Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
CopVRiGHT. 1899, BY Forest and Strbam Publishing Co. 
ERMs, $rA yeak. 10 cts.-a Copy. I NEW YORK SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1899. {no. sWroadw^V.^nw ^ 
Six Months, $2. j } * — — . 
1- 
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garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
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correspondents. 
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particulars respecting subsaiptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
THE FARMER'S BOY. 
No one among the lovers of nature recalls more fondly 
the scenes of childhood and youth than he who was once 
a farmer's boy but in youth or early manhood has 
wandered far from the farm and the paternal roof in quest 
of fame and fortune. 
In all the varied scenes of the larger world he has come 
to know in later life, none have the charm of those his 
young eyes first beheld, and the sounds that grew as 
familiar to his ears as household words. 
Alps or Andes rear their peaks of eternal snow in 
no loftier grandeur than did the blue hills of the strange, 
far-off land of the next county lift their tops to catch the 
autumnal snowfalls while the valleys at their feet were 
yet green with aftermath. The storm-swept ocean is not 
more majestic in its resistless rage than was the turbulent 
lake beating its rocky rim with a fury of small waves; 
nor is the Niagara's tremendous plunge more awful than 
was the downpour of the mill dam in a spring flood. 
Nowhere are there scenes of more tranquil beauty than 
along this mill pond that loops pasture and meadow land 
in its placid curves, or where the quick stream comes 
clattering and flashing to it out of the shadow of the 
woods, or where, in the heart of the woods, the slow 
reaches crawl among the shadows and never wrinkle the 
reflections of bank and tree, or where noisy rapids toss the 
shivered doubles amid a confusion of foam bells and 
scattered sunbeams. Here the wood duck reared her 
dusky brood, in near neighborhood to the grouse and her 
callow family, and it was here, perhaps, that the farmer's 
boy got his first shot at each and knew the ecstacy of 
his first success, and in the pond caught his first big 
fish — ^joys that could never be quite repeated in a lifetime. 
What a pleasant place was the hill pasture that slopes 
upward in grassy undulations to the woodside, where the 
ferns grow rank in the out-reaching shade, and sumacs 
and elders canopy and embower an old wall beneath a 
loftier growth of scattered hickories. Thither the boy 
felt himself always drawn in the drowsy August after- 
noons, though the cows were waiting at the bars, for he 
must know how the broods of young grouse were growing 
and whether the squirrels were coming out to the nut 
trees yet. What a thrill ran through his nerves when 
he heard the harsh barking of the gray squirrel in an out- 
lying hickory, the dribble of chips through the leaves from 
a gnawed nut. And what an ecstatic shock, when by ones, 
twos and threes the grouse sprang from their interrupted 
feast on the drooping cymes of elder berries and burst 
through the green roof of sumacs, the young birds almost 
full grown and strong of flight, shaking thunder from 
their wings. How he planned what a glorious day that 
should be that he might have for his own, with the 
battered but precious old gun, the squirrels, and the 
partridges. How could he ever wait for it? He has 
learned to wait since. 
There were the old woods that clothed the ledges and 
ravines of the hill beyond, where he first felt the exquisite 
delight of fox hunting when leaves were in the glory of 
autumnal color, and cliff and gorge rang with the wild 
music of the hounds; and where, in a January thaw, he 
first tracked the raccoon in the soft snow to his lair. 
There, too, when the farm hands turned lumbermen 
for the nonce, he watched the warfare against the vener- 
able pines and hemlocks, and beheld with sorrow their 
mighty downfall. Yet it was a boy's sorrow, not of a sort 
to spoil a youthful appetite whetted by exercise and the 
wholesome atmosphere of the winter woods. Such a 
one he brought to the cold dinner, served at npon around 
a roaring fire. It was the sweetest meal he ever tasted, and 
like great John Ridd, he thanked God for the room that 
was inside him, which was indeed marvelous, considering 
his outward dimensions. It was the first realization of a 
dream of camp life, and needed but little imagination to 
people the surrounding forest with terrible savages and 
wild bepsts. 
