Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of. the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Trrms, $1 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. (, 
Six Months, |-2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 18, 1901. 
( VOL. LVI.— No. 20. 
1 No. .346 Broadway, New Yor 
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 be 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 iii. 
Koro it is called, and the fathers say that when the sea for days 
rose steadily and steadily, and drowned the men and washed their 
plantations hito waste and gave their homes to fishes, the last 
spot of earth that anywhere arose above the waste of waters was 
the rocky summit of that mountain, and on it sat a little bird. But 
the water higher rose and higher, and covered even that last 
resting place, and the little bird flew sadly round and round, and 
wept over Koro,' for that it was lost. Yet it came again to light 
as the waters slowly sank, but the bird has never learned to 
change its mourning note, and ever wails in the woods of Koro. — 
IVilliam Churchill: A Princess of Fiji. 
Cbc forest and Stream's Platform PlanK, 
*'TAe sale of game should be prohibited at all seasons." 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1901.— No. VII. 
CALIFORNIA. 
Penal Code, Sec. 626k, enacted 1901.— Every person who buys, sells, 
I offers or exposes for sale, barter or trade, any quail, partridge, pheasant, 
grouse, sage hen, ibis, or plover, or any deer meat, whether taken or killed 
in the State of California, or shipped into the State from any other State, 
Territory, or foreign country, is guilty of a misdemeanor. 
■'THE.ARTAND PLEASURE OF HARE-HUNTING." 
Or all the professions none have greater uncertainties 
than has that of authorship. It is uncertain from first to 
last. No author can fathom the depths of his own mental 
powers, nor can any one forecast the verdict of the public 
on any literary work. Manuscripts have been condemned 
as unworthy of merit, which when published have been 
awarded a place in the classics, while others of which 
much was expected hardly made a beginning in public 
favor. 
But of the incessant output of literature, much general 
good is accomplished, for much of the current publications 
of the day makes the progress which is lost in the sum 
total of progress of the passing year as the literature of 
the year is lost in the lapse of ages. It would indeed" be 
an ill inference Avhich would visit disapproval on all litera- 
ture that did not bear the visible marks of immortality. 
Much of it is necessarily identified with the struggles of 
the moment, with the needs of mental diversion, and with 
the evolution of civilization. And the making of books is 
not without pathos, for in futui-e many an hour of work 
with its bright hope is lost; many a rosy dream of fame 
and honor is rudely dispelled ; many a heartache is the 
only return for hard wrought prose and poem, and often 
with failure, saddest of all, the wolf comes nearer to the 
door. Thus, like all else in civilization, authorship has its 
bright and dark side. 
The vicissitudes of authorship during the centuries are 
well exemplified in the miscellaneous collections which 
make up the stock of the dealer in old books ; and here 
we find that the sporting authors of the past are not in- 
frequently represented. Among the old books in a New 
York shop is one entitled "The Art and Pleasure of Hare- 
Hunting, in Six Letters, to a Person of Quality. By 
John Smallman Gardiner, Gent. Printed for R. Griffiths 
at the Dunciad in St. Paul's Churchyard, MDCCL." The 
title page frankly informs the reader that the price of 
the work is one shilling. Its price to-day is $70. It is a 
modest octavo numbering fifty-four pages, bound in quiet 
elegance in levant morocco with a delicate tracing of 
gilt on the inner edge of the covers by way of ornament. 
The paper and ink are of a qualitj^ which would be no dis- 
credit if made at the present dzy. The diction is in the 
quaint old idiom of 150 years ago. In his preface the 
author earnestly cautioned his reader that he had learned 
that some other author had treated on the same subject 
some time prior to his own writing thereon, but that he 
had never seen the writings of his predecessor, and that 
therefore an\i;hing that he wrote was not appropriated 
from him, however much it might be the same in idea. 
