Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, |4 a Year. 10 Cxs. a Copy, ) 
Six Months, $2. ( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1900. 
J VOL. LIV.— No. 
I No. 
346 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^fiill 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv. 
THE VIRTUE OF SPITE. 
We are accustomed to hear much of spite and revenge 
as factors which deter persons from reporting to the 
authorities game law violations of which they have knowl- 
edge. One may know of deer crusting or trout netting 
or grouse snaring, but would not dream of reporting it, 
because he believes that if he were known in connection 
with the prosecution his dog would be poisoned, or his 
cows' tails cut off or his barn set afire. This fear of 
revenge affords one explanation of the characteristic timid- 
ity with which game wardens are so familiar when they 
endeavor to ferret out the facts about law violations. It 
is a common experience with them to find that those who 
have the necessary evidence to convict absolutely refuse 
Lo co-operate because of fear of what might happen to 
them in case of prosecution. Taking it by and large, as 
they say in Connecticut, we must credit to the spirit of 
spite a large share of the immunity enjoyed by those 
for whom the game laws have no terrors. 
In another phase of its manifestation, however, spite 
is a motive which is active and admirable in promoting 
the cause of game protection. There is at least one ex- 
tensive game district where the operation of spite has 
saved a large stock of game. An officer of a protective 
organization which concerns itself particularly with the 
task of suppressing grouse snaring testifies that out of 
every hundred complaints received, ninety are spite com- 
plaints ; that is to say, the informers are actuated by spite, 
their purpose being not to suppress snaring, but to gratify 
a private grudge against the individual snarer. The agents 
of the association have come to look with peculiar com- 
plaisance on these spite complaints, because experience 
has demonstrated that information which grows out of a 
desire to injure the person complained of is likely to be 
of a substantial character. One who informs on an- 
other out of spite could not gratify his spite by this 
action unless the individual upon whom he informed was 
actually guilty of the practices complained of. Moreover, 
it very often develops that the informer is moved by a spite 
which has its basis in jealousy, and he himself is dis- 
covered to be a snarer who is seeking to get a rival into 
the toils of the law ; so that it is not an unheard of achieve- 
ment for the club's detectives to bag two birds at once — 
the snarer informed against and the snaring informer 
himself. Spite is not commonly reckoned among the 
cardinal virtues, but if it may be converted into such a 
useful factor in getting the better of the grouse snarers, we 
must perhaps revise our estimation of it and. exalt to the 
higher rank. 
There is another manifestation of spite in connection 
with shooting and fishing which is not altogether un- 
deserving of notice, since it affords an insight, amusing 
or pathetic as one may consider it, info the weaknesses 
of human nature. There is a certain censor who, having 
gratified an abnormal lust of blood by limitless slaughter 
of wild creatures, now makes a practice of vehemently 
and vociferously damning as game hogs or fish hogs other 
people who take more fish or game than he has determined 
to be allowable. The performance of this self-appointed 
task is, of course, a most praiseworthy and useful service, 
but one who does it conscientiously must of necessity 
make himself the easy prey of designing scamps who 
are bent on using him for selfish ends. There are, for in- 
stance, some conscienceless tricksters who manufacture 
out of whole cloth stories of game and fish slaughter 
which they send to him for no other purpose under heaven 
than to see him perform, just as in the old days travelers 
in the Yellowstone Park would throw soap into a geyser 
and then stand on one side and watch it .spout. There 
are others who have discovered here an easy way to gratify 
their petty spite against their fellows. Johnny Jones, for 
instance, gets the mitten from Susie Brown, who inclines 
to Jimmy Smith ; and Johmiy thereupon sends to the self- 
appointed denunciator of game hogs some yarn about the 
doings of Jimmy, and exults as he pokes under the eyes 
of Susie the column, or page, or two or three pages of 
"hot stuff" which he has thus cunningly induced the de- 
nunciator to denunciate. Statistics are not available for 
determining the percentage of such affairs which have 
their origin in the harmless invention of jokers or in the 
spiteful impulse of revengeful suitors ; it may not be the 
ninety per cent, which the game protective association 
has determined as the proportion of spite complaints of 
grouse snaring, but it is at least considerable enough to 
furnish a commentary on the amiable gullibility of the 
most astute reformers. 
"ALL THE CRANKS." 
In his talk at the meeting of the Massachusetts Fish 
and Game Protective Association the other day. Represent- 
ative Hunt related that one of his associates on the 
Legislative Game Committee had assured him that before 
the committee would appear all the cranks in Massa- 
chusetts, and that the proper way was to let them talk 
themselves out and then to give leave to withdraw, which 
is the polite and formal way the Massachusetts legislators 
have of refusing to accede to the views of those who 
appear at their hearings. This member's notion that the 
individuals who appeared before him in the committee 
were cranks may have been accounted for by the familiar 
fact that one who has absolutely not the slightest interest 
in a cause is given to viewing as a crank any person to 
whom the cause is of great moment and who persists 
in talking about it. Members of legislative game com- 
mittees, for instance, often appear to have been selected 
because of their dense ignorance of whatever relates to 
game and fish, a callous indifference to it, and a persever- 
ing determination to learn nothing of it. There is no 
wonder then that they should regard as a "crank" the man 
who comes before them to argue with all his soul for a 
changed opening date or a new restriction on killing game. 
