Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1902, bv Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $1 a Year. 10 Crs. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 4, 1902. 
j VOL. LVIII.-No. 1. 
| No. 346 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 
cages 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, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
THE BOY AT PLAY. 
While the formative stages of a man's character are 
mostly in the years from early boyhood to the transitional 
period when the boy becomes the man, there are still many 
important stages in his mature years thereafter. The 
emergement from boyhood to manhood profoundly affects 
the man's being, yet it does not make a line of separation 
between the two stages of life. 
The man is merely an older boy, with much the same 
character, mannerisms, likes and dislikes observable in his 
boyhood. His fondness for sport, both as boy and man, 
are likely to undergo no change at all ; however much man 
and boy may vary concerning other traits, in this respect 
they are as one. 
It is commonly believed by the general public that the 
years of boyhood are years of playfulness, much of which 
is frivolous, and all of which is unmeaning; and on the 
other hand, that the years of manhood should be devoted 
to stern effort devoid of all playfulness. 
Nevertheless there are certain classes, having a true 
education of life and the best way to live it, who know 
that play is essential to the best development of children, 
both mentally and physically, and also that all work and 
no play checks the further development of the man, and 
hardens and narrows his character, if it does not per- 
manently sour it. 
The play so essential to the development of the boy is 
equally essential to the recreation, diversion and change 
of thought to the man. It has its use throughout life. 
Of course, the man may take his diversions with more 
sedateness, more skill, and with more thought of cause 
and effect, yet in the matter of beneficence to mind and 
body, the play of man and boy are as one. 
Man and boy are organisms of superabundant energy. 
The boy is filled with unbounded curiosity and experi- 
mental activity. If he is checked in one line of effort he 
forthwith breaks out in some other line. If checked com- 
pletely, he frets, becomes ill-tempered, his energies have 
no vent, and his development then is at a standstill. Ac- 
cordingly as his energies are given play in a wholesome or 
unwholesome environment, he may become a model man 
or of the class colloq«ially called tough. If entirely 
checked in all his natural impulses to action through his 
boyhood, he may mature into a nonentity. 
But, with mature years, the need of play does not end. 
The old boy needs his hours of relaxation and diversion 
quite as much in a way as does the young boy. In par- 
ticular is this true of the man who belongs to the class 
which suffers most in the struggle, the brain workers. 
The mind, when at work, draws on the powers of the 
whole body for its support, and, for its best working, the 
ancients many centuries ago knew as we know, that a 
sound mind needed a sound body. The latter is not the 
product of hours, days, months, years incessantly devoted 
to work at the desk. It, on the contrary, is the result of 
varied contemplation of pleasing thought, of the exer- 
cise of all its parts in proper changes from gay to seri- 
ous, with proper physical culture therewith. To devote 
its action to one line of thought, no more conduces to its 
general soundness than the constant use of one hand con- 
duces to the general development of the body. Varied 
activity is essential to either. Of this some must be 
.recreative. 
For the training of mind and body, as it concerns the 
individual and his own best interests, and as it concerns 
the interests of society of which he is a member, there 
is no better field of activity for boy or man than the 
sports of field and stream. In these sports there are 
situations which contribute to the development and ener- 
gise of physical courage; self-reliance, endurance, patfeace 
and inventive power in surmounting obstacles are in 
constant requisition. 
To the boy the energies thus applied afford a useful 
schooling in qualities essential in later serious life. He 
by success acquires confidence in himself and in turn is 
not timorous in assuming the initiative. He learns to 
think and to act for himself. 
To the man who shoots or fishes, or who, better yet, 
does both, there comes by such recreation a rest of mind 
and upbuilding of body. 
Who has not remarked the bright eye, the ruddy color, 
the assured carriage and vigorous stride of him who has 
had an outing devoted to fin or feather, and noted the 
health and energy thus displayed in contrast to the hum- 
drum, listless manner of action exhibited before the 
outing. 
The old boy needs his playground quite as much as does 
the young boy. He needs it for his amusement and for his 
best well being. More playgrounds for the old boys mean 
fewer sanitariums and still fewer inmates; fewer doc- 
tors and still fewer patients ; fewer dyspeptic minds and 
still fewer dyspectic stomachs; and healthier and happier 
men, women and children. Cherish and maintain the play- 
ground for the old and young. 
THE TRAMP AND THE REMEDY FOR HIM. 
There is in this country an army of tramps, estimated 
to be 45,000 strong. It is disseminated over the land, and 
lives on the community. It contributes nothing to the 
work and wealth of the land. 
Podgers had a theory that the tramp, individually and 
collectively, might be converted into a highly useful ele- 
ment of society if he were put to work at building roads. 
In a paper read before the Massachusetts Association of 
Relief Officers, Prof. Francis G. Peabody, of Cambridge, 
has advanced a like recommendation. Taking as a motto 
the principle ennumerated long ago by the novelist Field- 
ing, "The only remedy for idleness is work," Prof. Pea- 
body finds the solution of the tramp problem to consist 
in the provision of work for the tramp, and urges that in 
America we should adopt the system of tramp colonies 
which prevails in Germany, Holland and Belgium. In 
these countries the tramp is subject to arrest and con- 
viction, but is treated not as a criminal but as a ward. 
