Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1900, by Forbst^And Stream Publishing Co, 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1900. 
( VOL. LV.— No. 26. 
1 No. 846 Broadway, Net*^ Voi k. 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
inient, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
ipages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
igarded. 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 iii. 
A CHRISTMAS STORY NUMBER. 
This is a Christmas story number. The customary 
departments have been omitted to provide room for the 
abundant store of stories and sketches which fill column 
after column and page after page. In the wealth of good 
reading this is one of the best numbers of Forest and 
Stream ever printed. 
We ask our readers and subscribers to take this number 
as an earnest of the Forest and Stream of 1901. In the 
first year of the new cen.ury the paper will maintain the 
prestige it has so long enjoyed as a bright, intelligent, 
entertaining clean and dignified journal for sportsmen. 
It will stand for the principles and strive for the upbuild- 
ing of the interests with which it has been idenlified for 
a quarter-century. In this year to come as in the past 
these columns will be a chosen medium for the interchange 
of sentiment, opinion and experience, and in the Forest 
AND Stream's stories of life in the field and on the stream 
its readers will find enjoyment of "the next best thing" to 
ihe actual experience for themselves. 
FOREST RESERVE REGULATIONS. 
Reference was made the other day to a California case 
involving the authority of the Secretary of the Interior 
to make regulations for the protecuion and control of 
the forest reserves and national parks. 
An act of Congress, June 4, 1897, provides that 
The Secretary of the Interior shall make provisions for the pro- 
tection against destruction by fire and depredations upon the 
public forests and forest reservations which may have been set 
aside or which may be hereafter set aside under the said act of 
March 3, 1891, and which may be continued; and he may make 
such rules and regulations and establish such service as will in- 
sure the objects of such reservations, namely, to regulate their 
occupancy and use and to preserve the forests thereon from de- 
struction; and any violation of the provisions of this act or such 
rules and regulations shall be punished as is provided for in the 
act of June 4, 1888. 
Under the authority thus conferred, the Secretary of 
the Interior, on June 30, 1897, promulgated, among other 
rules for llie preservation of the public forests, a regula- 
tion providing: 
The pasturing of sheep is prohibited in all forest reservations 
except those in the States of Oregon and Washington, for the 
reason that sheep grazing has been found injurious to the 
forest cover, and therefore of serious consequence in regions 
where the rainfall is limited. The exception in favor of the States 
of Oregon and Washington is made because the continuous 
moisture and abundant rainfall of the Cascade and Pacific coast 
ranges makes rapid renewal of herbage and imdergrowth possible. 
In the California case, which is now under considera- 
tion, one Blasingame is charged with criminal trespass 
on the Sierra Forest Reserve, in violation of this section. 
To the complaint Blasingame demurred, on the ground 
that the regulation which he was charged with violat- 
ing was not binding, since it was a rule made by. the 
Secretary of the Interior, who was without constitutional 
autliority to legislate in the premises. Judge Wellborn, of 
the District Court of Southern California, before whom 
the case was argued, sustained the demurrer, holding that 
the act of June 4, 1897, conferred legislative power on the 
Secretary of the Interior, and was therefore unconstitu- 
tional. The case will be appealed. 
The point involved has had consideration by the de- 
partment. In 1898 the question was submitted to the 
Solicitor-General, who in an opinion sustaining the 
validity of the statute said: 
I recognize the existence of the salutary rule that Congress 
cannot delegate its legislative power so as to authorize an ad- 
ministrative officer by adoption of regulations, to create an offense 
and prescribe its punis}i?nent, but here the statute proclaims t}ie 
punishment for an offense which, in 'general terms, is defitied by 
law, the regulation dealing only ^tli a mitt^t of d«!t8ii fti^d ad- 
ministration necessary to carry into effect the object of the law. 
