Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1901, by Forest ANt> Stream Publishing Co. 
Tjsrms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1901. 
( VOL. LVII.— No. 26. 
j No. 846 Broadway, New Yor k 
ti 
FOREST AND STREAM f 
CHRISTMAS NUMBER 
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The Christmas Number of Forest and jj 
^ Stream will be the next one. December 2Sth. jj 
m As with the Christmas' Numbers of other ^ 
$ years, the one for 1901 will contain a real ^ 
^ store of good reading. 
M sketch.es and stories : 
* In Lusty Manhood. 
J Selling the Bear's Hide. Chas. s. Davi 
This is the list of ^ 
Charles Hailock. 
son. 
■M 
M 
f A Man o' the Woods. 
A" 
1^ Sea Rack. WUUam Edward Aitken. 
I Casey's Wildcat. 
S The Tale of Lualu's Hunt. 
5? Llewella Pierce Churchill. 
S° 
% Luck with a Meat Gun. Ransacker. 
% 
Fayette Durlin. 
Francis MooiMn. 
M. W. Montgomery. 
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% Faithful Fido. 
J If you get the paper from a newsdealer 
J you should take the precaution to order in | 
^ advance. ^ 
LONG-RANGE RIFLE SHOOTING. 
In our rifle columns to-day is the story of a most 
notable reunion. The victors of that series of rifle vic- 
tories in '74-' 77, which placed America as the champion 
of champions in the rifle world, gathered to talk over old 
times, rejoice once more in the throb of triumph, name 
with words of regret the few who had dropped from the 
ranks, and display with pride the medals which had meant 
so much in the getting. But there was a special reason 
which had led Col. Leslie C. Bruce to bestir himself m 
organizing the gathering. When these men parted com- 
pany over two decades ago, rifle shooting of the highest 
type fell into desuetude, naturally perhaps, as there were 
no more victories to win, and the spur of competition was 
wanting to urge them to continue their effort. A new 
generation has come to the front, and the newcomers have 
failed to uphold the prestige of victory which Creedmoor 
had established. This was more than old-timers could 
quietly permit, and they met not only in sociable enjoy- 
ment, but to institute such measures as should redeem 
American rifle shooting from its present second-rate posi- 
tion. 
The teams which went down before the Canadians and 
the Irishmen in the contest at Sea Girt during the past 
summer have much to excuse them. They met seasoned 
veterans of the butts, and they were handicapped in the 
way of arms to a degree which would have disheartened 
any contestant. The task now is to wipe out those defeats 
in still more signal victories, and it was to revive the old- 
time Amateur Rifle Club and its work that Col. Bruce 
had in mind when he took upon himself the task of 
organizing that reunion of Dec, 14, and acting as a very 
hospitable host. 
The veterans can do no better service than to start 
those whose, task it will be to redeem American shooting 
prestige in the exact groove followed in the 70' s. The 
new club must be amateur, and it must be civilian. The 
man with the biggest title and its accompanying extra 
quantity of gold lace does not thereby and therefore have 
the most knowledge of rifle shooting or make the best rifle 
shot. He is more likely to be at a disadvantage because 
he is not free in his judgment to the merit of certain 
rifles. The old rule of the survival of the fittest must 
prevail, and the questiop of the fittest can only be de- 
termined by the proportion of buUseyes. Jfow, as 
before, it will be the certain shot, utterly untrammeled, 
who will work out results whiph the professional military 
workman must adopt. It was so when Creedmoor opened 
in 1873. The scores then made by amateur marksmen, 
who had not even taken on the dignity of privates, shamed 
the entire National Guard of the Union into a practical 
use of the arms which had before only done service in 
making parades a bit more glittering, and then the 
Regulars reluctantly followed suit and learned in the 
field before the butts, the limits to the efficiency of the 
old Springfield rifles. 
So much for history, and to-day the situation is ripe 
for its repetition. Now, as then, the task is to fix the 
highest limits to the possibility of the current arm. Then 
it was the bi'eechloader against the muzzleloader. Black 
powder and large calibers, with high trajectories and 
moderate ranges were the data to be worked upon. The 
rifle of to-day is of .30 caliber, and it must use a smoke- 
less powder cartridge. This means a higher velocity with 
lower trajectory and much greater range. It is far from 
satisfactory now. Against all the claims of the makers of 
smokeless powder cartridges, the rifleman who undertakes 
to make high scores at 1,000 yards will find that "un- 
accountables" will creep into his- score. This means that 
he gets misses where his holding and his trained judg- 
ment of wind tells him he should have a buUseye. It 
was the task of the old group of long-range men to elimi- 
nate the "unaccountable" from the arm then in use. It' 
must be done again with the arm of to-day. It must not 
only be done at 1,000 yards, but at 2,000 yards, as the 
high-power weapon now assures us is entirely feasible. 
The material of to-day is different, but the successful 
method of the past will hold, and now as then, victory in 
a very pleasant and healthful sport will come, and in its 
train an impetus to our soldiers, both regular and volun- 
teer, which is even more needful to-day than at any 
previous time. 
Any organization which the old-time riflemen may form 
is sure to be one which any young rifleman may be proud 
to Join, and there is no reason to doubt that the series of 
well-won victories of the closing quarter of the last 
century may be gloriously duplicated iri the opening years 
of this. 