Being himself incompetent to discern the false from the 
true, the wisdom from the foolishness, the committee 
member has easy recourse to the conclusion that all alike 
are cranks, and he lets it go at that. Under such circum- 
stances, with ignorance on the part of the committee, the 
wisest advocate of the best game laws maj^ expect to ac- 
complish little or nothing. He is handicapped and de- 
feated at the very start by being regarded askance as a 
crank who must be listened to while he talks himself out. 
On the other hand, it must be confessed, there may have 
been some justification for this member in his uncharitable 
and unsympathetic characterization of sportsmen as he 
has known them in committee. Sportsmen's conventions 
and gatherings of independent sportsmen before game 
committees of our different Legislatures are apt to repre- 
sent very many different individual opinions, and more 
likely than not very conflicting opinions and personal views 
and desires. In their arguments they contradict one an- 
other as to fact and contend with one another as to prin- 
ciples. The individual Senator or Assemblyman who is 
himself ignorant of the merits of the case, cannot be 
blamed if he comes from such a hearing dazed and be- 
wildered and all at sea as to what is the right course for 
him to take. Under these circumstances he is prone to 
act as the Massachusetts member declared was the proper 
way, simply to let the whole matter rest where it was. 
So long as sportsmen leave it to unorganized endeavor 
to secure for themselves what is desirable, they will fail 
of their effort because of this confusion which must in- 
evitably result in the minds of those they are seeking to 
influence. When in a hearing on a measure prescribing 
. close season, for example, a dozen different advocates 
contend for dates no two of which agree, what is the com- 
mittee to do? This year in Massachusetts a different 
course has been pursued. The sportsmen of the State, or 
a very large and influential proportion of them, having 
come together in convention, decided for themselves what 
they desired and presented themselves in solid front and 
^yith unwavering determination befpre the Legislature to 
secure this one definite law. They have encountered op- 
position, as was to be expected, but they have demonstrated 
once again the old principle of strength in union ; and there 
appears to be good promise that they will win what they 
are striving for. 
In these days of organization there is no good reason 
why the sportsmen of every State in the Union, pro- 
vided they themselves could definitely decide what they 
wanted and would agree upon it and combine to effect it, 
could not have an ideal code of game laws. Certainly 
there is not any reason why they should present them- 
selves before legislative committees disorganized, pulling 
at cross purposes, accomplishing nothing, and winning 
for themselves the characterization of "all the cranks in 
the State." 
THE AUDUBON SOCIETY. 
The fourth annual meeting of the New York Audubon 
Society, which was held on Saturday last at the American 
Museum of Natural History, was an interesting occasion. 
It was marked by the usual reports and election of officers, 
and by an illustrated talk by Mr. Frank M. Chapman, who 
told of the destruction of birds in various places, and gave 
the audience much interesting information, besides cor- 
recting many misstatements with regard to feather mil- 
linery. The excellent work done by the Society during 
the past year is a subject for congratulation to all bird 
lovers. This work will undoubtedly continue, and the 
growing interest felt in it is shown by the considerable con- 
tributions received for the purpose of protecting the gulls 
and terns at the various points along the Atlantic coast 
where they still breed, though in such diminished numbers. 
The Millinery Merchants' Protective Association, which 
is understood to have been originally formed to combat 
the work of the Audubon Society, has bowed to the force 
of public opinion and has offered to agree hereafter to 
use only the plumage of domestic birds and of game birds 
killed in season, provided the Society will consent that 
these feathers may be worn, as well as feathers imported 
from abroad. 
If this Protective Association and its members and 
those who are working for them could all be bound by 
such an agreement, something of the sort might perhaps 
well enough be considered; but will such an agreement 
bind all these people? Within a very short time officials 
of this Association have been quoted by the newspapers 
as denying that the feathers of North American birds were 
used at all in hat trimming, although the headgear worn 
by women on the streets gave the lie to each such state- 
ment. Moreover, at the present moment, according to 
correspondents in Maine, and according to the Maine 
papers, the gulls and terns along that coast are being 
slaughtered for coinmercial purposes by a large number 
of Indians and white men, working under the orders of a 
person who is reported to be the agent of various New 
York and Boston millinery firms. 
These people are endeavoring to sweep the sea along the 
Maine coast of its feathered life, and the destination of 
the remains of the birds appears to be well known. In 
the past Maine has given great attention to the laws pro- 
tecting large game, and the passage and enforcement of 
these laws have added largely to the wealth of the State. 
It is worth while now to consider whether the laws with 
regard to birds, and especially sea fowl, are not worth 
looking after. The Maine coast without gulls and terns 
would seem to many of its summer inhabitants a very 
barren one. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The American Forestry Association will hold the prin- 
cipal summer meeting this year in New York city, the 
sessions beginning on June 25 at Columbus University, on 
Morningside Heights. The Association is constantly 
growing in membership and in the measure of importance 
as an institution working for the public good. 
The Roberval Association, of which Mr. Chambers 
writes this week, is quite the most ambitious and expansive 
enterprise in the way of a fish and game preserve yet 
projected on this continent. The concessions acquired by 
the Association cover exclusive sporting rights in nearly 
30,000 square miles in the Province of Quebec. The club 
membership limit is put at 5,000 and the price of a share 
is $500. This figures up a total of $2,500,000, which is a 
fairly respectable sum when we consider that it is to be 
expended for fishing and shooting privileges. The coun- 
try included in the territory concerned covers the Lake 
St. John region, which has been resorted for ouananiche 
fishing ; but it is announced that for the present at least 
the waters will be open to the public as heretofore. 
