Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest akd Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 6, 1901. 
( VOL. LVIL— No. 1. 
j 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 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, $3 for six irionths. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
That old story about the Httle boy with the pin hook who ketched 
all the fish, while the gentleman with the modern improvements 
who stood alongside of him "kep' throwin' out his beautiful flies 
and never grot nothin'," is a pure lie.— Frank R. Stockton. 
THE HOME OF THE BASS. 
An illustration supplement goes with this issue. It is 
"The Home of the Bass," from a drawing by W. P. 
Davison, whose trout stream picture "Between Casts" 
was given with our issue of June i. Others of the series 
were: April 6, "The Trapper's Camp"; May 4, "Rap 
Full." Early annouiicement will be made of a new 
series. 
This is the weather when if one could not go fishing in 
cool waters the next best thing would be to play first as- 
sistant to Game Protector Overton in the exploration of 
the Arctic Freezing Company's cold storage rooms. 
Your prophets who foretell the future of a game species 
are no more sure of their ground than those who prog- 
nosticate of other things. The freaks of fashion may stimu- 
late or discourage the pursuit of an animal hunted for its 
fur ; invention may provide an oil to take the place of that 
obtained from another species; the unanticipated settle- 
nient of a remote district may wholly change conditions. 
In Lieut. Schwatka's account of his raft journey down 
the Yukon in 1882, he prophesies of the moose, "The 
Yukon Valley will give them a safe refuge from civiliza- 
tion when the hunting of them in Maine and Canada will 
exist only in books and stories." There were two factors 
I affecting this matter which Schwatka did not take into 
consideration — the discovery of gold on the Yukon and the 
development of the game protective idea in Maine and the 
Provinces. The Yukon gold has attracted a vast popula- 
\-Jdon into what was in Schwatka's time an unsettled and 
. practically unexplored wilderness ; and with the coming of 
'■ the gold seeker the price of moose meat has been put up, 
and the game has been and is now so persistently hunted 
that the prophet of 1901 would reverse the prophet of 
1882, and declare that the chances of longer survival were 
. with the game of Maine and Canada. With right protec- 
tion the Maine game will last for many generations oi 
moose and men. 
The small boy hunter, who stalks the mother robin in 
June and kills her if his aim is lucky or true, comes in 
k for a generous share of hard words from those who have 
' never been boys themselves — ^that is to say, women and 
■ some men — and none of us have any teo much patience 
Avith the pfedatory youngster when he invades our own 
orchards or lawns and pots the birds in which we have a 
\ quasi proprietary interest. But the boy is not the one to 
blame. It is his mother. Boys don't think. Their mothers 
I ought to. The mother woman should protect the mother 
bird. 
Send a lock of your hair, your photograph and ten 
dollars and receive by return mail a non-resident license 
to hunt in Illinois. The photograph is the latest wrinkle. 
It must be pasted on to the license for purposes of iden- 
tification. But if the shooters who go shooting in Illinois 
are like the sportsmen of other parts, the rough and dis- 
reputable looking tramp who comes to town after a 
week of burning gunpowder could not be identified as the 
original of his own photo on his license. 
Another new wrinkle in Illinois is the omission of quail 
and woodcock -from the protection of the game law. This 
is only one more in a long series of blunders which mark 
our game legislation. Here is an ambiguity in the New 
York law intended to protect wild birds other than game. 
Prior to the revision of this year the section read : 
■'Wild birds other than the English sparrow, crow, 
hawk, crane, raven, crpi^y-blackbird, cpmraon blackbird, 
kingfisher, and birds for which there is an open season, 
shall not be taken or possessed at anj time," etc. 
In this text the intent clearly was to except the "bir-ds 
for which there is an open season" from the class to be 
protected at all times, and the term "birds for which there 
is an open season" clearly refers to game birds. 
But as revised this year, the prohibition reads, "Wild 
birds other than the English sparrow, crow, hawk, crane, 
raven, crow-blackbird, common blackbird, kingfisher, and 
birds for which there is no open season, shall not be taken 
or possessed at any time," etc. The wording and punctua- 
tion remain the same as before, and the meaning of the 
section is then that the English sparrow and other named 
species and all other birds except game birds for which 
there is an open season may be killed at any time. "Birds 
for which there is no open season" are all birds other than 
game, and for them the New York law now provides no 
protection whatever. 
Still another example of "Engliaii as she is wrote" is 
contained in the law which the American Ornithologists' 
Union has induced a number of States to adopt. The 
admirable purpose of this law is to define the game birds 
and to protect all others. By an ingeniously stupid em- 
ployment of a double negative in several instances these 
laws forbid the killing of non-game birds, but permit their 
sale. For exam^e, in Maine the law reads: "No person 
shall kill * * * any wild bird other than a game bird, 
nor shall purchase, offer or expose for sale any such wild 
bird." In other words, no person shall not purchase. 
And in New Jersey "no per<K)n shall take nests or eggs 
of wild birds," nor shall have such nests or eggs in pos- 
session, which is to say that no person shall not have the 
eggs in possession. To declare that no person shall not, is 
equivalent to saying that every person shall. 
The Society for the Protection of Native Plants is a 
Boston institution, founded by persons interested in wild 
flowers, and cognizant of the fact that many of our native 
plants are exposed to the danger of extermination. It is 
the announced intention of the Society to publish brief 
articles, or leaflets, calling the attention of thoughtful 
people to the matter, and to point out what plants espe- 
cially need protection and in what way the desired end 
may be best effected. The leaflets will be distributed to 
teachers in schools, to flower missions and village im- 
provement societies, and in other places where they will 
be effective. The co-operation of wild flower lovers is 
invited, and the movement is one which should have 
cordial support. There is at present no membership fee. 