Among the distinguished victims of shooting accidents 
was Wm. E. Gladstone, who in 1842 lost the forefinger of 
his left hand by an explosion of his gun. The fact has 
come to public attention anew because of a question as 
to realism in art, which has been raised by a critic of the 
new Gladstone statue at Manchester, in which the sculptor 
has restored the finger. The critic expresses the opinion 
that the artist .should have been true to the fact, and 
that the bronze Gladstone represented as delivering a 
speech should be the maimed Gladstone without the 
forefinger. It is a delicate question of which much might 
be said on both sides. Where the maiming is so con- 
siderable as to become a characteristic associated with 
the personage in the popular mind, the true art unques- 
tionably is to perpetuate the fact in statue or painting. 
Thus the several effigies of old Peter Stuyvesant which 
decorate, if they do not adorn, Manhattan Island, show 
the wooden leg which helped to make him such a pic- 
turesque figure in New Amsterdam. It is not so clear 
that the lesser maimings, so insignificant, for instance, as 
the loss of a finger, should be perpetuated in art. If the 
sculptural realists shall have their way, however, and in- 
sist upon showing us in bronze as the chance explosion of 
a gtm in the field or the act of a fellow shooter may 
leave us maimed or dismembered, those of us who are 
elected to be cast in bronze by our grateful country would 
do well to forego the shotgun and the rifle. 
Setting aside the well-worn and by this time deadly 
dull jokes, on antidotes for the bites of venomous snakes, 
the subject of poisoning by snakes has always been an 
interesting one, and a vast deal of serious work has been 
done to discover some remedy which should be a specific 
in the case of a wound from the fang of a venomous 
snake. Many remedies have been suggested by different 
investigators, but it may be questioned whether any of 
them have proved generally effective. 
One of the latest of these remedies is antivenene, dis- 
covered by Dr. Calmette, and a recent issue of the London 
lancet cf>ntaina an extract from ^ report by a medical 
officer on an Indian railway line, which gives strong 
testimony as to its value. The quotation is as follows: 
"On the night of the 23d [of August] I was called to 
see a coolie woman who had been bitten by a large snake, 
supposed to be a cobra. She was said to have been bitten 
about 7 P. M., and I did not see her till two hours later. 
She was then practically moi-ibund, the throat paralyzed 
and consciousness completely lost. All the symptoms of 
poisoning by colubrine venom were well marked. I in- 
jected a full dose of Dr. Calmette's antivenene, but was 
not sanguine as to the result, the patient's condition being 
apparently hopeless. The effect of ^ the remedy was 
marvelous; consciousness returned in fifteen minutes, and 
I was so encouraged by the result of the first injection 
that I decided to give another dose of the serum. It acted 
like magic, and within three hours of the first injection 
the patient was well." 
*? 
The protest of our correspondent prompted by the sight 
of long freight trains loaded with Christmas trees is well . 
taken. Spruces, firs and other trees are cut down by the 
hundreds of thousands annually for use as Christmas 
trees. Vast tracts of young forest growth are wiped out, 
and the devastation of these areas is such as cannot be 
repaired for many years to come. The drain which this 
makes upon the rapidly lessening forestry resources of 
our country is most disastrous. The Christmas tree in- 
dustry, too, is a foolish enterprise on the part of those 
who supply the trees at first hand, since the ridiculously 
small prices received can in no measure compensate for 
the loss of the revenues which would be derived from the 
same territory were the trees permitted to grow to the 
proper market size for lumber. There is so much of 
sentiment attaching to the Christmas tree that he who 
inveighs against the custom is likely to be as one crying 
in the wilderness. And yet it may be that with a more 
intelligent comprehension of what this annual destruction 
means, some substitute may be found for the wild ever- 
green, or the trees may be produced in plantations main- 
tained for the purpose. The Christmas tree folly is of a 
piece with the heedless, thoughtless and improvident 
squandering of forestry resources in America, and like 
other abuses it will be corrected as one result of the 
growth of intelligence in forestry concerns. 
He was getting ready for the gold mines, and .one morn- 
ing he appeared at the office with a gigantic six-shooter 
bulging out of his hip pocket. For the next week he prac- 
ticed assiduously that part of the manual of arms known 
as getting the drop. At the most unexpected moments, in 
the midst of a conversation, or when greeting a friend, he 
would "pull his gun" and cover the astonished victim. 
If he ever had occasion at the mines to exercise his 
proficiency in time of stress we never heard of it, for min- 
ing in fact is not always the strenuous life the books make 
it. If he had been going deer hunting in Maine the case 
would have been different. To be able to get the drop 
on the other fellow is a very necessary qualification, with- 
out which no man who values his life should venture into 
the deer woods. The rule is to shoot the other man before 
he can shoot you. If that rule had been followed in 
Maine and Minnesota this year a number of hunters 
now dead would have been alive, and a corresponding 
number of hunters now alive would be dead. 
•I 
Complaints are made that the Maine penalty for man- 
killing in the woods has not sufficed to prevent these 
casualties. Of course it has not, for no attempt has been 
made to enforce it- by indicting and punishing the man- 
killers. Before drawing conclusions as to the good of the 
law, give it a fair test. The effect of punishing offenders 
would surely be salutary, because it would fasten upon 
the public intelligence the criminal cliaracter of the shoot- 
ing, and this in some cases at least would insure more 
caution on the part of hunters.- 
•6 
Dr. Tarleton H. Bean, who is Chief of the Department 
of Fish and Game of the St. Louis World's Fair, ex- 
presses the opinion that the fair will be an epoch-making 
exposition, far surpassing anything of the kind of the 
past, and that the fish and game of this country and of the 
world will have a more adequate representation than 
they have been given at any previous exposition. That 
forestry also wiU be wfll represented is a foregone con- 
clusion. 