Amid all these scenes he dreamed day dreams of the 
great outer world that 'was to be his to conquer when 
he grew to manhood, which would make all things attain- 
able—wealth and power and perfect happiness. Now he 
dreams of those blissful days of boyhood when he was 
happier than he ever could be again, and happily knew it 
not. No wonder that he holds dear those blissfirl days 
of boyhood and takes a sad pleasure in living them over 
in memory, a sadder pleasure in revisiting their scenes; 
for, alas ! how changed must they be ija this world of 
swift change. 
Woods that once seemed to him as enduring as the 
stars, have utterly vanished, devoured by the insatiate 
saw mill, pulp mill and engine; and the once full streams 
are shrunken. The wood folk whom he once knew ^so 
well, are gbne from their old haunts; fee flowers and 
plants that he alone could find, grow and bloom no more 
in the sunburned, arid ledges that once nurtured them in 
perpetual shade. The leaves of nature's primer, wherein 
he unwittingly learned to read her secrets, and to love 
her, are torn and disfigured. But the old lessons are not 
forgotten, and he loves her still, never so fondly. 
When it fell to the lot of the farmer*.s bOy to continue 
upon the paternal acres and the boy's tastes are pre- 
served in the man, he will still find days, though they be 
few, for the indulgence of them. With something of 
youthful zest he fishes in the stream where he caught his 
first fish, and hunts the infrequent grouse and wild duck 
in the old haunts that were populous with them in the old 
days. He has a handsome breechloader now, but it is not 
so precious a weapon to the man as to the boy was the 
battered fowling piece with its clumsy lock, altered by the 
neighborhood blacksmith from flint to percussion, its 
mended stock and crooked ramrod, and the shoulder of 
the coat is npt worn through with carrying it as the boy's 
jacket was by the other. And the heart does not beat so 
high beneath the coat as it did beneath the jacket when 
autumn leaves are underfoot and the elusive odor of 
autumn woods teases the nostrils, for alas ! youth comes 
only once in a lifetime. 
There are farmers' boys of another sort, who spend 
their lives on a farm, who never see the beauty that is all 
around them. To them a tree is so much lumber, so many 
cords of wood, and nothing more ; a moss-grown rock is 
rubbish or available material, as the case may be; the 
brook a convenience for watering stock. He would not 
spare for the woodcock's sake a rod of alder ec)f)Se that 
the brook crawls through, any more than for beauty's 
sake he would save the willow that ripples the current 
with its trailing branches. His mission seems to be to 
destroy, not to preserve, the beauty of that portion of the 
world which has been committed to his care. He is 
above the weakness of indulgence in field sports, which 
he considers a mere pretext for useless idleness. There- 
fore he is quite indifferent to the protection of fish and 
game, for since he is virtuous there shall be no cakes and 
ale. He may be a better and more successful farmer, but 
not a wiser nor a happier man, than his brother who 
finds wholesome, harmless recreation with rod and gun in 
his own woods and streams, and 'though confessing to no 
sentinientalism, gets genuirie pleasure from communion 
with nature. 
MOSQUITOES AND MALARIA. 
The investigation into the function of the mosquito m 
the communication of malaria to the human family has 
been carried so far that the ascertained facts appear 
to furnish an apparent support of the theory. There is 
some satisfaction, however, in the assurance which the 
scientists now give us that we need not regard the whole 
mosquito tribe as malaria disseminators, for, so far as is 
now deterniined, the mosquitoes which transport the 
malaria parasite belong to the single genus known as 
Anopheles. 
The theory that the mosquito is aij agent in the spread 
of malaria is not a new one, and it had been generally 
noticed that at the most active period of mosquito life, 
malarja is also rtiost prevalent. The subject- has been in- 
vestigated . ir. Ihdi^ by M^^jor Ross,., and.- in ,1897 this in- 
vestigator traced the malaria! parasite into the wall of the 
stomach of the mosquito, after it had fed on malarial 
patients. 
