Feb, 22, 1902.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
New Jersey Fish and Game. 
Just at present the Commission is engaged in an 
attempt to secure some modification of the present laws, 
for new circumstances are continually arising demanding 
a change in the laws. A number of bills have already 
been introduced in the Legislature, with every prospect 
of being enacted into laws. Commissioner Frothingham, 
who has a pleasant residence on the banks of Pompton 
Lake, in Passaic county, when approached on the sub- 
ject of legislation, said: 
"Perhaps the most important measure we shall ask the 
Legislature to pass is a law requiring non-residents of 
the State to take out a license for gunning. Such meas- 
ures have been introduced before, and I have always been 
strongly opposed to them as altogether un-American and 
in violation of that hospitality which the citizens of differ- 
ent States should show toward each other. But. with the 
lapse of years the potency of the arguments in favor of a 
license increased until I have been made a convert. In 
the first place, you must remember that we spend thou- 
sands of dollars every year in the propagation of game 
and its protection. The citizens of New Jersey pay for 
all this, and I think it would be only fair if non-resid«nts 
were required to contribute their share. New Jersey 
has taken a front rank in fish and game protection, and 
the result is that gunners from alii over 
the country are attracted hither, a -state 
of affairs which is only accentuated by 
the fact that New Jersey is the great 
highway between the populous cities of 
New York and Philadelphia. The resi- 
dents of both these cities find it very con- 1 
venient to slip across a ferry and enjoy 41 
the game which belongs to New Jersey 
and which New Jersey pays for. The 
best hunting grounds near New York 
and Philadelphia are in New Jersey, but 
the time is coming when it will be im- ' , 
possible to stock our covers to satisfy 
the demand. Non-residents should be 1 
required to assist in defraying this annu- 
ally increasing expense. Delaware and a 
number of other States have passed laws 
requiring such licenses from non-resi- ( 
dents. Perhaps the principle of retalia- 
tion alone would constitute a sufficient ,* 
argument in favor of the passage of a sr 
license law, but there is one thing cer- $j 
tain, and that is if Delaware and other 
States deem it advisable to have such a 
law it is rendered imperatively necessary 1 
in New Jersey. Then, again, men of 
wealth in New York and New Jersey 
have bought up large tracts of land, espe- 
cially along the sea coast, for wildfowl 
shooting. The resident of the State is 
kept off these preserves. If these non- 
residents want to enjoy the peculiar ad- 
vantages pertaining to New Jersey, they 
ought to be willing to pay for them and. 
by affording funds to stock the fields and 
woods open to all, in a measure make up 
for what they have deprived the citizens 
of New Jersey of. 
"The proper principle for the enact- 
ment of fish and game law;- ts one of 
restriction. With every yeat there is 
an increase of gunners, and the progress 
of civilization and increase of population 
denudes large tracts of land of trees and 
shrubbery. The chances for the exist- 
ence of game are decreasing. The chances 
of its being killed on account of the in- 
crease in gunners and the improvement 
in firearms are continually on the in- 
crease. For this reason we shall ask the 
Legislature to pass a law limiting the 
number of birds and other game animals 
a gunner may kill in a day, and also 
restricting the taking of fish as far as 
numbers are concerned. We cannot keep up the supply 
without some such measure. 
"By an inadvertence the last Legislature passed a law 
permitting the killing of flickers, as the yellow-winged 
woodpecker is known in this State. The Audubon so- 
cieties all over the State are up in arms over this enact- 
ment, but I hardly consider the subject worthy of .argu- 
ment. The flicker is one of the most beautiful and one 
of the most useful of birds to the farmer, for it devotes 
its whole life to the killing of insects. If flickers are 
not to be protected and if gunners are to be permitted to 
kill them in the months when our game birds are mere 
fledglings, we might as well let down the bars and kill 
off all our birds and game. 
"By another inadvertence the Legislature last year re- 
moved all protection from deer, but I do not presume 
there will be even the slightest objection to the enact- 
ment of a statute giving proper protection to the few 
deer that are left in the Sate. 
