Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, |4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1900. 
VOL. LIV.— No. 20. 
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 full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page*iv. 
THE MAINE GUIDE LAW. 
The Maine court has rendered its decision in the case 
of Elmer Snowman, who refused to take out a license 
from the Game Commission authorizing him to act as 
a guide for sportsmen, and who contended that the statute 
requiring such a license was unconstitutional, since it in- 
terfered with his personal rights. The court rules that 
there was no cause for action. It holds that the statute 
is constitutional on the ground that inasmuch as the 
State owns the game it may prescribe conditions for 
taking it, and as one of those conditions may require that 
guides engaged in helping sportsmen to take game shall 
be licensed. This result of the suit is based on just the 
ground which has been named by us as the probable one 
which would be taken by the court. There appears to be 
no limitation of the authority of the State as to the regu- 
lations it may prescribe for the taking of fish and game; 
as we have more than once pointed out, the State, as the 
owner of the game, has constitutional authority to forbid 
absolutely its taking, and since the greater includes the 
less, there is then clear authority for any other restric- 
tions which may be less than this absolute prohibition. 
The counsel for the defense announces that the case must 
not be considered closed, inasmuch as .it will be carried up 
to a higher court. There is little reason to believe that 
the decision just given will be overruled, provided the 
Maine Commissioners shall show that the license system 
as established by them is actually conducive to the pro- 
tection of fish and game. 
THE LACEY BILL. 
We print practically in full the debate in the House of 
Representatives on the Lacey bird bill. Mr. Lacey's 
presentation of the argument for the measure is well 
put. The only doubtful question raised is as to the 
conflict of Federal and State authority in the control 
of the game, and as Mr. Lacey explained in answer to an 
interrogation, this point appears fully to be covered by 
the text of the measure which assumes to give national 
jurisdiction over the game only when it has left the pos- 
session and control of the State and has become a subject 
of interstate commerce control. 
There is one point upon which Mr. Lacey appears to 
have been misinformed, for he said that it had been held 
in New York that the law of the State did not apply to 
game imported from another State to be sold in violation 
of the State law. The very reverse of this is the fact; 
for in the famous Phelps-Racey case, where one Racey, a 
game dealer of New York city, was arrested for having 
in possession certain barrels of quail which had been 
nnported from another State and possession of which he 
sought to justify by the contention that the birds having 
been lawfully killed elsewhere and imported into New 
York did not fall within the application of the New York 
law. the court held in unmistakable language that the 
birds were subject to the prohibition of the law irre- 
spective of the source whence they had been brought. 
The same finding was arrived at in the famous Magner 
case in Illinois, and these precedents liave been upheld 
in numerous instances elsewhere. So that in fact if there 
is any one point well established in the history and theory 
and practice of game protection in this country, it is 
tliat all game, whether killed in the State or outside and 
brought into it from Avithout. is subject to the State game 
law, in all cases where the statute is so worded as 
to cover it. This principle is so well established and 
familiar that it has general acceptance, and controls the 
policy of the common carriers. The Adams Express Com- 
pany has for years published for the information of its 
agents a summary of the close game and fish seasons and 
the regulations regarding transportation, export from one 
State and other restrictions: and employees of the com- 
pany are enjoined to observe the regulatioi^s. tf^e 
particular point under consideration in the April number 
of the Adams' "Official Gazette," as prepared by Mr. F. 
H. Crawford, Chief Clerk of the Tariff Bureau, the in- 
structions to agents say: "The United States Supreme 
Court has sustained the constitutionality of State laws 
that prohibit the export of game, or that prohibit the sale 
of game in the close season that has been killed in the 
open season or transported from another State." 
There can be no harm, however, in embodying the prin- 
ciple in the explicit declaration of a national statute. To do 
this will leave no room for uncertainty; it will make as- 
surance doubly sure. 
The Lacey bill (H. R. 6634) is now in the Senate, where 
it has been read twice and referred to the Committee on 
Interstate Commerce. 
A FOREST RESERVE HIGHWAY. 
In the consideration last week by the House of Repre- 
sentatives of the Sundry Civil Service Appropriation Bill, 
it was proposed to increase the amount usually appro- 
priated for the construction, repair and maintenance of 
roads and bridges in the Yellowstone National Park by 
$25,000. Most of this sum is to be used in building a 
wagon road and the necessary bridges through the Yel- 
lowstone Park Timber Reservation, and across the Ab- 
saroka Mountains by the most practicable route, through 
the Yellowstone Park to a point on the Yellowstone 
River, near where it leaves the lake. 
It has been unofficially announced that this year the 
Burlington Road is to build its line out to the border of 
the Yellowstone Park Timber Reservation; and it is 
proposed to construct the wagon road from this railroad 
terminus through the timber reservation and into the 
Park, to connect with the existing system of roads, in 
order that persons may get into the Park from the east, as 
well as from the north and the west. 
Obviously anything is to be approved that makes the 
Park more accessible to the general public without injur- 
ing the reservation or threatening its integrity. A wagon 
road through the timber reserve, if that reserve is prop- 
erty policed and protected, will be a good thing. 
To many persons the Yellowstone Park seems far off 
and difficult of access. They do not realize how easily 
it may be reached, and how comfortable are the accommo- 
dations for the traveler visiting it. They are disposed 
to imagine that something like rough life must be under- 
gone, with camping out, which many of them do not 
understand, and dread, as we are all likely to dread un- 
known things. If the ease with which the National Park 
may be visited were better known, the number of people 
who go to it would be many times multiplied. The beau- 
ties and wonders which exist there would be far more 
generally known and appreciated, and the interest now 
being felt in the establishment of national parks would 
greatly increase. 
