Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forbst and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, ^rA^.YEAR. 10 Cts. A Copy. ). NEW YORK SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1900. i No. 846 Broa"wa^;^Nbw York 
Six Months, $2. ( ' ' - 
FORESTRY. 
Not many years ago the people in this country who 
were interested in forestry were few in number and were 
more or less discouraged. Looking further ahead into 
the future than their fellows and foreseeing the grave 
dangers and difficulties which threatened North America 
from the destruction of the forests, they were yet unable 
to impart their enthusiasm to others, or even to make 
tliem see the dangers that were ahead. 
Nowadays things are very different. The number of 
people interested in forestry is large, the number of 
trained foresters in the country is considerable. Work 
is being done on every hand to demonstrate to the public 
that forestry is something practical ; a means of investing 
property so that an adequate return shall be had for the 
investment. It is but a few years since it was first 
deiinitely explained to the American people that the chief 
purpose of protecting and cultivating the forests is that 
the crops wdiich they produce may be harvested and sold, 
but when this statement came to be beUeved, and when 
what it meant came to be understood by the public, it was 
seen that land owners, lumbermen and foresters were all 
working for a common end, and it became- evident that they 
ought all to work together. The business of the forester 
is to manage the forest so that the land owner and the 
lumberman can get out of it as much as possible. 
Before that, the lumbermen had been bitterly opposed 
to the forester because they supposed that he wanted to 
keep the lumbermen out of the forest, that he wished to 
prevent the cutting down of the trees, that he desired to 
keep them— perhaps to look at. In other words, that the 
forester had. some incomprehensible sentiment about the 
woods which led him to go about constantly singing 
"Woodman, spare that tree." 
We all know a little better than that now, and are 
rather disposed to laugh at the ideas which perhaps we 
ourselves cherished not long ago. And at the same time, 
the notions of many people who are really interested m 
forestry are still sufficiently vague as to what forestry 
means, and they know little more than that it means in 
general the protection of the forests, which many of them 
have seen ruthlessly destroj^ed by the lumbermen or 
by fire. 
In a Primer of Forestry recently published by the De- 
partment of Agriculture as one of its Bulletins, Mr. 
Gifford Pinchot tells us something about forestry which, 
we take it, will be news to 90 per cent, of the people into 
whose hands the book comes. 
This Primer is in two parts. The one which has been 
published is entitled The Forest. A second part, to be 
issued, will deal with the practice of forestry, with work 
in the woods, with the relations of the forests to the 
weather and the streams, and with forestry as practiced 
in this country and abroad, and will be entitled Practical 
Forestry. 
The present volume of less than one hundred pages 
deals with (i) The Life of a Tr^e, (2) Trees in the 
Forest, (3) The Life of a Forest, and (4) Enemies of the 
Forest. Thus it takes up the individuals which make up 
the forest, and then the forest as a whole made up of 
many individuals. 
We are told first what a tree is ; its parts, its food, what 
wood is composed of, how the tree breathes, how it grows 
and of the structure of wood, including the annual rings 
and the heart wood and sap wood. The second chapter 
teaches what are the various requirements of trees as to 
lieat, moisture and light; it shows that some are tolerant 
and others intolerant of shade, while some tolerate shade 
at one period of life which yet cannot bear it at another. 
Rate of growth, reproductive power and succession of 
forest trees are'treated, as well as pure and mixed forests 
and reproduction by sprouts. 
Then comes the treatment of the forest as a com- 
munity. The life of a forest crop, the seven ages of the 
trees, the struggle among the trees for existence, the 
growth of those which survive, the culmination of the 
tree in size, the end 'Of the struggle and finally the death 
of the tree from old age. In this connection lumbering 
destructive or conservative is briefly considered. 
So long as the forest was left to nature it did very 
well, but man interferes with nature and trouble follows 
to all natural things. Among the enemies of the forest 
• Mr. Pinchot enumerates grazing in the forest, trampling, 
browsing, insects, wind, snoAv and fire, with something 
about the mean? of protection against fires. 
Since Mr. Pinchot returned to this country and took 
up the practice of forestry as a profession, he has done 
a great deal of good in many ways and in many places. 
It may perhaps be doubted, however, whether he ever 
did any one thing so useful in spreading a comprehension 
of what forestry really means, as the writing of this little 
book. What he has to say is told so simply that it can 
be comprehended by an intelligent child. The arrange- 
ment and order of his material is entirely logical, natural 
and the best that could have been devised. In no case has 
he jnelded to the very natural temptation to expand his 
material and to go into detail. He contents himself with 
giving us facts, simply, briefly, convincingly. Besides that 
his work is illustrated by forty-seven full page plates and 
eighty-three figures in the text which exemplifj' and 
illustrate the statements that he makes. 
The book is a model and should not only be read by 
every one, but ought to be made a text book in all schools. 
Teachers who have prepared material for Arbor Day 
should provide themselves with a copy of this Primer. 
THE MYSTERIOUS MAMMAL OF PATAGONIA. 
For many years a tradition has been current among the 
Indians of the interior of Patagonia that a great animal 
existed there which was extremely to be feared because 
of its ferocity and its destruction of men and of their 
horses. This tradition — firmly believed in and often nar- 
rated — came at length to the ears of scientific men, and in 
time gave rise to a belief among some of these that there 
might be something in the story, and that possibly there 
still existed in this part of South America one of the vast 
sloth-like animals of pre-historic time; the mylodon or 
one of its close relatives. 
Dr. Ameghino, who became very much interested in 
this subject, has devoted much time to its investigation. 
