Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
C0P7SIGHT, 1899, BY FORHST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO. 
r.nus,%i.Y^A.^jo^^..covv.^ NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1899. {no. m''kJ:o^:^%^-yo-- 
LOOKING OUT FOR NUMBER ONE. 
And now it is the summer boarder who must answer for 
depleted game covers. The men and women and children 
who invade the rural districts in the summer season con- 
stitute a factor with which in growing degree we must 
reckon, when we are seeking to account for barren covers. 
They do not shoot and do not in this way actively destroy 
the game, but their presence in the game country has a 
directly inimical effect upon the supply. Wandering 
through the woods they alarm the grouse, interfere with 
the breeding, and spoil the sport. This is a complaint 
frequently heard, and one which is by no means fanciful. 
Nor does any remedy suggest itself. The hosts of the 
summer boarder are growing; places which never knew 
him before know him now and will know him for all 
time. Many a resort once famous for its game and re- 
sorted to only by those who were in search of game has 
come to be a fashionable center. The rough accommoda- 
tions whicli sufficed for the sportsman have given way to 
pretentious caravansaries; and the man in search of 
grouse or deer might as well look for them in the streets 
of his home town. There are whole districts of the 
Adirondacks where a dense summer population has com- 
pletely changed the aspect of the country as a game 
region, and where even the deer hunting has come to be a 
fashionable function, engaged in for no other reason than 
that it is "the thing." 
When one has been deprived of his shooting in this 
way he finds no special mitigation of his chagrin in the 
reflection that the rule of the greatest good to the greatest 
number demands that if a hundred can find varied pleas- 
ures in the wild territory contiguous to a summer resort 
it is not for him to complain because his autumn shoot- 
ing has been destroyed and his own peculiar pleasure 
marred. This may be true, but it does not give him back 
his birds. 
The fact is that we sportsmen as a class and in so far 
as our sport goes stand with faces opposed to all the de- 
Trelopment and settlement and wilderness reclamation 
which in our other relations of life we are wont to 
applaud and advance. The sportsman of to-day, of 
just this day in particular, is confronted by conditions 
which ijerplex and alarm him. He sees his own hosts 
growing, and the field open to him more and more 
rapidly narrowing. His swamps are drained, his wood- 
lands felled, steamboats invade his sequestered lakes, 
hotels occupy his camping sites, the railroad shrieks 
through his deer country, and where he once enjoyed the 
quiet of nature is now the shingle mill or the discordant 
saw. With all this the problem of shooting territory 
is growing more and more pressing. 
The solution of the question is found by an increasing 
number of shooters in abandoning the old line of effort, 
which was to provide for a public game supply, and in 
resorting to the expedient of individual game protec- 
tion for individual benefit. In other words, shooters are 
despairing of saving game by game laws and are saving 
it by trespass signs. Whatever may be the merits of the 
system when considered from the standpoint of public 
interest, the fact is that the provision of a private game 
preserve or a posted stream is the end to which the most 
determined and effective individual effort is now directed. 
We were talking the other day with a New York business 
man who used to be known to the readers of this journal 
as a staunch advocate of game protection and an ever- 
ready complainant when the local game protectors were 
lax in their service. But for months and years he has 
been unheard. Why? Certainly not because the reasons 
for complaint have been removed; but if the game laws 
have been violated and the game fields have been de- 
nuded, nothing of this has perturbed his spirit. His 
name is on the list of members of a shooting club which 
has a large territory of owned and leased lands within 
easy distance -from. town. Here every year hundreds of 
live qmil ate imported for stocking the fields. Bass and 
trout waters jneld an abundant reward to the angler - 
Wardens patrol the cltib premises the year round, and in 
the shooting season the force- is doubled. This erstwhile 
contestant with other unattached sportsmen for a share 
of the game, this advocate of protection who long made 
the fight of the public his own fight because it was his 
fight, needs now maintain the contest no longer. When 
he wa,ut9 to go sliPAtirngj he repaiis to Iiis comfortable 
club house, his dogs quarter bag producing fields, and 
he may shoot up to the limit set by the rules, with the 
gratifying assurance that he is getting his quota of birds 
this year and will have the quota the following years. So 
far as he is concerned game protection is a dead issue. 
The same thing came out the other day in the talk 
of a Massachusetts man, who, having commented de- 
spondently upon the inconsequential results of a local 
game protective association movement with which he had 
been associated, and upon the apparetit uselessness so far 
as game ])rotection in his State was concerned of con- 
tributing a dollar to a league of American sportsmen, 
set forth the peculiar attractions and advantages of a New 
England mill site, with its availability for a trout pre- 
serve, with partridge shooting in the adjoining covers. 
And a trout preserve it will be made. 
The rule of the greatest good to. the greatest number 
is a fair-sounding proposition to which in a general way 
we all assent: but in the other rule of looking out for 
number one is found the motive for most of the actions 
of imperfect humanity. The game preserve is an institu- 
tion directly in line with the observance of the rule of 
number one. 
ARE THE GEYSERS DYING f 
Of all the wonderful, beautiful and interesting things 
seen by the visitor to the Yellowstone National Park 
none is so startling as the geyser in eruption. In this 
national pleasure ground, geyser phenomena are to be 
seen on a scale larger than anywhere else in the world. 
There are a half dozen distinct geyser basins, in which 
a number are grouped, besides many individual geysers, 
as well as many groups of hot springs which show every 
evidence of having been active m the p'ast, but which are 
now quiescent. We are all familiar with the old-time 
pictures showing the eruptions of Old Faithful, the tall, 
thin spout of the Bee Hive, the gigantic convulsions of 
the Giant and the Giantess, and we are likely to think 
that such expressions of activity' will continue to take 
place forever. It is by no means certain that this is true. 
