Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forest >nd Stream Publishing Co. 
Tehms, 14-A Year. 10 Cts. A Copy. I NEW YORK SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1900. ] No. BroadwIV.^Nw Yokk 
The Forest and Streaia is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not bt re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and fiill 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
SPORTSMAN AND FARMER. 
A SUBJECT of growing in\portance, and to which in- 
creased attention must be given, is that of the relation 
wliich exist between the gunner looking for game and the 
farmer upon whose land the game is found. Several 
factors combine to give the trespass question its grow- 
ing importance. The hosts of shooters have multiplied, 
and the area of available shooting territory has diminished. 
There are farmers and farmers, and sportsmen and 
sportsmen, and while sportsmen of one class may get 
along without friction with the farmers of another class, 
there are gunners and farmers who clash and will always 
be at odds. 
For any valuable discussion of the subject and any 
intelligent endeavor to solve the problems involved, a 
clear understanding must be had of the respective rights 
and privileges of the two classes concerned. 
The farmer owns his land, and the ownership gives 
him the exclusive right to enter upon it for whatever 
purpose. He may fence it in and warn all the rest of 
the world to stay off. It belongs to him. This is the 
fundamental fact which must be taken into account in 
any intelligent discussion of the rights of shooters. 
Legally one has no more right to enter upon a piece of 
land for shooting game on it than for building a house 
or digging a well. The man from town has no more legal 
right to shoot over the countryman's fields than the coun- 
tryman would have to camp for the night in the town 
dweller's back yard, or to bunk on his front stoop. 
On the other hand, while the dweller in town does not as 
a rule concede to the country stranger, coming from no- 
body knows, where, the privilege of unhitching his horse 
and pitching his tent in the back yard, the country land 
owner has been accustomed to give the town gunner the 
privilege of the range of his fields to shoot and fish and 
camp; and this has been so long the conventional custom 
that the sportsman has come to accept the conceded 
privilege as an inalienable right. 
The sooner we get back to first principles and recognize 
the exclusive right of the land owner to enter upon or to 
be upon his land, the more readily shall we consider the 
question in a way promising solution. To bicker over 
fancied rights, which do not exist, will obstruct. To 
accept the situation as it is, will facilitate its intelligent 
consideration. Two factors are working to encourage the 
owner of lands to adopt more stringent systems of tres- 
pass regulations. One is a purpose to be rid of the an- 
noyance of trespassing gunners and their depredations. 
The other is an appreciation of the revenue which may 
be earned from the letting of shooting privileges. These 
statements apply, of course, only to certain regions and 
districts, where the old easy-going relations between 
farmers and shooters no longer persist. 
Each of the two factors — trespass depredations and 
game revision — will grow in influence and importance. 
If the decent, well-behaved, thoughtful and considerate 
sportsman finds himself barred out from shooting 
privileges by the land owners' enmity to gunners, he has 
only to thank the gunners whose misconduct has created 
the antipathy. And as the army of the lawless gunners 
is annually enlarging in the neighborhood of great centers 
of population, the opposition to their raids will be 
strengthened, rather than weakened. 
If we are called upon to pay for the privilege of shoot- 
ing, where once shooting was free to all, it is because 
the land owner has discovered that his game may be made 
productive of revenue; and he reasons that if the stranger 
who comes to him wants to shoot game, he may reasonably 
be required to make some return for the privilege. 
In proportion as the value of game on the farm shall 
be recognized, the better will it be protected, and the 
more speedily shall we come to the solution of the prob- 
lem of reasonable garne protection. In place of apathy 
and indifference to good game laws on the part of the 
general public, we shall have a lively interest and more 
game. As sportsmen we shall be better content to pay 
something for the privilege of shooting and the certainty 
of finding game, than to go on in the old way of shooting 
grounds free to all and depopulated of their game supply. 
There is no refl clashing of interest between farmer and 
sportsman. What may now appear to be differences con- 
sist of nothing more than the friction involved in passing 
from the old order to a new; 
A FORGOTTEN HERO. 
A LONG time ago, when men whose hair is now touched 
with silver were rioting boys, there was enshrined in 
many hearts a name now almost forgotten. It was that 
of a writer whose fame, as it seemed to them, could never 
die. He told of lands that were far away, and of people 
that were strange, and of animals that all had heard 
of, but none had seen ; and about the inhabitants of these 
distant lands he wove romances so charming, so exciting, 
and withal so full of instruction that in all the range of 
boyhood's literature there was nothing that could equal 
them. 
Sometimes his tales were of boys no older than our- 
selves, but whose opportunities were far greater. We 
followed them over the prairie and among the moun- 
tains, galloped with Basil in the track of the mysterious 
white steed; listened, entranced, to the tales of wild 
animals and their ways that fell from the lips of the 
serious Lucien; or laughed at the pranks of the volatile 
Francois. In like manner we hunted with the Young 
Jffigers through the land of the Boers, and as we grew 
older, scouted in the Mexican War, were captured by the 
Navajoes or the Greasers, or mingled with and marvelled 
at the strange characters of the far Southwest, and the 
manly trappers of. the Rocky Mountains. 
Later in life, not a few of these boys, who had now 
become men, traveled to and fro over the earth and visited 
in person those distant lands of which they had first 
learned through the wi-itings of Capt. Mayne Reid. 
