Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal OF THE Rod AND Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $1 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1901. 
j VOL. LVII.— No. 7. 
(No. 346 Bfoadway, New York, 
CANADIAN ANGLING PERMITS. 
We print to-day a communication from Mr. J. B. 
Townsend, Jr., of Philadelphia, relating his unpleasant 
experience with the Dominion authorities upon the occa- 
sion of a fishing trip to Nova Scotia. The recital should 
have the careful attention of all American anglers who 
may be contemplating a visit to Canada, and who, unless 
they shall forestall such an event by taking out a fishing 
license, may have a like indignity put upon them. 
Mr. Townsend reviews the circumstances so fully that 
little remains to be said in comment. It is pertinent to 
remark, however, that Mr. Townsend appears to have 
been at all times and in every particular desirous of con- 
forming to the law as he understood it, as it was inter- 
preted to him by those who might be presumed to under- 
stand it, and as it has actually been construed in prac- 
tice. It is this phase of the affair which makes the action 
of the authorities at the time and their subsequent course 
appear so harsh and inconsiderate. 
The whole case turns upon the meaning of the provision 
that "foreigners temporarily domiciled in Canada and em- 
ploying Canadian guides, boats and boatmen shall be ex- 
empt from the regulation requiring permits." As Mr. 
Townsend' s counsel points out, the self-contradictory term 
"temporarily domiciled" can be interpreted only to mean 
"temporarily present," and the regulation then provides 
that if visiting anglers employ Canadian guides, they shall 
be exempt from the license requirement. If this is not 
the meaning of the regulation, it would be, difificult to 
discover that it had any meaning at all. This has been 
the construction of it in practice; permits have not been 
required of American anglers employing Canadians; Mr. 
Townsend is only one of scores of Americans who have 
fished in Canadian waters without a license because in- 
structed by the authorities that under the circumstances 
no license was required. 
Mr. Townsend's experience, however, demonstrates that 
at any time and in any particular isolated case the Can- 
adian officials are likely to arrest the unwitting foreigner, 
and until the test case which is pending to determine the 
matter shall have been decided, the only safe course for 
the visiting angler, to insure immunity from trouble, 
will be to take out a fishing license. 
GOING IT ALONE. 
We have had recently several expressions of opinion 
about desirable and undesirable companions for outings, 
and some of the writers have urged that one would do bet- 
ter to go alone. It is to be noted, however, that all of 
them apparently have taken for granted the employment 
of a guide. Has it come to this, that the art of woodcraft 
is dying out and forgotten except by such as follow the 
pursuit as a business ? Are there no longer sportsmen who 
go into the woods, packing their own outfit, selecting their 
own routes and camping places, making their own shelter, 
building their own fires, killing their own game, catching 
their own fish and making their own beds? It would 
appear to be so, judging from the ubiquity of the guide, 
his manifest importance, and the trustful dependence put 
in him by his "sport" or "party." 
It is better to go with a guide than not to go at all ; and 
in ninety-nine cases it may be better to go with one than 
without. But the hundredth man who goes it alone, or 
the party of comrades who go alone, will surely get the 
most from the outing. 
He gets most who does most. 
That is, within reason, if he has the physical strength 
and the knack. If he does not, as the phrase goes, "do 
himself up" with fatigue produced by over-exertion, or 
insomnia caused by the hard bed he makes for himself, or 
indigestion, caused by the impossible food he sets before 
himself. 