'T also believe that July woodcock shooting should be 
abolished and that there should be protection for eagles 
and beavers. The latter animals have again put in an 
appearance in the State, having been introduced by the 
owners of some game preserves. But these are minor 
matters, and our principal insistence this year will be the 
non-resident license law, the limitation in the number of 
fish and game to be taken and the protection of deer 
and flickers." 
"Do you think that the stocking the. Commission has 
done in the past few years has been rewarded with suc- 
cessful-results?" inquired the reporter. 
"That is a difficult question to answer definitely," re- 
plied -Mr. Frothingham.- "I should ce.rtainly answer it 
affirmatively; and that without any hesitation, but to give 
any definite' idea' as to the extent of the success would-be 
impossible. I v am- free to* say-that as far as stocking with 
ring-necked pheasants is concerned, it was an utter fail- 
ure, but I do not think this should be ascribed to the 
Commission. These birds and their Japanese congener 
have been successfully introduced in many of the West- 
ern States, where they have to a great measure taken the 
place of the native partridge or grouse. There is no 
reason why the birds should not thrive in New Jersey. 
We tried the experiment, and from nearly every place 
where the birds had been put out. we received encouraging 
letters and frequently glowing accounts of the success 
of the experiment. The birds bred well, and, although 
the old birds, from the fact that they had been bred in 
confinement, were rather tame and thus became easy 
marks for gunners, the young birds were sufficiently wild 
to afford good sport and to preserve themselves. Un- 
fortunately a measure we had introduced prohibiting their 
killing for a term of years failed to become a law. The 
next Legislature was equally obdurate in this direction, 
and by the time the following Legislature passed the pres- 
ent law the birds had been killed off. Want of funds has 
prevented us from pursuing the experiment, but the mat- 
ter will in all probability be taken up again. 
"That the stocking of quail has been a success cannot 
be denied, for, according to all the accounts we have 
received from all parts of the State, there are now more 
quail in New Jersey than there have been for many 
years. We were very careful to secure only Western 
birds coming from high latitudes, calculated to with- 
stand the rigors of our winters, for it is a well-known fact 
that Southern quail migrate in the late fall. Money ex- 
pended for Southern birds is wasted, but the quail we 
have distributed bred here and did well. What we shall 
do this year I do not know, for the markets have been 
practically closed for live quail by the enactment of 
The large fish feed on the small ones, these on the small, 
animals that live on the weeds and other subaqueous 
plants, these plants subsist on the food found in the soil, 
and this food subsists on the Lord knows what, but a 
single break in this chain and there is disaster. If _ the 
weed in the water dies, the small animals which obtained 
life from the weed also die. Then follow the small fish 
and in course of a short time the larger. We may know 
all about these things some time in the future, but that 
does not help us in New Jersey in this year 1902. 
"Fish and a great many other animals frequently change 
their habits, and this has given rise to disputes as to 
what these habits really are. I have read with some 
interest recent discussions as to whether the gray squirrel 
hoards nuts for the winter or whether he depends on his 
more industrious cousin, the red squirrel. The question 
has been answered both ways any number of times, and 
that by men who were positive that they were right, for 
what they knew they had learned from their own observa- 
tion. I believe that the gray squirrel very quickly gets 
out of the habit of hoarding nuts when he finds that he 
can depend on robbing the red squirrel. Then a year 
comes when the red squirrels die off or leave the country, 
and the result is that the gray squirrel starves, and then 
people wonder what has become of the gray squirrels. I 
know that gray squirrels hoard nuts, for I have seen them 
do so, and I have seen them go to their 
hoard in the winter. But in Central 
Park, in New York, the squirrels must 
be supplied with food during the win- 
ter months, for they have long since 
learned to depend on man to keep up the 
supply of their food. Remove those gray 
squirrels into the wilderness, and they 
would quickly go back to the ways of 
their ancestors and put by a winter's sup- 
ply of food. I only cite these facts to 
show how many matters must be consi- 
dered when we undertake to interfere 
with the admirable balance nature has es- 
tablished in the animal kingdom, when 
we undertake to place animals where 
nature did not place them. Remove a 
white perch from the brackish water in 
which he had his home to some land- 
locked water, and he will spend the rest 
of his existence in trying to find a way 
out to get back to brackish water. Take 
a white bass a few months old and place 
it in the same water, and he will never 
worry about brackish water, but will 
promptly settle down and multiply. But 
these incidents are only a few of many 
hundreds. We know these, but we do 
not know the hundreds of others. Un- 
der these circumstances we ttse what 
knowledge we have, and then the rest 
is experiment. _ We know that certain 
fish will not thrive in certain waters, and 
these facts guide us in our work of 
stocking. A pond may be stocked, for 
example, with pike-perch, and the follow- 
ing year there may be thousands of them 
and a few years after none at all. In an- 
other pond the introduced pike-perch 
may apparently wholly disappear, only 
to show up some years later in large 
numbers. What the cause of all this is 
we do not know. We do the best we can, 
and I do not think that we have any rea- 
son to complain that our efforts have not 
been successful." 