,Thus this old work had still an earlier one, and inferen- 
tially the older one had still an older one to contend 
against. Matters which were debated then as contem- 
porary in interest are still debate4 to-day as feeing of 
modern thought and interest. Of these are the wide or 
narrow range of setters and pointers, the relative capa- 
bilities of each, mental impressions and their influence on 
the progeny, etc. John Smallman Gardiner, Gent., was 
particularly conscientious in his treatment of the art of 
hare-hunting. In quaint old English with its piquant 
idioms he minutely describes the habits and wiles of the 
hare, the manner of hunting it. the dogs most approved 
for that work and many delightful speculations on their 
senses and insimcts. Treating of their powers of vision 
he iays : "Some maintain Hares to be of the tribe of 
Nocturnal Animals that cannot see zvell in the Day, their 
eyes being much like Cats or Owls, and of a Contexture 
susceptible of far nicer touches of the rays of light than 
Creatures more Habituated to Daylight." 
From one shilling to $70 is no mean appreciation, though 
the tmie required is necessarily discouraging to those who 
wait. And these old books of a far age of the past show 
that the element of favorable circutnstance, the element of 
luck, was not without its force in preserving some authors 
from cbli\ioii, for many of the old books owe their 
preservation to their association with a past age contem- 
poraneous with great historical events; to the ancient 
style- of type with which they were printed, or to the 
rich and beautiful bindings, the binder's art having been 
brought to an extraordinary degree of perfection. That 
some of the ancient books should owe their preservation 
to their covers differs in a way from some modern 
books, in whose covers is concealed their chief value. But 
in the vicissitudes of aitthorship there is little that can 
justly be called new. In every age the author encountered 
the author who had wrillen before on his favorite subject; 
he encountered the public which ignored his writings, his 
disappointments were the same disappointments of his 
predecessors, and he could not fail to note that many 
works were preserved by the guarding of good covers. 
Thus there need be nothing discouraging in the fact that 
there is nothing new under the sun, for while the facts 
of the world's knowledge may be old, they are ever new to 
those who have them yet to learn. In the matter of 
sporting literature, both ancient and modern, the good 
showing is ground for just pride, as it portrays the esteem 
in which the healthful and pleasing sports of field and 
stream were held, and the talent of the writers who gave 
these sports their attention. 
THE LOADED GUN TN THE HOUSE. 
A LOADED gun in the house is an instrument of harm. It 
is ever waiting for some one to set it off and. do the 
injury. Sometimes it goes off by itself. The house of a 
Long Island clergyman was destroyed by fire not long 
ago, and the fire was caused by the falling of a loaded gun 
from its rack on the wall and the consequent explosion. 
In a murder trial in the South the accused was acquitted 
when his counsel demonstrated this combination of cir- 
cumstances ; the person 'killed had been at the time of 
his death lying on a lounge. A muzzle-loading rifle had 
hung on the wall so disposed that it was aimed directly 
at the lounge, and this rifle had been kept loaded. A 
mirror had reflected the sunlight and concentrated it as 
a burning glass upon the priming cap of the rifle and had 
caused the discharge which had killed the victim. The 
thing was proved possible by an actual experimental test, 
in which the discharge of the arm was brought about in 
the manner described. 
If loaded firearms in the house are dangerous when 
let alone, they are a hundred times more dangerous be^ 
cause of the meddling propensities of human nature. The 
combination of gun and charge is always ready for the 
chance handler who did not- know.it was loaded. In a 
village in western New York the other day a five-year-old 
child and her uncle were in a room together, when the 
itncle took up a gun which he did not know was loaded, 
and in handling discharged it, .shooting the child's legs 
off and killing her. The incident belongs to a type which 
is so common that its relation here would be without 
purpose, did it not give an opportunity to direct atten- 
tion to the responsibility of those unthinking persons who 
•provide the ineans for the didn't-know-it-was-Ioaded 
shooters to do their fell work. The immediate active 
agent in blotting out the life of a beloved child stands not 
alone in the responsibility for the distressing casualty. 