The protection of the public forests is intrusted to the Secretary 
of the Interior. Section 5388 makes it an offense, punishable by 
fine and imprisonment, for any person wantonly to destroy any 
timber on a public reservation. In furtherance of this policy 
the act of June 4, 1897, directs the Secretary to make provision 
for the protection of the forests and authorizes him to regulate 
the use and occupancy of the forest reservations, and to preserve 
the forests thereon from destruction, making for such purpose 
proper rules and regulations. Any violation of such rules and 
regulations is, by the statute, made an offense punishable as pro- 
vided in Section 53S8. By this law the control of the occupancy 
and use of these reservations is handed over to the Secretary for 
the purpose of preserving the forests thereon, and any occupancy 
or use in violation of the rules and regulations adopted by him is 
made punishable criminally. It seems to me Congress has a right 
to do that. Suppose Congress had provided that the occupation 
or use of a forest reservation by any person without permission of 
the Secretary should be a misdemeanor. Would not this be a 
valid exercise of legislative power? The present statute does no 
more. The regulation is reasonable and necessary. It restrains 
no one in the enjoyment of any natural or legal right. To use 
the language of Mr. Chief Justice Fuller in In re KoOock (165 U. 
S., 526, 533): "The regulation was in execution ' of or sup- 
plementary to, but not in conflict with, the law itself, and was 
specifically authorized thereby in effectuation of the legislation 
which created the offense." 
If the higher courts shall rule that Congres-^ may not 
while legislating in general terms for the protection of 
the forests entrust to the Secretary of the Interior he 
duty of enforcing specific regulations to make that pro- 
tection effective, it will then be obligatory upon Congress 
to amend the national forestry laws, and to make them 
so specific in detail that they will cover all forms of 
trespass and injury. It is intolerable that sheep owners 
should devastate the public possessions with immunity 
because of a flaw in the statute. 
THE WILD ANIMAL FEAR. 
Ok all questions asked by people who have never been 
much out of doors, none seems so simple to the old- 
timers as that which concerns the dangers to which the 
camper may be exposed from the attacks of wild beasts. 
It is chiefly women and children who ask such questions, 
but it is evident that in the brains of many inexperienced 
persons is firmly established a belief that wild animals 
are dangerous — that wolves, panthers and bears prowl 
about seeking Whom they may devour. This belief is in 
all probability a survival in part of earlier days, when the 
most civilized men dwelt largely in the East, where might 
be encountered lions, who would attack them, or hyenas 
ready to snap up the stray child wandering away from 
the camp, or bears of the type encountered by the irrev- 
erent infants who apostrophized Elisha ; and also in 
part of that time when the weapons of primitive man were 
so feeble and of so little avail against the wild beasts 
that these were justly to be feared. 
This feeling already existing is encouraged and 
strengthened by a certain amount of the writing of the 
day. The average man and woman love to read a bear 
or panther or wolf story not less than do small boys and 
round eyed children listen with pleasure to the tales of 
some venerable uncle or grandfather who relates the siory 
of the wolves that used to howl about his cabin or visit 
his sheep fold when first he settled in the country. 
In this land of America, as many know, there are no 
such things as dangerous animals, though there are crea- 
tures which may be made dangerous. The wolf, the 
bear and the cougar are far more anxious to get away 
from man than man is to get away from them. If given 
the opportunity they will always slip away and run, and 
if they fight it is because they believe that they have 
been cut off from every avenue of escape. Where an 
animal has been wounded it is a different matter. Then, 
often, considerations of prudence are forgotten and the 
animal acts on impulse, instead of doing what it knows to 
be wise; but even so, there is much more danger from 
a wounded deer than from a wounded panther, and vastly 
more from a wounded moose. 
But for the average man who is traveling through a 
new country where wild animals may be plenty, who 
stops when he has made a day's march and is at home 
where night finds him, there is not now, nor ever was, 
more danger from the wild animals of the country than 
from the lightnings which blaze in the summer sky. Many 
more people have been killed by lightning than have been 
run over by stampeding buffalo herds, or killed by un- 
woimded grizzly bears, or by all the other animals of the 
prairie put together. One might almost say that more 
|)eople have been struck by falling niet^orites than have 
been killed by panthers or wolves. And yet from day to 
day the newspapers con inue to print bear stories, cata- 
mount stories and wolf stories, and probably they will do 
so until long after the last bear, catamount and wolf shall 
have disappeared from the land. 
