Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright. 1899, by Forest and Stream Publisking- Cq;. 
Terms, fi a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. | 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1899. 
r VOL. LI II.— No. IL 
t No. 346 Broadway, New York 
m Jm$t ana stream Platform PlanK. 
"T/ie sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons. 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
FOREST AIDS IN THE WEST. 
The interest in forestry and in tree planting in this 
country, to wliose growth we have frequently referred 
within the past two or three years, is now greater than 
ever. This is due in large measure to the enthusiasm and 
intelligence of Mr.Gifford Pinchot, at oiie time member of 
the National Forestry Commission and now United States 
Forester. Mr. Pinchot has not been satisfied with carry- 
ing on his work in a perfunctory manner, but has been 
fertile in plans to interest farmers and land owners, 
lumbermen and miners, people in the East and in the 
West, in tree planting, by making them see that it was to 
their material advantage to take such an interest. 
One of his most effective and wisest actions looking to 
this end was announced in circular No. 21 of the Di- 
vision of Forestry, and was described in the Forest and 
Stream in December last. This was a co-operative 
plan by which farmers, lumbermen and others in the 
wooded regions of the United States should be assisted 
in handling their forest land by the officials of the Di- 
vision of Forestry without expense, and this plan met 
so hearty a co-operation that it has now been extended 
so as to aid farmers and other land owners who desire 
to establish forest plantations in the woodless regions of 
the West. 
Although forest tree planting in the West has been 
carried on for many years, it has not always been success- 
ful. Its failures have been due largely to lack of knowledge 
as to what is required in a given locality — that is, to 
unintelligent planting. The average man, knowing noth- 
ing of trees, their habits and their adaptability to the places 
which are to be planted, is rather more likely to go 
wrong than right in setting o-ut the timber on his claini.^ 
On the other hand, there are regions where tree plant-" 
ing has been extremely successful, and where this suc- 
cess has added enormously to the value of the land 
and has made the labors of the farmers much more 
profitable than they would otherwise have been. 
The value— direct and indirect— of forests to farmers 
is fully understood by comparatively few people. In the 
wooded regious, where nearly every farm has its wood 
lot, this tract supplies most of the fuel used by the 
farmers, much of the wood for fencing and a considerable 
portion of the lumber used for building purposes. And 
when we consider that in the humid portions of America 
the total of the woodland is more than 200,000,000 acres 
we can form some rough estimate of the money value of 
.its product. To residents of the woodless plains, and 
generally of the dry regions, all these things are even 
more valuable than to the dweller in the wooded country 
oi the East, because they must be bought for money, and 
owing to their scarcity and the distances which they have 
tc be transported their price is comparatively high. So 
tliat a successful plantation on the plains has in the fuel 
and in the fencing that it furnishes a high and direct 
cash value to its owner. 
The indirect benefits derived from forests are less 
obvious, but they exist just as truly, for by conserving 
the moisture and tempering the winds the bodies of 
timber tend very greatly to modify the local climate. 
Persons who remember the valley of the Platte River in 
Nebraska as it was thirty years ago, and see it as it is 
to-day, have there an object lesson in tree planting which 
is very forcible. 
The' recently issued circular of the Division of For- 
estry contains not only a -sketch of Mr. Pinchot's plan, 
but also much information which is good reading for 
every land owner. • In addition to this he announces the 
organization of a section of the Division which has been 
placed in charge of an expert tree planter, assisted by a 
number of experts residing in different States and so 
familiar with local conditions. This section: will devote 
itself to investigation in tree planting and to th£ as- 
sistance of those who may avail themselves of the 
co-operative plan outlined. For areas under five ^ores 
in extent the Department of Agriculture will prepare 
plans for increasing the usefulness of the land to its 
owner by forest planting, without charge, but for larger 
areas the actual necessary expenses for traveling and 
subsistence of the bepartment agents must be paid for 
by the land owner. 
Under a provision of Mr, Pinchot's earlier circular, is- 
sued in 1898, about 400,000 acres of woodland have re- 
ceived attention, while applications have been received 
for assistance in the management of about 1,500,000 
acres and these are being attended to as rapidly as the 
small appropriation of the Division will permit. It 
cannot be doubted that a very large number of land 
owners in the West, as in the East, will take advantage 
of this offer, and it is certain that in this way the public 
interest in this very important subject wUl be greatly in- 
creased and the material wealth of the country largely 
added to. 
FISHING. 
Taking it all in all, there is no other outdoor recrea- 
tion in the world that begins to afford so much satis- 
faction to so many people as fishing. The fisherman num- 
bers his thousands Avhere the sportsman in any other field 
counts his hundreds or his scores. It is the most "all- 
round" sport known to man. It is as universal as the 
flow of the rivers and the ebb of the tide. Its speech is of 
every language, dialect and lingo. Its disciples belong to 
all races, all creeds, all colors, all ranks. The variations of 
the sport itself are as diverse as phases and shades of the 
human nature of its followers. What constitutes the en- 
joyment of fishing for one fisherman may be something 
very unlike that which gives pleasure to another; but 
travel the world over and you will find mankind — careless 
youth, lusty manhood and decrepit age — fishing, and fish- 
ing not for the fish alone, but for the fishing. That is true 
of your score fisherman emulous to outdo his lasj: big 
string, and of your fisherman on the Seine tickled and 
exultant over a nibble. 
Taken all in all there is no other common recreation 
which gives so much for so little as fishing. We hear fre- 
quent gibes at the expensiveness of the angler's trout, but 
in the aggregate the cost of fishing is ridiculously slight. 
The fisherman has yet to be found so poor that he may not 
fish. For the vast majority of fishermen the sport costs 
so little that the little does not count. 