There are tramp colonies, established at a distance from 
cities, where work of various kinds is provided, and to 
one of these colonies the convicted tramp is sent. Here he 
is given something to do, and is paid something for his 
work. But he is not confined; he may run away if 
he will, but if he runs away and takes to tramp's life 
again, • he is promptly arrested and sent back to the 
colony. In short, the tramp is provided with work, and 
is not permitted to live without work. 
The system is one which we would do well to adopt in 
this country. As Prof. Peabody points out, the work 
provided should be of such a character that it would not 
come into competition with labor, and there are numerous 
enterprises which might be set on foot without involving 
any competition. For Massachusetts Prof. Peabody sug- 
gests the digging of the long-projected Cape Cod canal, 
and the replanting of waste lands with trees. "Forestra- 
tion," he truly says, "is a. kind of industry which cannot 
bring any profit for a whole generation, but which may 
be not only commercially profitable, but of immense ser- 
vice to the future welfare of the State. I have looked at 
those barren districts on the elbow of Cape Cod, where 
for ten or fifteen miles there is hardly a house and hardly 
a tree — a region once covered with a superb forest — and 
I have sometimes pictured these wards of the State as 
reforestrating this region. It is an occupation which 
could not bring suspicion to the most zealous trade union- 
ist, but might be the physical redemption of the State, 
and the physical and moral redemption of many a man." 
As for road building, the field of useful labor is with- 
out limit. The increase in land values brought by good 
roads in any State in the Union could be estimated only 
in hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this could be 
produced at comparatively slight expense, were the tramps 
put to work; indeed, the cost of tramp labor on road 
building would be less than the community now expends in 
maintaining the tramps in idleness. Then there is the 
great irrigation work to be done in the arid West; the 
tramp ; will 4o to© $ i| only he be fet to it 
Director B. E. Fernow, of the New York State College 
of Forestry, has issued a reply to the charge that the 
Adirondack tract under its control was being improperly 
managed. The territory given to Cornell by the State 
was a tract which had been denuded of its valuable trees 
by the lumbermen, and the problem thus presented was 
to make provision for the reproduction of the valuable 
species. The college, says Mr. Fernow, is doing what 
it is set to do. It is harvesting from an area from which 
the valuable part has been already removed, the old, de- 
crepit hardwood crop which is rotting and becoming less 
and less valuable, and is replacing it by a young, vigorous 
crop of better composition. It is doing this by trying to 
make the old crop pay for the new ; that is, carrying on 
the experiment like a business venture. 
That Maine propositiafi of taxing visiting sportsmen is 
not a new one. It was broached two or three years ago, 
and among the most powerful protests against it we pub- 
lished at that time was one from a Massachusetts corre- 
spondent, who was deeply stirred at the thought that he, 
who had been a Maine boy, should be required to pay 
for the privilege of revisiting his native State on a hunting 
expedition. This is a phase of the question which has 
wide application, for there is a multitude of the sons of 
Maine scattered over the Union who go in the autumn to 
breathe its air again and immerse themselves in its mighty 
woods. And it is not to be wondered at, but is one of 
the most natural of consequences, that they should feel 
affronted at and resent the alien stamp which would be 
put upon them by the imposition of a non-resident tax. 
Something of the same feeling is shown by most men, 
even though they be not returning natives of the State, 
when they are obliged to pay a non-resident hunting tax 
in any one of the States which now exact licenses. They 
feel that thus to be discriminated against is to be treated 
as foreigners, not as fellow citizens of a common country, 
and in so far as this feeling is engendered the non-resident 
taxing system is in spirit un-American and undesirable. 
It 
What are the ethics of a case like this? A hunter went 
down to Maine to get the head of a moose to adorn his 
den. As is the custom and the rule with tenderfeet who 
visit Maine, he put himself under the guidance and con- 
trol of a registered guide at $3 a day and found. In due 
course the guide showed him the moose with the antlers. 
The aim, as the hunter believed, was true; and the 
bullet, as he was convinced, went home; but the moose 
disappeared. The hunter wanted to follow in the direc- 
tion the game had gone, believing that shortly they would 
come upon the dead moose ; but the guide poohpoohed the 
suggestion, and dissuaded from further p'ursuit. The 
hunter returned to his home. The mail the next day 
brought word from the guide that he had found the killed 
moose, whose chase they had abandoned, and that he 
had secured the head, and would sell it to the hunter 
for $25. The affair has the look of sharp practice on the 
guide's part. While in a court of law the hunter could 
not make good his claim to the head, inasmuch as he had 
not actually reduced it to possession, yet having been 
found by his own guide, who should have found it at the 
time, it was justly his and should have been restored to 
him without the $25 demand. 
As was pointed out the other day, the Forest an© 
Stream gives more than twice as much reading in a year 
as the largest of the four-dollar magazines. And it does 
this at a trifling cost of less than eight cents per week. 
In no other way may one secure for himself so much of 
the best outdoor literature at such slight expense. 
«s 
Major Holman F. Day tells us that the story of the 
Maine woods, which he relates to-day, is an entirely cor- 
rect and veracious statement of the events as they oc- 
curred; and it is because of this quality of truthfulness 
that the story has interest and value. 
A general invitation is extended to attend the meeting 
of the North American Fish and Game Protective Asso- 
ciation at Burlington, Vt-, Jan. 22. The President is Jno, 
W. Titcomb, of St Johnsbury, Vt ' yi 
