Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1901. 
TTerms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. ( 
J VOL. LVIL— No. 28. 
(No. 846 Broadway, New.Vork 
A little feather droops downward to the ground 
— a swallow's feather fuller of miracle than the 
Pentateuch — how shall that feather be placed 
again in the breast where it grew? Nothing 
twice. Tims changes the places that knew us, 
and if we go back in after years, still even then it 
is not the old spot ; the gate swings differently, 
new thatch has been put on the old gables, the 
road has been widened, and the sward the driven 
sheep lingered on is gone. Who dares to think 
then ? For faces fade as flowers, and there is no 
consolation, Richard Jefferies* 
7'H£ FOREST RESERVES AS GAME PRESERVES. 
Two subjects of great interest to the western country, 
and to sportsmen and naturalists at large, ought to re- 
ceive attention at the session of Congress which has 
just opened. These are the enlargement of the Yellow- 
stone National Park and the care and government of 
the Forest Reserves. While long steps toward the 
preservation of our game, our forests, and our water 
supply have been taken within the last few years, a vast 
deal remains to be done, and the need of action becomes 
constantly more pressine. 
Few people recognize the completeness of the exter- 
mination of wild game in the West, in all settled coun- 
tries, or how rapidly that extermination is continuing in 
regions where there are as yet but few inhabitants. It 
is obvious that when a region once wild is cut up into 
farms, with inhabitants, domestic animals, fences, and all 
that, there is no longer any place for large game. A 
region which is full of people cannot contain wild ani- 
mals. In States where of old great game was most 
abundant, it is now all gone. Many people fondly im- 
agine that game is still found in abundance on Indian 
reservations, and that the Indians still subsist by hunting. 
This is not true. For the most part, these reservations 
have been swept bare of wild animals, and not only are 
the Indians unable longer to kill game for food, but even 
the buckskin desired for moccasins or clothing is im- 
ported from the East, and the Indians have reached a 
point where they dress beef hides, horse hides and hog 
hides for moccasins, and also use canvas patched with 
fragments of old boots and shoes, if they can obtain 
either, for this purpose. 
Practically the wild game is gone from all regions, 
except the high mountain or the absolute desert. The 
only situations in which it is still found are those pro- 
tected either by their inaccessibility or by the stern han-d 
of the Government. Thanks to the Hon. John F. Lacey, 
of Iowa, an effective law was passed some years ago for 
the Yellowstone Park, but not, unhappily, until after the 
practical extermination of the buffalo there. The country 
south of the Yellowstone Park was formerly a great win- 
ter range for the herds of elk which summer within the 
Park, but it is now being fenced in all directions, so that 
the trails by which they have descended to their winter 
range from the higher mountains can no longer be passed 
over, and it is also being turned into a dry and dusty 
desert by vast hordes of domestic sheep driven into it by 
persons from the south, many of whom are wholly irre- 
sponsible, and do not own a foot of land, but who drive 
their herds over the Government domain, sweeping it bare 
of vegetation, making it unfit for game to pasture on, ex- 
pelling the cattle and ruining the small ranchers who are 
striving to make for themselves and their families a sub- 
sistence and a home. The Yellowstone Park should be 
enlarged, and should be extended south, at least as far 
as Big Piney, and it is to be hoped that persons inter- 
ested in this subject — and they are many — will get together 
during this session of Congress and will agree as to the 
detail of how this should best be done. The claims of 
settlers within the region should be purchased by the 
Government and thus the pleasure ground for the whole 
people should be enlarged and protected frem the aggres- 
sions which now threaten it on the south. 
In the western country there are something like 47,- 
000,000 of acres of forest reservation, for the most part 
valueless for purposes of settlement. On the preserva- 
tion of the forests which clothe the greater portion of this 
vast area depends the water supply of a great population. 
To-day we hear constantly of some of the greatest rivers 
of the West going dry, because their flow is taken out 
near their heads to supply the farmers there, with the re- 
sult that the people who live lower down on their banks 
are without water for irrigation, and are likely to lose 
their crops and to suffer. If it was worth while to estab- 
lish these forest reservations — and about that there exists 
to-day only one opinion — it is worth while also to man- 
age them to the best advantage and not to neglect them 
until the carelessness- or greed of irresoonsible persons 
shall have so injured them that hereafter many years of 
care must be expended to repair the damage done now. 
The present Congress should enact a general law provid- 
ing for the government of these reservations, forbidding 
the cutting of timber, except by proper authority, abso- 
lutely forbidding hunting on such reservations, and in 
general providing for all contingencies likely to arise in 
connection with these reservoirs of nature. The present 
slipshod method of throwing the responsibility of caring 
for these reservations on the Secretary of the Interior, 
who lacks sufficient authority to enforce his regulations 
by punishing those who infringe them, should not be 
continued. 
It is not to be doubted that if Congress will act in this 
matter and pass a reasonable bill covering the subject, 
the various States in which the reservations lie will do 
their part, and will work together with the geiieral Gov- 
ernment to make the most of these reservations, which 
for every d>veller in their neighborhood, and more re- 
motely to every inhabitant of the whole country, have 
such an enormous economic value. 
These two subjects may be commended to the thought- 
ful attention of sportsmen and sportsmen's associations 
all over the country, and every confidence may be felt 
that if such an association as the Boone and Crockett 
Club shall take hold of this matter it will find persons 
eager to work with them throughout the length and 
breadth of the land. 
BOB WHITE. 
In our supplement this week is portrayed one of Amer- 
ica's chief game birds, Ortyx virginianus, provincially 
known as quail in the North, partridge in the South. 
