Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
CSPYRIGHT, 1900, BV FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING Co, 
ERMS, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1900. 
VOL. LIV.— No. 15. 
No. 346 Broadway, TiTew York 
THE HAND OF THE VANDAL. 
That is a thoughtful, pertinent and timely injunction 
w liich Mr. W. W. Hastings writes— to be careful of the 
beautiful things of the natural world which we have re- 
ceived from our forefathers, that they may be bequeathed 
to those who shall follow. It fits in as a commentary and 
a commendation of the action of the House of Represent- 
atives, which has passed Mr. Lacey's bill, setting apart 
tlie E'etrified Forest of Arizona as a new national park, to 
lake its place with the Yosemite and the Yellowstone 
among the permanent possessions of the people where 
tlie wonderful phenomena of nature may be preserved 
and lianded down intact to future generations. 
Tlie States of New York and New Jersey are making 
lirnvision for the rescue of the Palisades of the Hud- 
,son and their conversion into a public park. The action 
is all too tardy, for in large measure the pristine beauty 
of llie noble bluffs has been wrecked and despoiled be- 
yond reparation. Nevertheless that which remains is 
worthy to be preserved, and to be received as a priceless 
heritage for other eyes to rejoice in. 
These two instances of legislative action to perpetuate 
.something of the natural beauty of American scenery, 
when taken in connection with the Congressional plan of 
preserving the Big Trees of California, and the move- 
ments to establish the Minnesota National Park and the 
Appalachian forest preserve, are significant of a growth of 
healthy public sentiment and new appreciation of our 
obligations as a people to cherish and protect and con- 
serve that which is beautiful in nature. Hitherto as a 
commonwealth we have conducted ourselves in this re- 
spect too largely after the manner of the individual. The 
individual is a vandal. The average person conducts 
himself on the principle that he is the only one in the 
world, and that there are no others to come after him. 
On this theory he mutilates, robs, wrecks, destroys and 
ruin.s, doing it all innocently enough and thoughtlessly 
enough, but nevertheless leaving in his train as much 
devastation as if he had set out deliberately to spite and 
defraud those who were to follow. Whether the motive 
be the desire for relics and souvenirs or the winning of 
material gain the act is equally inconsiderate of the 
rights of others. Instances of the havoc wrought by the 
two classes may be found in multitude. 
Some of the geyser formations of the Yellowstone 
National Park have been marred beyond the possibility of 
restoration by visitors who have perpetrated their wanton 
defacements with never a thought that other visitors 
would come after them to be chagrined and disappointed 
and defrauded and disgusted. 
Just south of Miami, Fla., on the road to Cocoanut 
Grove, is a ledge of rock which Mr. Kirk Munroe, who 
knows his Florida thoroughly, declares to be unique in the 
peninsula. It is a peculiar oolitic formation whose classi- 
fication has baffled the Geological Survey. As a feature of 
the landscape, it immediately attracts attention and in- 
terest, and adds immeasurably to the beauty of the scene. 
It should be cherished and guarded by an enlightened 
appreciation and protected for all time. A week or 
two ago the entire tract of land containing this rare 
rock was purchased under the pretense by the buyer 
that it was desired for a winter home site. Immediately 
after the sale the fact was developed that the rock had 
been bought for quarry purposes. Unless some effective 
intervention shall be found, this charming bit of nature, 
which the ages have fashioned and moulded and tinted for 
the gratification of the eye of man, will be cut into build- 
ing stone and broken into filling for grades. 
The famous sea gardens of Nassau, with their corals 
and sponges and sea mosses and shells and multiform 
marine growths, have been so devastated by the curiosity 
seekers and souvenir plunderers that their rare beauty 
is now almost a memory. The gardens have been robbed 
for years, and the material has been carried away by the 
harrelful, until at last the authorities have wisely stepped 
in and prohibited by law further spoliation. 