Of these parks there can hardly be too many, and it is 
gratifying to believe that the tendency toward establishing 
them is constantly growing. 
POST CHECKS. 
Those who have occasion to send money by mail (and 
this means practically everyone) know full well the 
annoyance it is to secure convenient and safe means of 
transmission. There are, of course, bank drafts and post- 
office and express money orders, but the great mass of 
people live where banks are not at hand, and two-thirds of 
the post-offices of the country are not money-order offices. 
There are open several ways of sending money, which 
differ from one another in degree of the annoyance and 
trouble involved, but none of which is satisfactory. One 
is to inclose stamps, another to manufacture a coin card 
for silver, a third to have recourse to the post-oflSce to 
register the letter. It goes without saying that if the 
transmission of money by mail were made safe and 
convenient, so that no trouble was involved in the 
transaction, it would vastly increase the volume of busi- 
ness and would be a boon of incalculable advantage to 
those who are compelled to use the mails in this way. Out 
of long and careful consideration of the subject has 
grown what appears to be a practical solution, and this 
is embodied in a measure which is now before Congress. 
It is known as the post check system. 
The new system would substitute for all the present 
$1 apd |a an4 $5 notes of otjr currency a new series of 
the same denominations having upon the face of each bill 
a blank space in which may be written the name of a 
payee. Until this blank space shall have been filled in. 
the note is currency and passes from hand to hand just as 
at present, but after the name of a payee has been written 
in the blank the bill becomes a check payable only to the 
person whose name it bears. When such payee receives it 
he in turn exchanges it at a bank or post-office for a 
corresponding amount in currency. For example, when a 
reader of the Forest and Stream who is remote from 
bank or post-office or express office wishes to renew his 
subscription, he takes from his pocket the amount of $4 
in currency, writes upon the face of each bill the name and 
address of the Forest and Stream Publishing Company and 
affixes a two-cent starrip postage, which he cancels with 
his initials and the date, as the fee required by the Gov- 
ernment. He has now converted the cltrrency into checks, 
which are payable only to the Forest and Stream Publish- 
ing Company. These he sends in the ordinary course of 
mail, and the Forest and Stream Publishing Company 
upon receipt of the checks banks them or exchanges them 
at the post-office for $4 in currency. 
The Congressional post check measure, which is Sen- 
ate bill No. 3643, introduced by Senator McMillan, and 
House bill No. 9632, introduced by Representative Lentz, 
provides further for the issue of fractional currency bills 
of the denominations of 5, 10, 15, 25 and 50 cents, which 
will pass as currency, or upon being filled in with the 
name of the payee become checks payable only to the 
designated person. The convenience which will be in- 
sured by the proposed system and the resulting readiness 
and safety with which the money may then be trans- 
mitted by mail will be so welcome that the public should 
give its warmest support to the post check measure. Our 
readers are requested to write their indorsement of the 
plan to their Senators and Representatives in Congress, 
urging the adoption of the system. 
ONTARIO WATER KILLING. 
Ontario has taken a retrogressive step in restoring the 
lawfulness of killing deer in the water. As this mode is 
practiced in the Province it consists in driving the deer 
with dogs into a lake or river, the hunters being stationed 
on commanding points along the shore or lying in wait 
in boats. When the deer takes to water the hunters in 
boats pursue it and either kill it themselves or drive it 
within range of the men on the shore. As a means of 
getting venison to keep one's wife and seven small 
children from starvation, these Ontario deer-killing ways 
are efficient and admirable; and back in the sixties and 
seventies and early eighties it was called good sportsman^ 
ship too. But times have changed and are changing, 
sentiment has changed and hunting methods have changed. 
Few regions are left to-day where the killing of deer in 
water is countenanced by. the sportsman's code or per- 
mitted by the law of the land. Ontario is almost alone in 
this, a solitary exception to the rule against water killing ; 
and we sincerely regret that the Province has put itself 
in this unenviable position. 
Herschel Whitaker, of Detroit, Mich., died on May 5, 
aged fifty-three years. Mr. Whitaker was appointed to 
the Michigan Fish Commission in 1883, and from that 
date until his final illness precluded further activity he 
gave to the work intelligent and highly efficient service. 
He was a member of the American Fisheries Society, and 
for a term its president. Mr. Whitaker was specially 
interested in the work of restoring the commercial fish- 
eries of the Great Lakes ; at his instance exhaustive scien- 
tific investigations were undertaken into the life his- 
tories of the species, and fishcultural operations were 
developed and enlarged. He wrote much on the subject 
of fish breeding, one of the last papers from his pen being 
the chapter on "The Whitefish and its Culture," con- 
tributed to Mr. Mather's "Modem Fishculture." 
Commissioner J. P. Collins, of the Massachusetts Fish 
and Game Commission, sends us a note reporting proposed 
experiments by Commissioner Brackett in the artificial 
rearing of ruffed grouse. This is an enterprise which has 
been often attempted and in some instances under what 
appeared to be very favorable conditions, but so far the 
result has uniformly been failure. T^lus. is not to say that 
the breeding in captivity may not yet be accomplished. 
Continued experimenting on -a large scale and with ii^-: 
telligence may crpym the gffort with success. ^ 
