Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year, 1ft Cts. a Copy. ) 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 12, 19 OO. 
J VOL. LIV.— No. 19. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York 
The Forest and Stream 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^ll 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
PUBLIC SENTIMENT. 
'Mn our country," said the Pennsylvania man from 
Pike county, "deer hounding is forbidden by law, but it is 
in effect the only style of deer hunting we have, and when 
any one wants venison that is the way he gets it." 
The reason the Pennsylvania law is a dead letter in Pike 
county is because it runs counter to the prevailing local 
sentiment. The Legislature may enact anti-hounding laws 
till doomsday, but if the Pike county hunters believe in 
hounding they will hound. The situation there is all of 
a piece with that which prevail in some parts of the 
Adirondacks, where, in spite of law and wardens, the use 
of hounds has been persistent. It has its counterpart also 
in those sections of Lake Champlain where illicit pound- 
netting is practiced, and where the local sentiment is so 
strong than in one way or another the coming raid of a 
warden is always known beforehand and the netters are 
given abundant opportunity to get the incriminating nets 
out of the way, just as in certain villages in the prohibition 
State of Vermont by some mj^sterious means the liquor 
sellers always know when the officers are to appear and 
so have time to conceal the forbidden fluids. 
In such distsricts, while the neighbors must for the most 
part stand together, either actively as participants in law 
violation or passively as shielding law breakers, it is not 
difficult to imagine the unhappy position of one who is led 
by zeal for game protection to undertake the duty of in- 
forming the authorities and urging them to arrest the 
law breakers. Such a person may win the approval of his 
own conscience and may be given much credit by those 
who hear of his work abroad, but his neighbors look at 
him askance or manifest open hostlity to him in his new 
character. He speedily discovers that his zeal to have 
tlie law enforced has drawn upon him the enmity not only 
of the lawless, but of his amiable fellows as well ; for they 
ha\ e no particular concern with the game, care nothing 
for its protection, regard violations of the game laws as 
venal offenses with which no one should particularly 
trouble himself, and look upon him as a meddler and 
busybody concerning himself with things which are none 
of his business. He is an informer, with all the obloquy 
which attaches to informers everywhere; so that straight- 
way he finds that his relations with his neighbors are 
strained to the breaking point, and in due time he comes 
to consider that the simpler course is to let things re- 
main as they are. Peace and the good will of neighbors 
he reckons as worth more than the game or the fish ; and 
as for shooting and fishing, he can go to other grounds. 
This has been the experience of numerous persons. The 
rule is that whether one lives in Pike county or in any 
other section, he will in the end weary of his well-doing 
and settle down to acquiescence in, or at the least to tolera- 
tion of, the prevailing sentiment. To denounce such an 
one and to exhort him to renewed aggressiveness and per- 
se\erance is very simple for those who are on the out- 
side and have nothing to lose by the persistent activity 
of another; but poor human nature is such that even 
these exhorters. the loudest of them, when confronted 
bv similar embarrassing positions, follow the usual rule 
and withdraw'into innocuous retirement as informers and 
reformers. 
They are accomplishing most to-day for the cause of 
game and fish protection who are doing most to educate 
the public and to create a healthy public sentiment to take 
the place of that which now opposes these interests. Such 
a campaign of education, for instance, as Commissioner 
J no. W. Titcomb of Vermont is conducting in his State 
stands for the most intelligent and profitable work in 
the field. Mr. Titcomb has prepared a large series of 
lantern slides illustrating fishculture and the care and 
distribution of fish as practiced at the State hatcheries, 
and has give© numerous lectures in different parts of the 
State, explaining the work of the Commission, the pur- 
poses to be ztttasied sn^ contrasting the conditions of 
different waters before the Commission took hold of them 
and afterward. He is in fact giving the fullest possible 
information for an inadequate comprehension of just what 
the Commission has done, is doing and is endeavoring to 
do. The result is that there is in Vermont a growing 
public sentiment indorsing the interests of fish and game 
protection. With public sentiment on the right side the 
problem of protection and propagation is simple. 
THE AFRICAN REMNANTS. 
A SIGNIFICANT meeting was held in the British Foreign 
Office on the 24th of .last month, when representatives 
of Great Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and 
Portugal joined in a conference to devise measures for 
preserving from extermination the diminishing supply of 
African mammals and birds. The continent has now 
come under the rule of so many different nations that 
only by some joint agreement can there be secured a 
scheme of protection w"hich shall be efficient; and on the 
other hand, it is clear that if such an agreement could 
be reached it would practically cover the situation. There 
is growing an appreciation of the necessity of adopting 
stringent measures at once, if the destruction is to be 
checked in time. As no continent was more richly en- 
dowed with the variety and number of its big-game 
species, so in no other has the destruction been so rapid 
and extensive. Where a half-century ago vast herds of 
ruminants swarmed in such number that the reports 
brought back by explorers were received with incredulity, 
hardly a remnant now remains. The report of the pro- 
ceedings of the conference will be received with much 
interest. 
The London Times has suggested the establishment 
in various parts of Africa of natural parks similar to our 
own Yellowstone National Park, where the game shall 
find a protected and absolutely safe refuge. Something of 
the kind has already been done by the Government of the 
Cape Colony, which has set apart tracts for the preserva- 
tion of the elephant; and Cecil Rhodes, as already re- 
corded in our columns, has established a preserve for cer- 
tain of the antelopes. The game preserve presents itself 
as the only effective expedient if many of the African 
species are to be known to another generation in any other 
way than hy museum specimens and the printed page de- 
scriptive of what has been, but is no more. 