The Vandals, from whose record we get our word 
vandalism, destroyed the works of man. The ruin they 
wrought was deplorable, but it was of things which have 
been or may be restored or replaced. What art has done 
in the past art may do in the future. The pity of the 
devastation of nature is that the destruction is irreparable 
New York and New Jersey Palisad«s, builded and 
,sculptured by the fires and waters and upheavals and 
erosions of geologic tie??, if dpstrgyed iti the brief 
period which spans a generation of human existence, 
are gone irrevocably. Arizona petrified forests, Montana 
geysers, Florida rocks, all alike, if once destroyed are 
lost forever. It is a wise forethought which calls a halt 
in the wanton ruin of one after another of the natural 
features which help to make th£ world a world of interest 
and beauty. 
THE OLD TRAIL. 
The city dweller, or he who travels over beaten ways, 
knows little of the lastingness of the scars which the 
elements, or man, or his relations, the animals, make in 
the bosom of mother earth. It is only the countryman, or 
the traveler in wild regions, who learns of their per- 
manence. 
In the old fields of the South — now growing up to 
young forests and not cultivated for many years — the 
foot of the quail shooters will often detect the old furrows 
thrown up by the plow when the land was planted in 
corn or in cotton. In New England fields, which the ad- 
jacent woodland is beginning to again embrace with its 
outreaching arms of brush and saplings, may still be seen 
the straight rows of old hillocks, which point to crops of 
corn harvested many years ago. 
The dark green of the Alaska forests which cling so 
tenaciously to the granite sides of mountains rising sharply 
from the sea, is often broken by long streaks of paler green 
deciduous trees, which show where — perhaps centuries 
ago — the snow slide plowed its clean furrow through the 
vigorous spruces. 
Out on the prairies, which now are cattle ranges or 
wheat farms, long lines of green worn deep in the soil 
still run over the swells, converging at water holes or at 
the crossings of the streams — -trails made in ancient times 
by the herds of buffalo which were then the sole cattle 
that roamed over these limitless pastures. 
In the main range, along the sides of the mountains 
which often rise so steeply from the valley's level, pale 
lines ascending gradually from the stream bed to the 
mountain's top zigzag this way and that, which are ways 
worn in the years that are past by the climbing feet of elk, 
and deer, and mountain sheep, whose light and springy 
hoofs, passing along the hillside for generation after 
generation, have pushed aside the stones, or worn hollows 
in the rocks, forming trails almost as enduring as the solid 
rock itself. 
No matter how long it may have been disused, the trail 
always remains, unless it should happen that in this place 
or in that, man has leveled it off with his tools; but by 
making a wider cast it can be taken up again a little 
beyond, and followed on and on. No man has ever 
lived long enough to see an old trail disappear. 
Even where it passes through the timber, the trail lasts. 
Leaves may fall into it and grass grow up at its side, but 
it remains. Often the rank grass and weeds and brush on 
either hand cover it up, and obscure it, yet if the vegeta- 
tion be cut away, there is the trail as plain as ever, with its 
worn stones, its roots whose bark has been rubbed off, and 
with its different color of the soil, showing that it has 
been finely powdered by the passage of many feet. 
Of all the memorials of ancient times in America, what 
is there that is more permanent than the old trail? The 
skull and the leg bones weather and fall to pieces, and 
are covered up and disappear ; the buffalo chip is devoured 
by vegetation; the iron moulders and crumbles; but the 
old trail will outlast our time, and in the time to come 
our children shall speak of it as a path. 
CO-OPERATION. 
In the common harmonious effort in the futherance 
of a common purpose, a number of men, associated to- 
gether, can accomplish much more for the common 
good than by pursuing lines of independent endeavor. 