We talk about a wilderness excursion as a getting back 
to nature. It is a getting back to the childhood of the 
human race. The camper who goes alone is confronted 
by the same necessities and problems that his primeval 
ancestor met and solved. He must have shelter. For 365 
days in the year he has lived in houses built by other men ; 
now he must make one for himself. He must have some- 
thing to eat. For 365 daj-s in the year he has sat down 
at a table to eat what some oiie else has provided, cpolced 
and set before him; now he must find it and prepare it 
himself. He must make a place to sleep. All his life he 
has had beds made for him; now he must contrive one 
for hirasejfj }n t|iese things, at every step, the artificial 
man of to-day, with his dependent nature acquired by 
-centuries of living in a house in a town in a community, 
finds himself in the position of man the beginner. Par- 
tially in that position, it must be said, for rarely does one 
recede so far back into the past as not to have a modern 
gun or fishing rod or frying pan. But the point we wish 
to make is this, that the more nearly the person who is 
playing at being a savage actuallj^ comes to being a 
savage, the further back he gets toward the simplicity of 
living, the closer does he get to nature, and the more 
satisfaction and profit does he win. 
There are not many who have the physical stamina, the 
taste or the knowledge to "go it alone" without a guide. 
In a great majority of cases where such an experiment is 
tried, the result is not such as to encourage a repetition. 
The great world movement constantly in progress which 
draws population as with some great centripetal force into 
town and city is converting the modern man into a de- 
pendent creature, who, when in the woods, must be guided 
and guarded and sheltered. It is for him to go with a 
guide or not at all. 
THE MOSQUITO WAR. 
For untold ages the human race has borne patiently the 
torture inflicted on' it by the mosquito, but at last it has 
now rebelled, and has declared war on the tyrant. What 
the result will be is as yet doubtful. We cannot tell 
whether man's rebellion will be spasmodic and short lived, 
or will be carried on year after year with a grim determin- 
ation to conquer which shall at last be crowned with 
success; but in any event we may feel sure that the 
struggle will continue for years before it is ended. 
It seems an extraordinary thing that no general interest 
was aroused in the mosquito and its ways until the dis- 
covery that the insect is the vehicle through which certain 
diseases are conveyed from man to man— from the sick to 
the well. The petty annoyance of bites, the nightly dis- 
turbance of hi-s rest and the injury to his live stock was 
meekl}'- endured, but when — only a few years since — it 
became established that malaria and possibly yellow fever 
and other diseases were communicable only by means of 
certain species of mosquito, it became evident that some- 
thing must be done. 
In previous years, and, indeed, running back nearly for 
a century, complaints against the ravages of the mosquito 
had been frequent, but they had been only complaints, and 
man had come to believe that the insect was a necessary 
evil — one of those things which, like the winter's cold, or 
the fierce heat of the summer aun, might be complained 
about, but could not be avoided. But within the past few 
years the mosquito evil has been taken up seriously by 
many people in this country, and on other continents, and 
among the Americans who have striven to learn his ways 
and so learn to fight him most (effectively. Dr. L. O. 
Howard, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, stands 
easily first. 
• It is, of course, well understood that the mosquito breeds 
in water, the female laying her eggs during the night on 
its surface in masses containing from 200 to 400 eggs. 
The eggs hatch in from sixteen to twenty-four hours, and 
the exceedingly active larvae emerge — the "wrigglers," 
which are such familiar inhabitants of still pools, of water 
butts, and generally of standing water. For about seven 
days they inhabit this water, constantly in motion and 
continually rising to the surface to breathe and again sink- 
ing toward the bottom. It appears that their specific 
gravity is slightly greater than that of the water, and 
the larva's tendency thus is always to sink. This tendency 
must be overcome, for without frequent breaths of the 
surface air it will drown. It seems like a contradiction in 
terms to speak of the drowning of this water-inhabiting 
larva, which has never known any other home, yet as a 
matter of fact many of them do drown. 
After about seven days of the larval condition the in- 
sect transforms into the pupa stage, and about two days 
later emerges from the water a complete insect. The 
total period, therefore, from the laying of the egg to the 
emergence of the insect, is about ten days, but this time 
may be lengthened by unfavorable weather conditions. The 
female mosquito is now ready to perform her allotted task 
of biting, and singipg to the fiuman subject if she can 
find him. 
