Forest and Stream 
A W 
eekly Journal of the Rod and 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
G 
UN. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 11, 1902. 
Terms, $1 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i 
Six Months, $2. . ) 
I VOL. LVIII.-No. 2. 
"i No. 846 Broadway, New York. 
BONDING GAME IN STORAGE. 
The only recommendation relating to game in Governor 
Odell's message is one which urges the provision of larger 
opportunities for the dealers in game. The Governor 
says : 
The seizure of a large amount of game in cold storage during the 
past summer, and the possible conflict of our laws with those gov- 
erning commerce between the States, brings up the question 
whether, while aiming to preserve our game, we should not also 
protect the innocent purchaser thereof. The provision against 
possession of game by an individual or a corporation after the 
closed season begins is proper. 
But it seems that if a system of bonding for such game as may re- 
main in possession of a dealer at the close of the open season were 
provided for that we should do more for its protection than by 
any attempt to ferret out and destroy it under conditions that are 
at least questionable. 
I would recommend that authority be given the Forest, Fish 
and Game Commission to thus bond dealers and warehousemen. 
This would serve two purposes. It would protect those who are 
honest and who do not desire the destruction of their property, and 
it would bring about voluntary recognition of our laws. The 
penalties against killing out of season could then be more strictly 
enforced. There would be no claim made that the supply came 
from outside, because no one would care to run the risk of 
seizure and the expenses incident to the trial in attempting to 
establish this fact, and the duties of game protectors would thus 
become simpler and the laws easier of enforcement. 
As for the Governor's suggestion that the New York 
law restricting the sale of game and forbidding posses- 
sion of it in the close season may be in conflict with 
the laws governing commerce between the States, it needs 
only to be said that the point has repeatedly been passed 
upon by the courts in a number of States, and the con- 
stitutionality of the State law has been upheld. In the 
special circumstances which prompted Governor Odell's 
suggestion, the seizure of an enormous quantity of game 
in this city, the fact was established by the express tags 
attached to the articles that a large proportion of the 
seized game had come into the New York market from 
States whence its export was forbidden by the local State 
law. Now the Supreme Court of ,the United States, in the 
Geer vs. Connecticut case, has declared that when a State 
forbids the taking of its game foe export, such game can 
never become an article of interstate commerce. Thou- 
sands of the birds seized in New York having been ex- 
ported unlawfully, fell within the category of the game 
defined by the Supreme Court as that which could not be- 
come a lawful article of interstate commerce, nor subject 
lo the control of the interstate commerce law. We need 
not worry ourselves therefore with any apprehension that 
the New York law which forbids game dealers to have in 
cold storage barrels and crates of quail exported from 
Indiana in defiance of the Indiana law conflicts with the 
interstate commerce act. 
The real and only interstate factor here involved is 
that of interstate comity. The fact is, and it must be 
reckoned with in discussing this subject, that because of 
the almost universal existence of the non-export game 
prohibitions, it is impossible for the marketmen of New 
York to have any considerable amount of game in their 
possession which they have come by lawfully, and the 
question for us to decide is whether the New York 
market, under cover of the further protection which 
would be afforded by this bonding system advocated by 
Governor Odell, shall become in larger degree than before 
the receiving market for contraband goods. The prac- 
tical working of the bonding system would presumably be 
that which is suggested by President Bootman of the 
Arctic Freezer Company, in the interview quoted else- 
where. Under cover of a small lot of bonded game, the 
dealer would sell with greater freedom in close season. 
But even were this not to result, and were all the game 
on hand at the close of the open season to be put into 
bond and kept for another year, the system would not 
be wise. The present law which forbids the possession 
of game in close season has this purpose, that the dealer 
shall confine his supply to what can be disposed of in the 
open season. If at the end of the period for selling he 
finds himself loaded up with an over supply, that is 
simply a result of his own bad judgment. No law com- 
pels any game dealer to lay in a larger supply than he 
can dispose of in the permitted period. If any change 
-is made in the New York law, let it be for th'e further 
restriction of game selling, not in encouragement of the 
traffic. 
