Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
COPVRIGHT, 1900, BY FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING Co. 
ERMS, f4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ) 
Six Months, $2. ( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 1900. 
j • VOL LIV.— No. 14. 
I No. 346 Broadway, New York 
The Forest akd Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
•Tient, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications or. 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 |jcr year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
i particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
TRIUMPH OF BIRD PROTECTION. 
As stated last week, the Hallock bill for the protec- 
tion of non-game birds, which was mutilated in the As- 
sembly, was changed in the Senate so as to restore pro- 
tection to gulls and terns, and after having been favor- 
ably acted on by that body and gone back to the Assembly, 
was passed there almost in its original shape. The Governor 
has stated that he would sign it, and very possibly 
even before these words reach our readers' eyes the bill 
will have become a law. This is a signal triumph for the 
cause of protection, and so distinct a repulse to the bird 
skinners and their allies that all who love nature and 
nature's tilings may well rejoice at it. 
AH now regret, we think, that the friends of the 
original Hallock bill should have yielded, when it was 
proposed to omit the gulls and terns from the list of birds 
protected by it, and should have consented to such a 
change. Strong protests against it came not merely from 
New York, but from all the line of our coast, over which 
bird lovers recognized that the legalized slaughter of gulls 
and terns in New York -means the destruction of ...those 
birds along the whole Atlantic seaboard. 
In last week's Forest and Stream a correspondent ad- 
vanced excellent economic reasons for the protection of 
-these water birds, which are well known to be the 
;5cavengers of the sea, just as the buzzards of the South 
:are those of the land. The amount of organic matter 
which they devour, especially near cities, where the refuse 
is dumped into the sea, is very great, and but for them 
much of this refuse would be cast up again on the shores. 
Eithirr the economic or the sentimental reasons are good 
'enough to protect the gulls and the terns, and it may be 
■hoped that with the new law and the new Forest, Fish and 
' Game Commission which goes into office next month, there 
■will be set on foot bird protective work in this State which 
shall be real. A few convictions under the new law 
will make the public clearly understand that the law is 
:Hn effective one, and that the authorities having the matter 
•in charge are determined to enforce it. If those who 
now violate both economic and humane laws can be 
'brought to understand that these laws are now also those 
■ of the State of New York, and that their violation brings 
-swift punishment, the whole question of the protection of 
■our American birds will be settled forever. - ' - 
It is not to be doubted that those who are commercially 
interested with the bird skinners will make a hard fight, 
"but they cannot fight against public opinion. That is far 
too strong for any of us. 
SPORTSMEN'S SHOW. 
The artificial environment incident to life in a great 
city imposes a barrier between the dwellers therein and 
nature's handiwork. The importunate exactions, in the 
struggle for existence — the continued attention demanded 
by the duties appertaining to social, financial or political 
success — which countless thousands of city people must 
observe day by day and year by year, would seem as a 
matter of theory to have a tendency to diminish the innate 
love of mankind for the things of the woods and fields 
and streams, if they did not entirely cause its loss. As a 
matter of fact, this innate love for nature, the inheritance 
of mankind tlirough the countless ages of the past, can- 
not be extinguished. 
The late sportsmen's shows, held respectively in New 
York and Boston, have afTorded a great object lesson of 
the profound interest felt by all mankind concerning the 
world lying outside the areas of bricks and mortar. That 
they were appreciated by the public at large is evidenced 
by the thousands, from every walk of life, who attended 
them daily. They have proved what has been proved 
again and again, that this inborn fondness for nature and 
nature's creatures may seem to becorne dormant from 
disuse enforced by isolation; but it is instantly revivedj 
>yhen opportunity is offered foi; it§ expression. 
Many thousands of those who dwell in cities can take 
out of the whole year but a few days in the country for 
recreation and enjoyment. They have at best but a 
limited time in which to study the best manner of recrea- 
tion or the best equipment for it. To such, the exposition 
was a great school, where he who was in search of the 
knowledge of sport could find it all under one roof. He 
could learn how to camp, what was necessary for it and 
what was not; and so of shooting and fishing and boat- 
ing, and all the other wholesome sports of which it was 
an exposition. The trade exhibits were a necessary com- 
plement to the sportsmen's features, for the best equip- 
ment for sport is no small factor in it. 
To the thousands who can take no vacation, the ex- 
positions brought such sights and suggestions of the fields 
and streams as in themselves were a pleasure to behold. 
That the innate love for nature was implanted in man 
for a beneficent purpose, no one will doubt. He who keeps 
in touch with it enjoys in the highest degree the happi- 
ness of a sound mind in a sound body. It is a restorer 
to him whose mind and body are worn by the cares of 
life. The sportsmen's expositions, beside the pleasure 
they confer for the time being, accomplish a much more 
important work and more lasting benefit, in spreading the 
gOFpel of recreation, of which mankind, in the conditions 
prevailing in modern civilization, has constant need. 
THE WISE FATHER. 
There is nothing that the average father desires more 
than the success of his son. He would like to have the 
boy grow up strong, industrious, capable, good ; a credit , 
to his family and to the community in which he liveis. -5 
Above all things he fears lest bis. son shouM form bad 
habits, should fall into evil company, and when he be- 
comes a man should look back on his childhood and his 
upbringing with regret and shame, feeling that if he had 
been better controlled he might have turned out differ- 
ently. 
In another column vye print the pr.Qud words of a father 
to whom his grown up soti— now out in the world and 
fighting his own battles — declared that he beheved that 
the father bad never made a mistake in bringing him 
up. A principle of that father's care of his boy was to 
treat him not with the authority that a father may exer- 
cise over his son, but with the friendship that one good 
comrade feels for another. When he went fishing or when 
he went shooting, this father took his boys with him. 