Go where you will, in one personification or another, you 
find "the fisherman. His ubiquity on a holiday near a great 
city is marvelous. Fresh water, brackish and salt, all lure 
him to reward or disappointment. And if from the day's 
outing he does not return with some winning beyond the 
full creel or the empty basket^ the default is not in fish- 
ing but in himself. 
MAINE SUMMER PARTRIDGES. 
A PRESS dispatch from Bar Harbor reports that Mrs. 
Jules Reynal, of New York, described as one of the Maine 
resort's "most popular summer visitors and the recognized 
leader of the fashionable set," has been made to pay a 
fine and costs of $254.98 for the unlawful possession of 
twenty-five partridges in the close season. This was the 
result of some detective work by State Game Warden 
Walter I. Neal, who had information that the serving of 
illicit partridges at the Reynal dinner parties had been 
going on for some time ; so that the sum collected in fines 
was in the nature of a compromise. The Bar Harbor 
summer residents are not slow to express their indignation 
at what they consider the "outrage" of the warden's 
activity, and the offending and offended woman, it is re- 
ported, has incontinently left Bar Harbor in disgust and for 
good. The papers have given attention to this particular 
case because of the prominence of the parties involved ; but 
it differs in no essential respect from the common, every- 
day disregard of the game laws by summer residents and 
summer hotels. The market afforded by these people 
for snared and sunimer killed immature game birds is one 
qf th? agencies with which not only Maine but many other 
States find it difficult to cope. We are accustomed to hear 
the grouse parer and the chicken partridge killer roundly 
denot^nced; but t|ie ..truth is that they are less to blame 
thin the pepple who prompt them, to their lawlessness by 
rewarding them for "the game they take out of season. 
The consumer should be counted the principal in the un- 
liwful tranWction. He or she ought to know better and to 
be governed by a higher standard of ethics than one which 
permits encouragement of another to violations of the 
law. What can be expected of Maine summer partridge 
killers if New Yorkers constitute themselves summer 
partridge consumers? We commend the action of War- 
den Neal in having gone right to the responsible parties 
and not contenting himself with prosecuting the partridge 
killers. If this case had been one simply of the arrest and 
fining or jailing of an obscure Maine pot-hunter, it would 
have been passed over by the press without a word. Now 
that a "recognized leader of the fashionable set" has been 
punished for violating the Maine game law, the case is 
given wide publicity, and other leaders may discover that 
the law applies to them and be governed accordingly. 
A FEATHERED TURNCOAT^ 
Maryland wardens have been enforcing the reedbird 
law, and now we are told by the shooters whcj have been 
arrested for shooting in-elose season that any protection of 
reedbirds in Maryland is a mistake since the birds are 
ijiigratory, are fitted for game only for a short time while 
passing through the State, and when they reach the rice 
fields of the South they are killed by the wholesale on 
the rice fields. This illustrates one phase of the life of a 
bird which is an anomaly among our American species. 
The robin shares something of the bobolink's double char- 
acter as a cherished song bird in the North and a prized 
game bird in the South ; but more than this, the bobolink 
when it becomes the ricebird of the Carolinas is a positive 
nuisance, regarded as vermin and treated as such. So 
that we have the curious spectacle of a feathered creature 
which is welcomed and defended by the New England 
farmer and made the subject of verse by the New England 
poet ; and a little later in its life, having run the batteries 
of sportsmen and market-shooters on' its southern flight, is 
greeted with anathemas and bird shot in the further 
South, and at length betaking itself with hardly diminished 
ranks out of the country for the winter, to return in due 
time for another cycle of alternate regard, pursuit and 
warfare. From time to time inquiries are made for the 
bobolink as a bird which has disappeared from its old 
haunts ; and there appears to be no question that in certain 
restricted localities where it was abundant it is not now 
found in the old supply; but on the other hand, the rice 
planters assert that they can perceive no diminution in 
the hordes of the bird, and that they are obliged to lay out 
as much as ever in the purchase of powder and shot and 
noise-producing devices and daily labor of gangs of men, 
women and children, to save the fields from the ruinous 
onslaughts of the birds. To the Northern farmer denun- 
ciation of the bobolink as a crop-devastating nuisance 
would be received with open amazement; while the 
Southern planter would find himself equally at a loss to 
comprehend the sanity of a plea for the bird's protection 
based on sentimental reasons. Between the immunity 
given it in the North and the warfare waged upon it in 
the South, the bird has held its own; and probably the 
Maryland sportsmen are right who argue that whatever 
happens to Maryland reedbirds does not materially affect 
the parent stock. 
CAMP COMRADES. 
As the years go by and separate us by distance or by 
death from the outing comrades of former years, we come 
to realize more and more- strongly how much the element 
of human companionship has to do with the enjoyment of 
field and stream and the hunting trail. There are very 
few men who are so constituted that they can get the most 
enjoyment out of a solitary sojourn in the wilderness. 
However much satisfaction we may find in going alone 
during the day, we look for the cheer and comradeship of 
others about the camp-fire at night. We want some one 
to "talk it over" with; and the talking over makes up a 
large and important part of camp life. 
Some of the firmest and most cherished of our friend- 
ships have been cemented— perhaps they may have begun— 
in camp; and one mutation of time we find it most diffi- 
cult to reconcile ourselves to is that which cqmes when 
the old companion of our outings may no longer join us in 
them. Not infrequently to the Forest and Stream comes 
the p|aint of one and another thus bereft of their wonted 
companionship, and the pity of it is that only in rare and 
exceptional cases can the void be filled. Once' the oli|a 
associations are broken up, it is not easy to form new 
alliances. Most of lastuig friendships are made in early 
life; it is much simpler for the youngsters to make up 
to one another than it is for their elders. 