With a population of 76,000,000, and constantly growing 
larger, and with narrowing |ame fields, we have adopted 
the principle in this country that the wild game is no 
longer to be considered a commercial commodity. This 
principle has been incorporated into the laws of most of 
the States. What we need, therefore, in discussing 
any change of the situation in New York, is to follow 
in the general line of legislation adopted by the country at 
large, and to make it more difficult instead of more easy to 
deal in game. 
ANIMALS AND SUICIDE. 
The daily press, contributing constantly to the general 
sum of human information, is nevertheless -not free from 
a proneness to foster the marvelous, or at least give cur- 
rency to it when it can be so circumstantially set forth as 
to have a reasonable chance for public belief. This is 
particularly true of the recountals of happenings which 
are not susceptible of proof, or of such matters as are out- 
side the bounds of common knowledge. Thus the sensa- 
tional and periodic appearance of the sea serpent holds a 
place in the view and wonderment of the people, for a 
longer or shorter time, accordingly as the public will give 
credence or wonderment. Cardiff giants, by virtue of 
pen and ink, become exemplars of real giants. A dog in 
a fit, running blindly and senselessly about, becomes in the 
press report a mad demon running amuck and doing all 
the malicious damage within his powers. Given a certain 
lot of circumstances, if of a novel kind, the average re- 
porter is not backward in appending to them his own 
sensational conclusions, if by so doing he can add to their 
interest and to the consequent sales of his news matter. 
If he has a mental reservation or disbelief in his own 
story, the public is none the wiser concerning it if he does 
not inform them of it. The list of fakes and myths might 
be extended ad infinitum, but we will consider in particu- 
lar only one which seems to be growing in favor as a news 
subject, and which seems, by its steady growth, to be 
accepted as a standard theme. This is the alleged suicide 
of animals. This story is a fair example: 
Anton Wolsieffer to-day brought to town a rather unusual and 
very curious freak. In the top of a cottonwood tree on his place 
hung an oriole's nest, and the other day Mr. Wolsieffer noticed 
the body of a male oriole suspended at the side of the nest. He 
made an investigation, and found the lifeless and weather-beaten 
corpse of the oriole hanging by a piece of string. From ap- 
pearances, the bird had become entangled in the string — a part of 
his nest— and, failing to break his bands, after a hard struggle, had 
died. The string holding the bird is looped around the neck, 
and it looks very much like a clear case of suicide. 
When one pauses for a moment to weigh this mentally, 
the absurdity, not to say silliness, of the conclusion is 
self-evident. The writer assumes as proven that the bird 
had a knowledge of life and death, that it had a knowledge 
of the means by which death could be produced, and that 
by a premeditated act it ended its own life. The reason- 
able probability that the bird accidentally became en- 
tangled and was strangled by the piece of string is en- 
tirely ignored, for the reason that the story of a little bird 
killed by accident would excite no interest, while • the 
story of a bird suicide would be quite the reverse. This 
story of the little bird in itself is of no special importance 
if it was the only story of the kind, but is one of many 
concerning the deaths of dogs, horses and other animals 
domestic and wild. The favorite manner of suicide in 
dogs, as the story goes, is by drowning. The dog is 
perforce melancholy for a day or two, then when taking 
his bath he plunges his head under water, drowns him- 
self, and the world is no more to him. The fact that 
dogs have apoplexy, heart failure and other diseases, and 
are subject to sudden death as are all other animal organ- 
isms, is not taken into account in the story of the suicide, 
nor is the further fact considered that a dog does not 
know of death, nor how to produce death ; nor even if the 
dog did know this, could the observer know of what the 
dog was thinking or purposing in this respect. The 
horse, in the suicide story, generally dashes out his brains 
against the wall or jumps off the dock. But the horse, 
too, is subject to brain disorders. That he could de- 
liberately, from premeditation, commit suicide is not 
reasonable, nor is it reasonable that the average man could 
possibly know a horse's premeditation in such an event 
even if the horse had any. 