Grassi, an Italian observer, studied the mosquitoes of 
different malarial sections of country and found that where 
mosquitoes of the genus Culex alone existed there was no 
indiganous malaria, but that this did occur where the 
large mosquito Anopheles was found. Two other Italian 
students endeavored to infect a man with malaria by 
having him bitten by mosquitoes, but were unable to ac- 
complish this infection until they imported mosquitoes 
from a certain malarious district, and, these, when they 
bit the man, infected him with the type of malaria prev- 
alent in the district from which they had come. The 
whole subject is one of such interest that it is certain 
to be studied exhaustively, and most interesting results 
will be obtained. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The protest put out by Commodore Bliss, of the Inter- 
lake Yachting Association, against the presence at the 
meets of rowdy individuals, who, under ordinary condi- 
tions at home, would not be recognized as fit associates 
by decent and self-respecting men, is a word which is well 
spoken. There is no good reason whatever why the rowdy 
element in any branch of sport should be permitted to 
obtrude itself. Yachting has been cursed in past years 
by a class — more or less in evidence — of men who, taking 
advantage of the temporary escape from the accustomed 
repressions and restraints of their every-day surroundings, 
converted their "yachting" cruises into seasons of besti- 
ality, disorder and uproar. They were a curse to the 
waters that gave them harbor and the communities they 
smirched by their intrusion, and not less a reproach and 
injury and insult to yachting. We use the past tense be- 
cause, for the most part, and in most yachting circles, a 
new order has tatcen the place of the old, and as a rule 
such reproaches as those uttered by Commodore Bliss 
must be accepted as applying to specific districts and 
specific clubs and individuals, but not to yachting at 
large. There is then all the more reason why respectable 
yachtsmen should jealously protest the good name of 
their chosen sport and repress with harsh and vigorous 
and peremptory measures the disorderly conduct of those 
who are a disgrace to yachting. 
The same rule applies to other branches of sport. The 
rowdy gunner who trespasses on posted lands, tramples 
the farmer's crops and shoot his live stock, tears down 
fences or walls, leaves open gates and bars, and insults 
the owner — this fellow is not a sportsman, as sportsmen 
understand the term, and yet with thousands of people he 
is tl?!4 only type of sportsmen known and recognized. One 
blackguard shooter in a neighborhood will make a 
stronger impression on the community than a dozen decent 
and well-behaved sportsmen, and the pity of it is that the 
dozen have slight protection or none at all against the one, 
The profitable course to pursue, however, is to be stren- 
uous in season and out of season in condemnation of the 
rowdy with the gun, and ready and active at all times and 
in all practicable ways to promote his repression in the in- 
terest of sport. 
If we have no patience with the deer hunter who shoots 
a human being by mistake for a deer, what shall we say 
of him when his act is that of a drunken man? It ap- 
pears to have been well established that a hunter who 
killed a man in the Adirondacks the other day by a so- 
called accident was under the influence. of liquor. If, in 
addition to the possible heedlessness of sober hunters, the 
recklessness of drunkards in the woods must be taken into 
account, the prudent man will be content to do his deer 
hunting by proxy. 
President Smith of the New York State League has 
taken commendable action in urging upon the members to 
use their influence in promoting the proposed national 
park in Minnesota. The subject is one which should 
engage the attention of all sportsmen's organizations, and 
we look to see the example of President Smith followed 
by many others. As is reported by our Chicago - corre- 
spondent, the outlook for the viewing excursion, is most 
promising ; and since the Minnesota wilderness is in itself 
the most eloquent pleader for this enterprise of forest 
preservation, he must be insensible to the- charms - of 
nature and dull to the influences of the primitive wilds,, 
who shall not return an enthusiastic advocate of the park. 
!• Long Island Qty the other aigfet a mzn who. was 
searching for sonjiething on a shelf knocked off a book, 
which fell and struck an old gun that had been lying on 
the shelf for years — ^loaded and waiting for a chance to do 
something. The gun went off and the bullet ploughed 
its way through the man. This shows the danger of keep- 
ing books in the house. , 