THE DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
The report of the Secretary of Agriculture for 1900 
contains a great amount of very interesting matter, of 
which that accompli-hcd by he two division- known as 
the Biological Survey and the D1vt>icn of Fore t'y i ; of 
espec al interest to sportsmen. The good work done by 
both is sufficiently well known, but it is satis'ac ory to 
have brought together in compact form s atemen's of what 
has been accomplished during the year by each. 
The Biological Survey con inues to do good work in t':e 
study of foods of birds and economic re.su' ts of im- 
portance are re ult ng from this study. The divi.sVn bas 
charge rf the enforccmenl of the Laccy .^ct. w^i h we 
understand to l)e largely in be hand^ of Dr. T. S. Palmer, 
Assistant Chief of the Division. Congress hiving au- 
thorized the Secretary to take t'le necessary lUTa rres for 
carrying oiU the purposes of tliis act addiiiml appro- 
priations to this end are needed and shou d be p-ov ded. 
The damage done by prairie dogs in the Wes is a ques- 
tion of great interest to farmers, and is being investi- 
gated by the division. Steps have been taken to warn 
the public of the danger which may follow the reckless in- 
troduction and distribution of the so-called Belgian hare. 
The Sate Board of Horticulture in California reports 
that large numbers of these animals have been set free 
throughout that State, and there is possible great danger 
from their rapid increase. 
The great and continually growing interest in forest 
matters continues to be astonishing and gratify'ng. Efforts 
are being made by the Secretary of the Interior to secure 
the co-operation of the Department of Agriculture in 
reference to the National Forest Reserve, while the Forest, 
Fish and Game Commission of New York has requested 
working plans for the protection and working of the New 
York State Forest Preserves. The popularity of Mr. 
Pinchot's offer to furnish such plans to the public is shown 
by the fact that at the close of the year the total requests 
for them exceeded 50,000,000 acres. Of these two and 
one-half millions were private land. Nearly 900,000 acres 
have been actually examined by the staff of the division, 
plans have been prepared for 200,000 acres and 50.000 
acres have been put under management. Not only this, 
but applications are frequently made by cities, or cor- 
porations controlling city water works, for plans for plant- 
ing and working the water sheds which they control. 
Such a case is seen in the Water Company of Johnstown, 
Pa., where the object sought is to prevent disastrous 
floods such as once devastated the town. 
The Division of Forestry under its present chief is 
working amicably by the side of the practical lumber men 
and the tree planters, and the results cannot be other than 
to the advantage of the country at large. 
An association has been formed for restoring moose to 
the Adirondacks. It is reported that Dr. W. Seward 
Webb will furnish a number of moose from his preserves 
for the public forests if he can have assurance that they 
will be protected; and a special committee of the tiew 
association will endeavor to secure additional protective 
legislation. As the law now prohibits absolutely the 
killing of moose, it is difficult to understand what more 
is needed. The most essential requisite for Ad'rondack 
moose restoration is a controlling public sentiment to pro- 
tect them. This sentiment does not now exist, but it 
may be created. The place to begin is not in the woods 
but out of them. The people in the Adirondacks cannot 
reasonably be expected to hold more advanced views on 
game protection tlian their employers who come in froiis 
the cities. 
We had promised for" this, week? one of the chapter* of 
"Reminiscences" of his boyhood days wh ch were the last 
things written by Rowland E. Robinson, bui since lliat 
aimouncement the story of "How Elijah Was Fed at 
Christinas" has come to us, and we print it in place of the 
"Reminiscences." It has (he qualities which won for 
.Mr. Robinson a cherished place in th(iii'<aiuls <«f hotuee, 
and the pathetic interest which attachei lo the unitnblishe^ 
writings, all too few, by Idm^ _ 