It is much better to deal with dogs and horses and other 
animals as they really are. They are quite marvelous 
enough as created without attaching to them any artificial 
marvels of fhe imagination, 
The plea which Mr. Dall de Weese makes for a game 
code for Alaska should have the immediate attention of 
Congress. Outside of Alaska the game conditions pre- 
vailing in the Territory are not generally known. The 
popular belief is that the country is so rough and the 
game is so protected by natural barriers, that the species 
are in no immediate danger of extermination. The actual 
state of affairs is on the contrary this, that with the 
tremendous influx of population into the Territory and 
the unrestricted slaughter of game animals for food pur- 
poses, the supply has been diminished at an alarming 
rate. Mr. De Weese is well qualified to state the facts 
and sound the note of warning. He himself has seen the. 
old conditions and the change to the new. As a practical 
sportsman in the field he has studied the situation, and 
he writes as one who has been deeply stirred by the in- 
considerate and often useless and wanton killing of 
species whose stock at best is scanty. As he pictures the 
game situation in Alaska to-day, it is clear that some 
remedial legislation should be provided without delay. 
Whether or not the specific recommendation which Mr. 
De Weese makes shall be assented to, there can be no 
question of the importance of doing something and doing 
it now. The very fact that these Alaskan game fields are 
so remote from Washington and so are likely to be over- 
looked by Congress, should stir the friends of game pro- 
tection to immediate action. 
There is a better way of administering the Adirondack 
and Catskill forests owned by the State than preserving 
them forever untouched by the axe. They should be ex- 
ploited according to the established principles of practical 
forestry, as commonly pursued in European countries. 
Professor Fernow's definition of forestry as tree farming 
puts the case in a word. New York should farm its 
forests. We believe that the intelligent public sentiment 
is with Governor Odell in his forestry preserve recom- 
mendations. It would be a tremendous mistake to restore 
the conditions which existed before, and which prompted 
the adoption of the clause in the constitution declaring 
that the forest should never be cut; but popular informa- 
tion and appreciation have grown so rapidly since then 
that the people would sanction a wisely framed system of 
administration for the public forests. There sh mM be 
available and discoverable in the great State of New York 
a forestry administrative force equipped witli the scientific 
knowledge, the business ability and the integrity and 
conscience to convert the public lands into a revenue- 
yielding resource. 
It is one of the well-pronounced qualities of angling that 
it is in a peculiar degree the delight at once of youth and 
of old age. The born angler — for our Walton tells us 
that a true angler is born, not made — may for a period in 
his life forego the rod; but there is certain to come in later 
years a time when he takes it up again, and you will often 
find him a gray-haired veteran on the very streams he 
frequented in his youth. He may not find them all his 
fond fancy has painted them as seen through the vista of 
the vanished years. The fish may be not so numerous nor 
so large nor so active as his memory of the old days would 
demand, but the pursuit has in it the same recompense as 
before, and the old angler is no whit behind the youngster 
in his capacity of enjoyment of the sport. What else is 
is there in all the realm of outdoor sports which has this 
lasting quality which belongs to fishing? 
•I 
The Maine game warden who engineered the prosecu- 
tion of a partridge snarer to the imposition of a fine of 
$700 now has a companion in an Illinois warden who lias 
arrested a woman for the possession of a pet fawn given 
to her last June as a wedding present. Such antics as 
these have only one effect, which is to foster a feeling 
against the game laws. They work just as would the 
actual imposition of a "penalty of $500 or a year in 
prison" which the New York street car signs declare to 
be the punishment for the offense of spitting on the floor 
of a car. The Maine justice, of course, dismissed the 
grouse killer; but the Illinois justice gave the woman the 
option of killing her pet or sending it out of the State. 
It is intimated that the New York Forest, Fish and 
Game Commission's forthcoming report will contain a. 
recommendation of the adoption of a non-resident hcens^ 
for shooting game. 