We are told that within the past few years a great 
change has been noted in the action of the geysers of 
the Park, and that there appears to be a distinct de- 
cline in their activit}^ The observations made are said 
to have been superficial, but the conclusions drawn 
from them indicate that many of the ge3rsers are dying, 
and that their places have not been taken by others of 
equal force and activity. ' 
In a paper recently read before the American Associa- 
tion for the .Advancemeint of Science Mr. Erwin H. 
Barbour gives it as his opinion that the activity of the 
Yellowstone Park geysers is declining at an extraordi- 
nary rate, and he believes that if the decline of activity 
which has been noted during the past four years should 
continue for eight or ten years longer, the features 
which most interest the geologist will disappear. 
The first thing that impresses the visitor to the Yel- 
lowstone Park, if he enters it from the north, is the great 
lime formation, known as the Mammoth Hot Spri»gs. 
In these springs, which, when the Park was first dis- 
covered, flowed at almost all points, the activity is said 
to be now not one-tenth what it formerly was. The well- 
known Minerva Terrace has become extinct since 1895, 
while from several other important terraces the dis- 
charges have alinost ceased. Roaring Mountain, which 
formerly bellowed, grumbled and muttered continuously 
from its dark cavity, is silent now. Steam issues from 
it, but no sound. 
In the Nbrris Basin, geysers that were once impor- 
tant have ceased to play, while in the Lower Basin the 
beautiful Fountain Geyaer is extinct, and the Paint Pots, 
which used to, be watched with so 'much interest, occupy 
a much dim.inished ^rc, and that portion which was pink 
has ceased to bubble, In the Upper Basin many well- 
known andabdaUtiful geysers appear to be extinct. A.mong 
these ire .the Splendid and the Bee Hive. The <3;rand 
CeySer, -'which used to s;p6ut frequefitly. now does ?o 
only at rare intervals. 
Mr. Barbour's warning will very probably lead to the 
setting on fnot a series of careful observations on the 
geiyeoF3 aad !io* springs ol t&e Perk. Tt jaay b© hoped 
that their present inactivity may prove to be only tem- 
porary, for if the National Park should lose its geysers 
one of its features most attractive to the general public 
would be lacking. The lover of nature would take not 
less pleasure than formerly in wandering through its 
charming fastnesses, but the great public which longs to 
behold wonders that are startling would find in the Park 
much less to marvel at. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Our Boston correspondent reports that there is much 
dissatisfaction over the Massachusetts law which forbids 
shooting on Sunday, though why there should be more 
cavil at the .statute now than in past seasons is not ex- 
plained. The 1899 law quoted is new only in respect to 
the Sunday gunning penalty: the prohibition itself was 
contained in the 1882 revision of the Public Statutes, and 
presumably had been the Massachusetts law from time 
immemorial. The amendments made from year to year 
have been designed to provide more effective punish- 
ment for violations; and the reason given for this by 
the Game Commissioners has been that the Massachu- 
setts Sunday gunner, in the vicinity of towns at least, 
is a decided nuisance, which under the old law they 
found it difficult to suppress. Of the magnitude of the 
nuisance and the intolerable nature of it abundant testi- 
mony can be given by the dwellers and land owners in 
the neighborhood of the factory towns. The Sabbath 
observance phase of the subject — if it has any such phase 
— we do not discuss; but as a game protective measure 
pure and simple, and as aflfording land owners some pro- 
tection against the invasion of three-dollar pot-metal 
gunners, the law has a good purpose and quite sui^icient 
justification; and these points should be given considera- 
tion in making up an estimate of its wisdom. As for 
"the partridge and quail gunners," reported by our cor- 
respondent, who say that if they are interfered with by 
the authorities "it will be a trial of the best man, the 
gunner or the officer of the law," this is bravely spoken, 
but it is hoodlum talk and much more worthy of the sand- 
lots or the Haymarket than of Washington street, 
Boston. 
In the use of the long quill feathers now so much in 
demand for women's hats, those of the eagle are especially 
desired. Those of either wing or tail are used, and it is 
not uncommon to see a woman passing along the street 
bearing on her hat the single tail feather of a war eagle, 
much as the Indian warrior of old times used to tie an 
eagle's feather in his head. However, the supply of 
eagles does not at all equal the demand for these quills 
and almost any long feathers are used. Among these are 
the primaries and tail feathers of the turkey buzzard, a 
bird which, as Mr. Lucas has pointed out, has hitherto 
been little pursued to satisfy the whims of fashion. We 
may wonder how long this demand will keep up, and 
whether it will result in the extermination or marked de- 
crease in the numbers of buzzards. The use of the 
feathers of tjiis malodorous and notorious fowl on the 
heads of women who are endeavoring to be fashionably 
important is not without its humorous side. 
For a behind-the-time folk commend us to the good 
people of Pike county, Pa. They are well meaning and 
hospitable, and have grouse and deer and bear, not to 
mention some of the toughest hunting country on the 
face of the earth; and withal they are so old-fashioned 
and unprogressive that they shoot their game under a 
law which is no longer in force, but which they observe 
because of an apparent inaptitude to catch up with the 
times. Pike county was given open seasons for deer 
and game birds by an act of 1878; that law has been 
repealed, and the Pike seasons are those of the Com- 
monwealth at large; but Pike county newspapers have 
this ye^j, as before, published the old law as still in force ; 
and at last accounts the Pike hunters, native and vis- 
itant, were booming away at game out of season, Thus 
it cornes about that those who are beh-ind the ti«nes are 
ahead of all the rest. 
The -well-known English writer on ornithological .$ia1v 
jects, W. B. TJg^tmeier, has published a book on the 
house sparrow, which he calls "the avian rat." This is 
perhaps t!ie most felicitous description of the liird ever 
iawsit&tk 
I 