Through his tales some of them had imbibed a love for 
nature which led them to become naturalists, others a 
desire to see far countries which made them explorers, 
while others still became soldiers. Wherever they went 
or whatever they saw, they found that the descriptions 
given by Mayne Reid were essentially true to life, just 
as they remembered that the lessons taught by his writ- 
ings were wholesome and worthy. It may well be 
that few of them took part in adventures so thrilling 
and so surprising as befell his characters, but then com- 
paratively few men can become heroes of romance. Yet 
we may be sure that some of his readers have had ad- 
ventures enough, in which, let us hope, they bore them- 
selves well, and as Mayne Reid's heroes would have 
done. 
Perhaps there never was a writer 'for boys who had a 
popularity so great and so well deserved as was Mayne 
Reid's. It is true that his stoi-ies were of hunting or of 
fighting and were intensely exciting; but mingled with all 
this was a great fund of natural history lore, drawn from 
the best sources then accessible, and calculated to make 
the boy love nature and observe it. Mayne Reid taught 
no lesson that was unworthy. The standard that he set 
was high, and he showed the importance of being honest 
and true, self-dependent, watchful, ready. His stories, we 
do not doubt, had a wholesome effect on the boys of the 
last generation. Mayne Reid's works are perhaps no 
longer read, and we are sorry for it. Except for one or 
two of the latest published over his name, but very likely 
not written by his pen, they were all good books, appealing 
to all that is best in a boy and instructing while they en- 
tertained him. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
As was foreseen, J. P. T. has found the lost bear for 
which he advertised in Forest and Stream. The story 
was one of Majme Reid's, and several correspondents 
have given reference to it. Moreover, we have in type the 
actual story as told in the "Hunters' Dream," and it shall 
be printed in our issue of next week. Meanwhile, for 
apother bear story of the old-fashioned sort, told when 
men were men and bears were bears, and between the 
two was still strong an irreconcilable conflict as ancient 
^s the days whep the bears came down from the moun- 
tains and devoured the children who had mocked "go 
up, thou bald head," commend us to Col. T. B. Thorpe's 
tale o-E the "Big Bear of Arkansas." It is one of the 
classics among the bear stories of the world. 
We print in another column a note of the action of the 
Audubon Society in having introduced at Albany an 
amendment of the wild birds law. The statute, as 
amended, would read (wild birds meaning those other 
than game) : "Wild birds shall not be killed or caught 
at any time or possessed living or dead, nor shall the 
plumage or skins or any part of such birds be so pos- 
sessed." This clause in italics is the new provision. The 
end sought to be attained in this amendment by the So- 
ciety is most commendable, and the step is an outgrowth 
of a recent attempt on the part of Mr. Dutcher to prose- 
cute a Long Island bird plumage factory proprietor. Mr. 
Dutcher secured at the factory a number of fresh bird 
skins, and with that evidence sought to enforce the statute 
against the concern; but the prosecution failed because 
the law was held not to cover the case. 
It is possible that if the amendment should be adopted 
the statute would be pushed to an extreme in the opposite 
direction ; for it would involve every woman who wore a 
bird plume on her hat, the millinery shops and dry goods 
stores and all persons who have in possession bird skins 
or mounted birds as natural history specimens or home 
furnishing. In other words, it would be a law imprac- 
ticable of enforcement, and such a law would be much 
less useful than the present one. As it certainly is not 
the intention of the Audubon Society to ask for a statute 
like this, the members of the law committee will doubtless 
be ready to modify the text in such a way as shall accom- 
plish the real purpose without involving others which are 
impracticable. 
One result of the hunting license systems is to give 
us some tangible evidence of the amount of game killed in 
a season. In Ontario, for example, last year more than 
5,800 deer hunting licenses and hunters' permits were 
issued; and Chief Warden Tinsley writes: "I am sure 
that in allowing one deer to each license and permit holder 
we are giving a low average"; and going even beyond 
this, he estimates that fully 6,500 deer were taken in the 
Province during the season. These are very large figures ; 
equally impressive are the statistics reported from other 
Provinces and from the States which have license syS' 
tems. The game is shown to be a natural resource of 
wonderful recuperative power, despite the constant war- 
fare upon it by the human race. The way in which the 
several species of wild life have thus maintained their 
place and their supply is one of the marvelous features 
of animal life. 
For the Toledo Centennial Mr. John E. Gunckel is 
pushing his plan to have an extensive display of fisheries, 
to be housed in a huge building constructed in the form 
of a fish. He would make it "an exact fac-simile" of a 
gigantic small-mouthed black bass, 250 feet in length, 100 
feet high and 45 feet wide; to be built of steel, iron and 
wood, and painted the natural color of the fish. In the 
fish he would have an aquarium, a fish hatchery, conven- 
tion hall for the American Fisheries Society, and, of 
course, a pond for fly-casting contests. 
In response to our Maryland correspondent's request 
for a form of organization of a farmers' protective as- 
sociation, we asked Mr. A. C. Collins, of Hartford, for 
the constitution of the farmers' and sportsmen's society 
formed by him some years ago. If farmers are to com- 
bine, why should not sportsmen combine with them? 
The annual report of the American Society for the 
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shows that during the 
last year 85,895 dogs and cats were humanely destroyed 
by its agents. This is a decrease of 11 per cent, from 
the preceding record; and the difference is accounted for 
by the fact that the streets are no longer infested witli 
vagrant animals. 
We illustrate a handsome series of heads of mountain 
sheep and mountain goat secured by Mr. C. S. Mc- 
Chesney in the Rockies. 
When you ask for a Forest and Stream calendar, tell 
us Tvhether you shoo|. pf f\s}\, or sail a boat. 