Quite the equal of any of its congeners in physical 
symmetry and perfection, alertness, power of wing and 
beautiful coloration, it possesses other qualities peculiarly 
its own, which enhance its value to sportsmen, and which 
endear it to them and all others. For of all the game 
birds, it is the only one which deigns to make its habitat 
near the domicile of man. From early spring till fall 
it is a part of the active life of the cultivated areas. It 
makes its nest with little pretense of concealment; and 
the farmers' crops afford a good part of its food supply. 
Then, any kind of cover of reasonable area is approved 
by it for shelter and protection. 
In the breeding season, its ventriloquistic whistle of 
"Bob White," uttered mostly in the morning and evening 
hours, is musical to the ear, and suggestive of sport with 
dog and gun afield at a later time when autumn is yield- 
ing place to winter. i 
From the sportsman's viewpoint, if we consider the 
abundance, variety and high character of the sport which 
the quail affords, it should be esteemed as the best of 
game birds. 
While the ruffed grouse, feathered wizard of the dense 
woods, affords a high grade of sport, its habitat is limited 
to a relatively small area in comparison with that of the 
quail, whose range is from the ocean on the East to the 
far West, and from the far North to the far South. 
The prairie chicken is strictly a child of the open. 
There are no trees, no dense covers, ledges, old walls 
and fences wherewith to complicate the game of hide and 
seek. As a matter of sport, there is much of a constant 
sameness to it which makes it monotonous and tame. 
Under the same conditions, the ruffed grouse would find 
itself equally helpless, and afford sport equally common- 
place. The quail, however, affords sport which is a com- 
promise of both. In its pursuit betimes one encounters 
all the difficulties of ruffed grouse shooting, and all the 
ease of prairie chicken shooting, as the pursuit varies 
from cover to open, and vice versa. If one chooses to 
hunt with the greatest comfort, the saddle horse and 
broad plantations of the South afford the maximum of 
sport with a minimum of effort On the other hand, the 
rugged fields and tangled swamps of New England offer 
fatigues and difficulties enough to win the esteem of the 
fiaert athkle. 
A bird of the cover and open, swift of wing and cun- 
ning of device, beautiful in form and color, and tooth- 
some withal, the quail is worthy of the sportsrhan, the 
artist, the epicure. 
JVE PV J ERSE Y FREE FISHING. 
The free fishing question is exciting much interest in 
Sussex county, N. J. There are in the county several 
lakes of considerable size and well stocked with fish, 
but which by reason of private ownershin are closed to 
the public. In the old days, before fishing had come to 
be so esteemed, the waters were open to everybody, and 
resident and summer visitors alike enjoyed them; novi 
that the lakes have been posted, the Sussex county people 
have sought to have them opened again by the State. A 
measure was adopted at Trenton last winter, known as 
the lake and park law, which provided for the appoint- 
ment of a commission to condemn the lakes as public 
parks, and to determine the proper compensation to be 
paid as indemnity to the owners. The measure was made 
operative conditionally upon its ratification by the 
county; and at the last election the county vote endorsed 
it by a majority of 1,112. The commission has now been 
named and the condemnation proceedings would have 
followed, but have been interrupted by the action of Mr. 
Andrew Albright, of Newark, who is the owner of the 
greater part of Swartswood Lake, one of the waters af- 
fected, in the township of Stillwater; and who has secured 
a writ of certiorari to forbid the commissioners to act, 
and so to test the constitutionality of the law. The oppo- 
nents of the measure declare that it can be overthrown 
because it is special legislation, and an unwarranted 
taking of private prope-ty. 
The situation in New Jersey has its parallel in other 
States, where the conflict between public and private in- 
terest in fishing waters is every year becoming intensified. 
We have mentioned before the Percy Summer Club case 
in New Hampshire, which has been dragging along in the 
courts for years and the settlement of which appea''s to 
be a long way off. 
The fawn may be docile and pretty, as a pet, but the 
full-grown deer is by no means the timid and defenceless 
creature he is supposed to be. Quite recently several in- 
stances of assaults of tame deer upon their keepers have 
been recorded in the newspapers, all of them "more or 
less fatal," the latest being that of the vicious attack 
of a pet deer upon the well-known California breeder, 
Mr. C. T. Boots, at his paddock near San Francisco, on 
Nov. 3, the horn of the animal goring the breast and 
penetrating one lung. The buck elk in particular needs 
no odds in a scrap. He is a match for the predatory 
beasts of the forest and plain — bear or catamount — in a 
fair and open field. 
One of the best illustrations of his prowess is depicted 
in a bronze group at the Corcoran Gallery in Washing- 
ton, where one of these stalwart cervidse has given a 
mountain lion his coup de grace by thrusting him through 
the breast with his prongs. 
In the case of Mr. Boots the assault was aggravated 
and unprovoked. As he was leaving the paddock, after 
feeding his herd of black-tails, one of the ingrates chased 
him, and before he could leap the inclosure had him im- 
paled. Doctors regard his injury as serious. 
The leasing to the United States Fish Commission of 
the lakes on the Grand Mesa in Colorado, owned by Will- 
iam Radcliffe, presumably brings to an end a bitter tres- 
pass feud. ^ Mr. Radcliffe, an Englishman, had converted 
these lakes into a fishing preserve, and provided guards 
to keep out trespassers. Last spring one of the guards 
killed a man who was trespassing, and this aroused, intense 
feeling among the people of the locality. Mr. Radcliffe 
was driveri out of the country, and his buildings were 
destroyed. He appealed froni the Colorado authorities 
to the National Government, and on the strength of being 
a Briton sought to enlist Great Britain in the securing of 
his rights. In all of these efforts he had been unsuccess- 
ful, so that the taking over of the waters for Fish Com- 
mission purposes means the dawning of peace on thg 
Grand Mesa, . . < • 