The children grew to enjoy the same things that the 
father liked: together they talked over their excursions 
for fish and game; the father out of his greater experience 
told the boys shooting and fishing stories, and they came 
not only to regard him as the best friend they had, but 
as that person above all others with whom they desired 
to- spend, their time. And since a parent loves above 
all other things to be with his children, we may well im- 
agine that in their excursions this father and these boys 
had each far better times than they would have had if 
their associates had been other than they were. 
We have often advised our readers to get guns and 
fishing rods for their sons, and to take the boys with them 
on their excursions; and is there not in the simple rela- 
tion of personal experience published this week a rein- 
forcement of this advice so strong as to be worth laying 
to heart by every man who has at once a boy and a taste 
for life out of doors? 
Setting aside the self-reliance that a boy learns by being 
taken out in this way and being led to believe that he is 
looking out for himself; setting aside also the lesson that 
he is taught in observation, and those other lessons in 
manual dexterity of one kind and another, all of which 
tend to make up the complete man, there is another point 
worth thinking of. Each child must learn for himself 
the lessons of experience, yet each, consciously or un- 
consciously, strives to model his life on that of some one 
that he has known. Whose life can he better take for a 
model than that of his father, who to his son invariably 
shows his better side? And if the boy, enjoying the sports 
of the field, sees that his father is skillful in them and 
grows to believe that all that he does is well done, is not 
that boy far more likely to listen to the father's coun- 
sel as to other matters in life, than he would be if their 
relations were less close or his confidence in the parent's 
skill and wisdopi less? 
The more a child's interests are broadened the wider is 
made the field of liis pleasures and the less becomes the 
opportunity and the likelihood of his yielding to the low 
and base temptations to which every child — whether reared 
in a garret or in a palace — is ineyitably exposed. There is 
no better sheet anchor for good morals, worthy adol- 
escence and useful manhood than the fostering in a boy 
a love for outdoor life under the guidance and com- 
panionship of a father who is fond of shooting and fishing. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The averment that "trapshooting is the crookedest of 
all sports," made in St. Louis recently by a man whose 
livelihood at present is dependent on trap^hooters and 
trapshooting interests, has evoked a storm of indignation 
from the trapshooters throughout the land. They very 
justly feel outraged by such a slander. To any one who 
gives a moment's thought to the manner in which the 
slanderer's averment recoils upon hinicelf. a feeling of 
wonder will be added to the feelins? of indign^ftion ; for, 
if he honestly believed it to be "the crookedest of all 
sports," why has he not exposed it to the world at laree, 
in the most public manner? If it is "the crooked°'^t of all 
sports," why has he, as an hone=t mnn. hoQX] irlentified 
with it in the way of obtaining a livelihood from it? The 
truth is that there is no cleaner snort than transhnnting, 
none which has a better following of the bf=t citiT-ens, 
none which cotnes nearer to being the snort of the p^onle. 
He has an unfortunate bent of mind who sees bad where 
bad does not exist. 
For some time efforts have been marie to brino- the Lacey 
bird bill to a vote in the House of Representatives, and 
"dii- Monday last Mr. Lacev endeavored to ?pcnre its 
passage under suspen^^ion of the rules, bein<^ c^n'^d'^nt that 
he Copld get a two-thirds vote for it. Consideration of 
the bill failed, however, owing to the lack of a quorum, 
Mr. Cannon, Chairman of the Committee on Appropria- 
tions, who opposed a somewhat different bill la^t year, said 
he was not necessarily opposed to the present one. but he 
thought it. of such importance that a quorum, should con- 
sider it. As there were only sixty-seven members pres- 
ent, it being nearly 5 o'clock, the bill went over to some 
future day. Mr. Lacey's bill has the support of a wide 
circle of those interested in game protection and in bird 
protection. It is said to number among its advocates- Dr. 
C. Hart Merriam, of the Biological Survey, and many 
other scientific men whose opinion carries great weight, 
and almost all sportsmen support it. 
The bill to protect Massachusetts game birds by shorten- 
ing the season, and by forbidding their sale, is meeting 
with much opposition in the Legislature, and its pros- 
pects do not seem bright. On the other hand, it has 
brought out a great deal of earnest v.'ork by sportsmen, 
and some of the fish and game associations and gun clubs 
have done yeoman service in behalf of the hill,' Note- 
worthy among such clubs are the Fitchburg Rille and Gun 
Club arid the North Attleboro Fish and Game Associa- 
tion, who have been sending literature and petitions favor- 
ing Bill 549 all over the State. Whether the hill passes 
at this session or not, the agitation in its favor cannot but 
do great good, and undoubtedly the energrtic sportsmen 
of Massachusetts will ultimately succeed in having passed 
this bill, or one enough like it to protect the birds of the 
State. Meantime, all Alassachusetts clubs and associations 
interested in game and fish preservation should work 
hard for the good end. 
There are innumerable places in the North which, 
though now devoid of game, would afford good shooting 
in the fall if they were properly stocked. Grieving over 
the days agone will not restore what is lost, but active, 
energetic work in the right direction may do so — in part 
at least. By proper co-operation much could be done to 
restock many places, and at least something could be done 
for all, however little that might be. An ounce of effort, 
supplemented with active enforcement of the game laws, 
is worth a pound of repining. He who sows in the spring 
may reap in the harvest time. 
The Governor of New York has signed ^Ir. Knipp's hill 
amending the forest, fish and game law in relation lo the 
transportation of game without the State. This is one of 
a class of non-exjport laws which in certain States liave 
proved very effective in the protection of game. Just how 
the present law will work no man can tell at present, but 
its wording emphasizes once more the great ttced of lli^ 
appointment at Mh&tiy gf a State schoolmaster. 