THE PASSENGER PIGEONS. 
From the West come reports of the occurrence of small 
numbers of passenger pigeons, and their publication will 
no doubt call forth those questions concerning the species 
and its present abundance, which so frequently find a 
place in these columns. 
It is to be hoped that the gunners who may see wild 
pigeons will not forthwith feel prompted to go out and kill 
as many of them as they can. The thoughtful sportsman 
can be depended on to spare this bird, but unhappily many 
are not thoughtful, and those who are not so are anxious 
to make sure that the birds they see are really passenger 
pigeons, or to try the flavor in the pot of these birds, of 
which they have heard so much, or to have the doubtful 
glory of having killed the last wild pigeon. The average 
man has no difficulty in finding excuses for killing. 
If for a few years these beautiful birds should be pre- 
served from destruction and should be permitted to in- 
crease in peace and quietness, there is a fair prospect that 
once more the race would become firmly established and 
that the danger of its extermination would no longer 
threaten. 
Already several species of North American birds have 
been exterminated, and one of them at least by the gun. 
Surely it is worth while now for each man to hold his 
hand as to the pigeon, and as to certain other birds 
which in many localities are yearly growing fewer in 
number, and to exert what influence he can to persuade 
others to let them alone. 
The days of the old pigeon roosts, and the days when 
from sunrise to sunset, and long after, the sky was blotted 
with clouds of the passing birds or streaked with the 
long lines of their flight, have gone — never to return. But 
if the men and boys who carry guns can be taught to exer- 
cise 'a reasonable self-control, we may hope in the future 
still to see from tim»-to time, and to take pleasure in, little 
flocks of these swiftly darting birds. 
Each State in the Union should pass a law projecting 
the pass**ng*T pigeow. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Even the districts whose names have stood for wildness 
and in which we have been wont to imagine the game was 
a perpetual element, one after another are yielding to the 
man with the axe or the man with the hoe. Our freqiient 
contributor Aztec, who has been revisiting his old home in 
Missouri, relates that the apple tree is rapidly extending 
its sway over the Ozark wilderness, and before it the game, 
big and small, is vanishing. The deer have been hounded 
out of the country. After the deer had disappeared the 
deer bounders took to hunting wild turkeys with hounds. 
The dogs were put on the trail and the mounted hunters 
followed after. The birds were driven until they could 
go no further or took to trees. By this method the wild 
turkey has been harried without mercy; in Missouri it is 
doomed. And as for the apple orchards, they occupy vast 
tracts of what used to be Aztec's hunting grounds; the 
woods have been cleared off until now there is not hiding 
for a squirrel. The change was inevitable; it was bound 
to come when the world discovered the quality of the 
Ozai-k apple. The fruit has an international reputation; 
large quantities are shipped to Europe; and the Ozark 
fruit farmer who sells his crop unpicked to competitive 
buyers can well aft'ord to buy railroad tickets to some 
wilder region when he takes a notion to go hunting for 
game. 
The Canadian system of forbidding Americans to shoot 
or fish without a license has long been a grievance with 
those sportsmen of New York who have seen Canadians 
free to use gun and rod in American boundary waters; 
and this year the feeling has found expression in the 
enactment of a law which provides that "On fresh water 
forming a part of the State boundaries or through which 
the State boundary runs no non-resident of the State shall 
take any kind of fish or game unless residents of this 
State may lawfully take the same kind of fish or game in 
such part of said waters as are not within the State, during 
the open season therefor in the State or country in which 
such waters are situated. If any license fee to take such 
fish or game in waters not in this State be required of a 
resident of this State, a non-resident may take the same 
kind of fish or game in such waters within the State, if a 
license so to do shall have first been obtained from the 
Commission." This is retaliation in kind, and the Cana- 
dians can have no just ground for complaint. The pur- 
pose to be attained by the law is, however, not a very 
exalted one. If a non-resident system for New York is 
sound in principle, it should be enforced irrespectively of 
the requirements Canada may or may not exact of Amer- 
icans. The license fee for angling in the Thousand Island 
waters has been, remitted by the Canadian authorities for 
years. 
The decrease of ardor for sport with the gun, as the 
years pass and old age comes on, is a familiar and com- 
mon manifestation of human nature. It is easily explained 
as only the evidence of the decline of the exuberance of 
animal spirits. Attendant upon this change of inclination 
then often comes a new attitude toward the killing of 
game; and we may even hear the old sportsman declare 
himself opposed to the pursuit of deer or ducks; and in 
extreme cases he may question if shooting for sport is 
legitimate. All this is to be regarded as a changed view 
point, but not necessarily a point of view any more true 
than was the old. Field sports are just as enjoyable 
to-day as they were when in earlier years the critic of 
them himself could enjoy them; shooting is as manly a 
recreation to-day as it was a quarter-century ago or a half- 
century ago, when the vigor of manhood rather than the 
decepitude of age determined the attitude of approval and 
participation. 
The Lacey game bill, which has passed the House, now 
goes to the Senate for action, but there is danger of its 
failing there, unless all who are interested in its passage 
shall make a strong effort to have it brought up with- 
out delay. It is quite possible that Congress may adjourn 
some time during the month of June, and in the later days 
of the session a bill like this one is likely to be overlooked, 
unless it can be shown that there is behind it some strong 
general sentiment which asks for its passage. It is de- 
sirable therefore that sportsmen all over the land should 
call the attention of their Senators to the importance of 
acting on this bill, which is likely to do more gam*^ 
protection than any statute that has yet been drawn. 
