumes, containing among other poems 
the well-known verses on the Death of Napoleon, be- 
ginning 
Wild was the night; yet a wilder night 
Hung round the soldier's pillow — 
a favorite with thousands of schoolboys for declamation. 
The fields and streams and forests and prairies and 
their .v^ild dwellers were ever chosen themes for his verse, 
and no man in America has written more extensively in 
this field ; he almost literally took all animated nature for 
his own. He was one of the "Old Spirit Crowd," as the 
contributors to the early Spirit of the Times delighted to 
call themselves, and when the Forest and Stream was 
established in 1873 the salutatory poem in the first columii 
of the first page of the first number bore his signature. 
From that time for a quarter of a century Mr. McLellan 
contributed to these columns. In 1885 his outdoor verse 
was collected in a volume entitled "Rod and Gun, or 
Sports by Flood and Field," and some years later this 
was supplemented by another volume, "Wild Game in 
its Haunts." 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Some years ago we noted the interesting enterprise of 
transplanting our American quail to China, and indulged 
in a bit of sentiment over the grateful note of Bob White 
when it should come to the ear of an American in those 
foreign parts. Unfortunately the sentiment was wasted, 
for Bob White's call may not be heard in China. In 
response to our recent inquiry respecting the success of 
the experiment, Dr. Geo. A. Derby, U. S. Marshal at 
Shanghai writes : 
As far as I can learn, a few hundred quail were shipped in 1891, 
but I think none reached China alive. In 1893 several hundred 
were shipped, of which from sixty to sixty-five arrived alive, but in 
very weak condition, and when put out they were hardly able to 
take care of themselves, and with very few exceptions have never 
been heard of since. 
The great difficulty has been in the shipping. The climate and 
surroundings are certainly well adapted to the propagation of the 
Bob Whites, and it is a great pity that they arrived here in such 
very bad condition. There seems to be no talk of again attempt- 
ing their introduction. There is no game bird here that can in 
any respect compare with them. The native quail lies well to the 
dog, but is too small and flies too slowly, and is hardly consid- 
ered "game" here. I think there would be no difficulty whatever if 
the birds arrived here well and strong, but that seems impossible. 
The length and hardship of voyage should not prove 
insuperable obstacles; and we trust that those who have 
interested themselves in the project may give it another 
, ' 
In one of the essays of "The Doctor," published 1834 
to 1837, Robert Southey tells us of a certain hunger 
emaciated dog which was so weak that it had to lean 
against a wall to bark. Bernard Romans, the British 
surveyor, whose "Concise Natural History of East and 
West Florida" is one of the greatest rarities of Florida 
books, relates etf the Choctaws that they were "very fond 
of dogs, in so much as never to kill one out of a litter, 
and it is not uncommon in the nation to see a dog very 
lean, and so sensible of his misfortune as to seek a wall or 
post for his support before he ventures to bark." Romans' 
book was printed by "R. Aitkin, Bookseller, opposite the 
London Coffee-House, Front Street," New York, in 1776, 
or more than fifty years before Southey. Was "The 
Doctor" indebted to the Florida explorer for the original 
of his hungry dog? was Romans himself perhaps draw- 
ing on some earlier writer? or did both of them simply 
embody in their works a bit of the common folk-speech of 
their times? 