The best an individual can achieve independently is 
but fragmentary when compared v/ith what he can ac- 
complish in co-operation with his fellows. Organized 
with them, he derives a great personal benefit from their 
sum total of experience, of influence and of wisdom. As 
a body united in a bond of common effort, the -world at 
large values them as being many more times of greater 
worth than they are as individuals. They jointly have 
greater prestige, greater powers of action and a wider 
scope of being. Each member excels in some special 
talent or accomplishment which redounds to the common 
henefit of alii The individual, relying on his ow^ un- 
assisted efforts, at times perforce must divide his time 
and attention among many things, neglecting some while 
engrossed with others ; the association, on the other 
hand, will have members who will engage in the needed 
co-operative effort while their fellows are in other spheres 
of action. 
Thus, while many material advantages accrue to the 
aggregated membership of an association, many more 
accrue to them as individual members. This is particu- 
larly true of those who are drawn together by a common 
interest in the ^pursuit of recreation, amusement, com- 
petition, and the fostering of Some wholesome sport or 
art. Unity of purpose and harmony of tastes make con- 
genial fellowship and not infrequently warm friendships 
among people so associated. The hours of relaxation are 
made more wholesomely pleasurable when passed in 
sympathetic companionship. The knowledge of the in- 
dividual increases from the contributions of his asso- 
ciates in the way of discoveries, or comparison of ideas, 
or the teaching of what is best, and recreation brings a 
healthful reaction needed in the M'ear and tear of business 
cares and labors. 
In the world of sport, as in the world of business, the 
need of co-operative effort is felt more and more, though 
as a matter of course in a lesser degree in the latter than 
in the former. Thus it comes that shooting, fishing, 
outing, boating, camera clubs, etc.. are formed, but which 
unfortunately have many times an inherent defect which 
makes their existence shorter than need be, much to the 
loss of all concerned. This defect is the apathy of a 
niajority of the members. This, as a logical result, un- 
fairly burdens a few with all the club's cares and all the 
club's work. The enthusiastic members may bear the 
burdens a longer or shorter time, but as a rule they be- 
come weary at last and refuse to bear them further. 
Not infrequently there are murmurings of one-man power, 
and when the one man ceases to act it is then discovered 
that there is no power at all. The common benefits of 
organization in fairness require reciprocal effort on the 
part of all who enjoy them. Furnishing a theory or a 
grumble is a small contributiori in return for the work 
done by the few. In association matters, it is better to 
take a broad view whose compass is the good of the whole 
rather than one too narrowly confined to selfish limits. 
NEW YORK TROUT OPENING. 
Much of the news on forest and stream subjects which 
appears in the daily papers is misleading and absurd. 
Usually these misstatements are amusing only, but re- 
cently they have been not at all a laughing matter to 
people in Forest and Stream office. 
For example, last week several of the daily papers an- 
nounced April I as the date of the opening of the trout 
season in New York and its neighborhood, and this in- 
formation being received by many of our readers as trust- 
worthy, a number of personal calls were made to this 
office by kindly disposed people, who endeavored to con- 
vince us that we did not know when the season opened, 
but that the various daily papers of the city did. 
The original statement about the law appears to have 
been taken from a country paper published up the State; 
and worse — if possible — than copying from a country 
paper is the suggestion that the statement was taken 
from plate matter in this country paper. We have not 
looked up the precise date of the law from which the 
erroneous date was taken, but there appears to be reason 
to believe that it is a law seven or eight years old. 
Various were the arguments offered by our callers to 
support the contention that the trout season for New 
York State at large must open April i, and this, notwith- 
standing the fact that the date of the opening had been 
printed the previous week in Forest and Stream, not 
only as a matter of news, vouched for by ourselves, but 
also in an official communication from the secretary of 
the New York Society for the Protection of Fish and 
Game. 
The steadfastness with which some of these callers 
clung to the belief that the daily paper which each is 
accustomed to read could not err was interesting and 
touching, and it was difficult to induce them to believe 
that on this particular matter the Forest andi Stream 
knew the facts. Each caller, when he finally went away, 
did so with a dissatisfied air, which showed that, though 
I^haps convinced against his will, he was of the 9am? 
c^nion still. 