The secretary is Miss Maria E. Carter, Curator of 
Herbarium, Boston Society af Natural History, Boston, 
Mass. 
The State Forest, Fish and Game Commission has 
placed in the Adirondacks a herd of twenty elk, four of 
them males. They were presented to New York by Will- 
iam C. Whitney, and come from his Table Mountain pre- 
serve in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. It-^is given out 
that George J. Gould is arranging to procure a herd of 
moose in Canada to be presented to the State for the 
Adirondacks. 
The sportsmen of Havana are coEsldering the introduc- 
tion of desirable game into Cuba, and when the Cuban 
legislative machinery is in running order a new game 
code will be adopted. It is suggested by some persons 
who have no reverence for antiquity that the ancient 
Spanish laws on game should make way for something 
embodying modern progress. There is one statute which 
we trust no one will venture to relegate to oblivion. It is 
the one which provides that rabbits shall not be tracked 
in the snow. As Cuba has neither rabbits nor snow, it is 
evident that here is one game law which absolutely cannot 
be broken, and a law like that our Cuban brothers of the 
gun should be proud to possess. 
Among the objects upon which we come on our field ex- 
cursions none are more provocative of speculation and 
dreaming than the chance memorials of man's former 
occupation. 
It rtiay be that in our outing under Southern skies we 
come upon little heaps of stones disposed at regular in- 
tervals, which mark the spot where in the years of strife 
was bivouacked a winter encampment of troops; and as 
we study out the street plan of the camp we may conjure 
up in fancy, or in recollection, perhaps, the scenes of 
those momentous years, and see again the evening fires or 
hear the reveille. 
In the further South, where the surface of the ground is 
not subject to the leveling effect of frost, it is not at all 
unusual to find an "old field" with the ridges of the crop 
still rising above the surface, clearly marking the rows, and 
with giant pines growing from them, showing that the 
cultivators of the soil who labored here had gathered their 
last crops before nature plant*l the trees. 
Sometimes in our quest of big game in the mountains 
of the West we come upon a series of stones and rocks so 
disposed as to form the wings of a V, with the long sides 
converging gradually to its point at the brink of a cliff, 
and we know that here in the long ago was an Indian 
buffalo piskan. If not too eager in our own quest, we 
may pattse a moment to recall the exciting scenes that 
were enacted here in the days of the red hunter, when the 
game was craftily lured to the mouth of the fatal chute, 
and then the thundering herd was driven down the ever- 
converging, always narrowing lane of death, and over the 
precipice to its doom. Game and hunters both alike have 
long since passed from the land ; but to one who can read 
the story these weather-worn piskan stones are eloquent 
with their suggestion of the old-time ways. 
Or it may be that an old cock grouse has lured us on and 
on in the cover tintil we stumble upon the fallen stone 
chimney and the vine-clad foundations of an old New 
England homestead. Here stood the house; there was 
the well ; the barn was just over there, and the apples 
gone wild tell its of the orchard. Beyond on a gently swell- 
ing knoll shaded by great elms, and most pathetic of all, is 
the little inclosure where, in keeping with a custom not 
uncommon, the family laid their dead to sleep the long 
sleep. All this we may study out, but the old partridge 
devoid of sentiment has stolen away, and we may carry 
home the picture of New England family life our fancy 
has painted, but no game in the bag. 
It is a law of nature that relaxation should follow effort, 
it matters not whether the effort is of the mind or body, or 
both, nature ordains that if the organism is best, conserved 
rest must follow. This does not signify that a period of 
activity is necessarily followed by a period of inactivity 
or dormancy. The mere alternation from one to the other 
has no significance in respect to wholesome recreation. 
True rest and development require change of scene, 
change of thought and change of effort. After engaging 
for weeks or months in the narrow confines of a vocation 
the best powers of either man or woman gradually de- 
cline. All that is pleasurable is worn away and in time 
without any relaxation, a vocation and drudgery are one. 
A change from a contemplation of man's own handiwork 
to a contemplation of the work of omnipotence is the best 
restorative. The rest and change conferred by the benefit 
of the trees are indicated by a vivacity of mind and vigor 
of body, a broader view of life and appreciation of life's 
purposes, and the probabilities of added years. 
Rest and wholesome recreation are best where the trees 
grow. The camper can erect his tent and live in the en- 
vironment of primitive man and still enjoy the luxuries of 
civilization. 
The sunlight, the fragrance of the wilderness and fields, 
the beauties spread everywhere so gratifying to the eye, 
the pure air free from the contaminations of the city, are 
a tonic to mind and body, far transcending any of the nos- 
trums of mankind. 
For him whose recreation is with rod and reel, the bene- 
fits of the trees, too, are free. They enhance the charms of 
the waters wherein dwell the brave and wary trout or 
bass, and gratify the angler's eye as the touch of rod and 
reel is gratifying to his hand. 
In the unrelenting struggle of civilization, men are pFone 
to believe that they cannot afford the time to partake of 
the benefits of the trees. In such a narrow view they 
fail to perceive that they are certain to live a shorter Kfe 
as m.easured by years, and a narrower life as measured 
by the social and business horizon, and by individual 
capabilities. If the artificial phases of life predominate to 
the neglect of the natural, the time will come when nature 
will exact a settlement. The allotted span of life can be 
reached more happily by taking the rest enjoined by the 
doctrine of recreation told in the whisperings of the trees. 