Since a considerable period of the mosquito's life is 
passed in the wator, it is obvious that it is at this time and 
at this place that it should be attacked, for here it cannot 
get away. It has natural enemies enough to somewhat 
reduce its number, yet not enough to seriously keep it 
in check. Small fish devour the larvfe in goodly numbers, 
and so do certain predatory water beetles, while larval 
dragon flies prey on the larval mosquitoes as the trans- 
formed ones do on the adults. 
As long ago as 1812, in a work entitled "Omniana or 
Horfe Otiosiores,'^ the following suggestion is to be found : 
The mosquito, which is of all the race of flies the most noxious, 
breeds in the water. Might it not be possible at the seasons when 
they emerge and when they deposit their eggs upon the surface 
to diminish their numbers by pouring oil upon great standing 
water and large rivers in those places which are most infested by 
them? 
For many years petroleum has been used in Europe by 
a fewJndividuals to destroy the larvse of the mosquito, but 
this remedy had attracted no general notice until Dr. 
Howard's extensive experiments within the past few 
years. Nowadays this remedy, together with dyking and 
draining lands where "standing water has commonly been 
found, promises in many localities to greatly reduce the 
numbers of the pests. Localities which, have for years 
been notorious for the number and ferocity of their mos- 
quitoes have been almost freed from the insects in a com- 
paratively short time. The method of applying the oil 
is simple. A small quantity — from half a teaspoonful to a 
cupful, according to the surface to be covered — is poured 
in the water, and is likely very soon to diffuse itself as a 
thin, but effective, film over the whole surface of the 
water. 
The effect of such a treatment is very interesting. In a 
recent case under observation, a water barrel in which the 
water for the plants in a small green house was Jield con- 
tained thousands of larvee; a tablespoonful of oil was 
poured on the surface. The next morning the water at 
the surface was thick with the dead larvse, and besides, 
there lay dead on the surface a great many adult mos- 
quitoes, which' had apparently alighted on the water to 
deposit their eggs. There were no living larvs; in the 
barrel. 
A drinking trough in a barnyard was seen in the morn- 
ing to be alive with larvae. Many of them, were at the 
surface and were seen sinking slowly to the bottom 
and again struggling upward. A tablespoonful of kerosene 
oil was poured on the surface, and lay all together in one 
flattened globule. Two hours later it had diffused itself 
over the whole surface of the water; many dead larvse 
were at the surface, and many hundreds of others could 
be seen resting on the bottom of the trough dead. No 
living ones could be discovered. Besides, there were 
fifteen or twenty dead flies floating on the surface, whether 
killed by the fumes of the oil or by drinking of the tainted 
water could not be determined. 
A specific has now been found for the mosquito — one 
which is within the reach of every one, cheap and easily 
applied. There is no reason, therefore, why one of the 
small, yet really serious, annoyances of summer life in 
many places should not be largely abated. 
The question of the spread of disease among people by 
the mosquito is another and broader one. 
We congratulate the Massachusetts Fish and Game 
Commission upon the ruling of the courts and the Attor- 
ney-General, that the Sunday fishing law in that Common- 
wealth must be considered an act for the better observance 
of the LoVd's day, and not one for the protection of fish. 
This immediately takes from the Commission the duty of 
enforcing the statute and transfers it to the police. This 
is a welcome way out of an unpleasant complication. The 
protection of fish has no proper or logical connection 
with the observance of the Sabbath, and any fish com- 
mission which concerns itself with the Sunday question is 
out of its field; there is quite enough for it to do in the 
single work of fish propagation and protection. We have 
always felt that the Sunday fishing question was one 
which should not be made a part of fish protection, nor a 
subject of discussion in sportsmen's conventions, for the 
feeling on both sides of the controversy Is always very 
strong, and the topic is closely connected with religion, 
which, along with politics, is taboo. 
We have just learned with deep regret of the death of 
N. D. Elting, of Central City, W; Va., who for more than 
twenty years had been a frequent and valued contribntC!« 
to the FoKE.^T Awrt- Stream. _ _ .1 