Another must share with him the awful burden. That 
other one is the person who kept the loaded gun, who 
maintained the engine of destruction ever ready to work 
its disaster. If the owner of the gun had adopted the 
simple precaution of taking out the charge before standing 
the arm in the corner, his home would not have been 
darkened with this great sorrow. The teaching of the 
incident is this : If you have a loaded gun standing in the 
corner or hanging on the rack, take out the charge. 
Remove from your own home at least the possibility of a 
disaster for which you would have to share with the 
didn't-know-it-was-loaded shooter the responsibility. 
In the old days when loading a gun was a complicated 
operation of measitred powder and shot charges, wadding 
and ramrod, there may have been some excuse for keeping 
a charge in a gun ; but under present conditions, when to 
load is the work df a second, and to remove the charge 
is equally simple and expeditious, there can be absolutely 
no excuse for the loaded gun in the home. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The Smithsonian Institution has ju.st published as one 
of the series of reports devoted to the National Museum 
a memorial of George Brown Goode, together with a 
selection of his papers on the museums and the history of 
science in America. There are given here in permanent 
forni the tributes paid to Dr. Goode by his associates, at 
the memorial meeting held in Washington in 1897. These 
comprise a memoir by Prof. A. P. Langley, Secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution, and estimates of Dr. Goode 
as a historian and citizen, by Pres. W. L. Wilson, of 
Washington and Lee University; as a naturalist, by Prof. 
Henry F. Osborn, of Columbia LTniversity, and of his 
activities in relation to American science, by Dr. W. H. 
Dall, of the United States Geological Survey. The papers 
of Dr. Goode relate to museums and rtiuseum history and 
administration, and the beginnings of natural history and 
sciences in America ; and these are followed , by a full 
bibliography of Dr. Goode's published writings, by Ran- 
dolph I. Geare. The volume of over 500 pages is made 
the more valuable by a series of no fewer than 109 por- 
traits of scientists, natttralists, explorers and others who 
have contributed to the advancement of science in Amer- 
ica. The noble volume is a fitting recognition of Dr. 
Goode's life and character and public services. Another 
memorial of the man is the National Museum itself, for 
as it is to-day in large measure he made it. 
The Massachusetts Legislature rejected last week a 
bill to permit shooting and fishing on Sunday. The advo- 
cates of making shooting lawful upon that day base their 
argument upon the fact that many 'shooters who are con- 
fined to their work through the week have no time to go 
shooting on any day but Sunday, and the opportunity to 
shoot on that day should not in fairness be denied thetti. 
As was inevitable, the debate in the House was a combina- 
tion of Sabbath observance and game protection argu- 
ments, and the two together were strong enough to defeat 
the proposed amendment by a vote of 61 to 17. 
The Appalachian National Park may be regarded as a 
thing accomplished. Dr. Ambler tells us as much as this 
in the report printed to-day on the present standing of 
the scheme. The favorable action taken by the legisla- 
tures of the States immediately concerned, and the atti- 
tude of Congress,, as shown in the last session, are such as 
to give fullest confidence that the Government will acquire 
the territory and maintain it as a perpetual forest reserve 
and pleasuring ground for the people. Some hint of the 
attractiveness of this Appalachian country and its pos- 
sibilities from a sportsman's standpoint is contained in 
Dr. Waldo's description of it. 
Mr. C. H. Ames asks for the origin of the name Poke-o- 
Moonshine as applied to a mountain or stream. There is 
much of romance and history in place-names. We have 
in hand and shall print next week an interesting paper on 
the subject of Adirondack names. 
That story of a cabin on the shore of a Massachusetts 
lake is full of suggestion. There are just such sites with- 
out number for summer camps, and the shelter may be 
put up by any one who has the gumption -to drive a nail 
and push a saw. The cost is practically nothing. ' The 
enjoyment and solid comfort possible are beyond compute. 
We shall be much mistakep if the account of the Massa- 
chusetts camp shall not prompt cither fishermen to make 
Uke provision for cheap, handy and sensible near honnj 
>ii tings. 