He obtained certain fragments of such an animal and 
learned of a piece of dried skin belonging to it which 
was found on the west coast of southern Patagonia, in a 
cavern in Last Hope Inlet. From this skin and the other 
material he described a new species of great sloth under 
the name Neomylodon Listai, and. believed that this was 
the animal which still causes terror to the Indians of that 
country. 
During the past season another scientific man visited 
the cave where the first piece of skin was obtained, and 
secured other pieces of skin, together with bones and parts 
of skulls. Here, too, he found the bones of other animals, 
among them those of man, of a great cat-like animal, of 
the dbg, horse, lama, skunk and the South American 
ostrich, together with implements of stone and bone, the 
remains of fires, and fragments of bones that had been 
burned. 
A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the. La 
Plata Museum gives a description and classification of 
the remains found in this cave, and from this study the 
various interesting conclusions are drawn. One of these 
is that this sloth does not belong to a new genus, but to 
one which has been already described fi'om the Pampean 
beds further north. 
The very large cat whose remains were found in this 
cave is a new species, and the tales told by the Indians 
about the depredations of the terrible animal which is 
said to attack and carry off their horses are thought to 
refer to these cats. It would be difficult to imagine an 
animal less likely to commit such ravages than these great 
slow moving sloths, which subsist wholly on vegetable 
food. 
If the suppositions with regard to this great cat are 
true, it is extremely interesting to find an extinct animal 
existing in tradition and described with so much detail 
that not onlj^ its size is given and the fact that it has a 
prehensile tail, but also the animal's color and the num- 
ber and character of the toes on each foot and other 
points. 
It is thought that man, and all the other animals whose 
remains were found associated in this cave, existed here 
during an interglacial period, and that the men who 
occupied this cave possessed certain domesticated animals 
among which was this great sloth. It seems probable 
that further exploration in. this region will bring to light 
other remains, and perhaps additional evidence concerning 
the characteristics of the mysterious mammal "of Pa%'- 
gonia. 
ELLIOTT COUES. 
Dr. Elliott Coues died in the Johns Hopkins Hos- 
pital, Baltimore, on Dec. 26 from the effects of an opera- 
tion performed on Dec. 6. The news of his death, which 
was altogether unexpected, came as a shock to a multitude 
of friends throughout the country. 
Dr. Coues was born in Porthmottth, N. H., in 1842. 
In 1853 the family removed to Washington, where his 
education was received at the Jesuit Seminary and the 
Columbian University, from the Medical Department of 
which he graduated in 1863. In 1862 he had entered the 
United States Army as a medical cadet, and was con- 
nected with the service from that time until 1881. From 
his father, Samuel Elliott Coues, who was in his day a 
well known writer on scientific themes. Dr. Coues in- 
herited a taste for scientific .study and research, and 
early devoted himself to the special branches in which 
he afterward became distinguished. A term of three years 
in the field in Arizona was devoted to a careful study of 
the ornithology and natural history of the Southwest, and 
his field work was continued subsequently during his 
service in South Carolina, Vermont and Dakota. In 1873 
he was appointed surgeon and naturalist of the United 
States Northern Boundary Commission for the Survey of 
the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to 
the Rocky Mountains. His report of the field work of the 
expedition gave him an established place among 
naturalists. To "many thousands of readers and students 
of ornithology Dr. Coues was best known by his great 
work, the "Key to North American Birds," which was 
first published in 1872, to be followed in 1874 by his "Field 
Ornithology." His next important work was as Secre- 
tary and Naturalist of the United States Geological and 
Geographical Survey of the Territories, commonly known 
as the Hayden Survey. He edited the publications of the 
Survey from 1876 to 1880, and ptiblished "Birds of the 
Northwest," "Fur Bearing Animals" and "Birds of the 
Colorado Valley." He was an industrious and prolific 
writer on ornithology and other branches of natural 
history, and a constant contributor to periodicals. The 
early numbers of the Rod and Gun and of the Forest and 
Stream contained manj' charming bird sketches from his 
pen. As a writer he was vivacious and brilliant; of him 
it may truly be said that he touched nothing' that he did 
not adorn. To his admirable writings countless students 
of birds and bird life owe the initial impulse and the 
continued devotion to the study. 
Dr. Coues was one of the founders of the American 
Ornithological Union, and for a term was its President. 
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences 
and numerous other societies. His later years were de- 
voted to the editing of the "Journals of Lewis and Clark," 
the "Travels of Alexander Henry and David Thomp- 
son" and other works relating to early exploratioiJS in 
the West and Northwest. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
.Whatever may be said of the shortcomings of the New 
Jersey Legislature in its various successive enactments 
of unfortunate game laws, there is yet abundant promise 
for these interests in the fact that the subject has had and 
will continue to have intelligent consideration by the Fish 
and Game Commission. These gentlemen are especially 
charged with the duty of studying the game conditions 
and recommending such changes in the present statutes 
as may be for the good of the game supply. We devote 
considerable space to the very well put considerations ad- 
vanced by the Commission in its report just issued, re- 
specting game seasons and the other restrictions essential 
to maintaining the game supply. It is worthy of note that 
New Jersey is following those States which have found 
necessary a restriction of the export of game, and it is 
probable that this feature of our protective systems will 
be incorporated in the New Jersey law. 
Just as we go to press there comes to, us the third an- 
nual report of the New York Commission of Fisheries, 
Game and Forests. Like its predecessors, this is a sump- 
tuous and beautifully illustrated volume, with portraits of 
game and fish and papers of permanent worth contributed 
bjr v&ious hands. We shall recur to the volume for 3 
further HOttce in a subsequent issue. 
I 