HON, F. R. LATCHFOKD. 
President North American Fish and Game Protective Association. 
strict laws in different States prohibiting their trapping 
and exportation. About the pnly State left open to us is 
California, which still permits the exportation of qitail 
under restrictions from the State authorities. Whether 
the California quail will withstand our winters is some- 
thing I cannot tell. We may try the experiment if inquiry 
warrants a belief that it may prove successful. The Cali- 
fornia bird would certainly be a glorious acquisition to 
our wild fauna, and the temptation to try to acclimate it 
here is certainly great. But the fact that we cannot secure 
any more of the common Western quail affords another 
strong argument in favor of further restriction and for 
the passage of a law limiting the number of birds that 
may be lawfully taken in a day's gunning. 
As to whether the introduction of the pike-perch, the 
white bass, the channel catfish and other fish brought on 
from the Great Lakes will prove successful, time alone 
can tell. We have had very satisfactory reports from 
many waters where these fish were introduced, but 
whether the success was merely spasmodic, whether their 
breeding was merely due to peculiar and fortuitous cir- 
cumstances or whether it will be lasting, cannot as yet be 
told. Hundreds of circumstances, many of- which we 
know nothing at all about, govern the well-being and the 
multiplication of fish. Mankind has been studying fish 
for centuries, but what we do not know about fish Would 
fill a far larger volume than what we do know about fish. ' 
Why fish should multiply one year and not another is 
something we cannot tell. This is not at all surprising. 
Ask a farmer why it is that one year he has abundant 
crops and the following year none at all, and he will ' - 
simply shrug his shoulders and say he does not know. 
He uses the same quantity of seed, the same quantity of- - 
..compost and does just as much work one year ; as..he,.does..> 
the following, "but the results are vastly different. How 
is it that an apple tree one year will be laden with fruit 
and the next year not produce enough to make a decent 
pie? And yet here you have the soil, the tree and all 
its surroundings under your eye. You can use the micro- 
scope, and you can make chemical analyses, but all the 
science in the world will never answer that simple ques- 
tion. With the fish you have the impenetrable veil cast 
over their doings by the water. Fish keep moving about 
continually in search of food or for some other reason. 
The New Jersey Commissioners are 
Howard P. Frothingham, Mt. Arling- 
ton, President; William A. Halsey, of 
Newark; Benjamin P. Morris, of Long 
Branch, and Richard T. Miller, of Cam- 
den. 
The Commissioners appointed under 
the law of 1894 have made regular an- 
nual reports, and these show that dur- 
ing the incumbency of the Commission there have been 
collected fines for violation of the law to the extent of 
$23,376-84, the State's share of which amounted to $7,- 
792.28. This latter sum was turned into the treasury of 
the Commission and expended for the furtherance of its 
work. The reports also show that there were distributed 
throughout the State 474 ring-necked pheasants and 8,626 
quail-. During the last year the Commissioners gave heed 
to some few demands for rabbits and distributed 180 cot- 
tontails. In the distribution of fish the Commission was 
among the first to recognize the fact that the distribution 
of grown fish proved more satisfactory than the planting 
of eggs or fry, for the latter were subject to too great a 
rate of mortality on account of their delicate condition. 
The Commission was the first one in the country to suc- 
cessfully carry out the project of bringing carloads of live 
fish from the Great Lakes to the waters of the East, and 
annually this work has been going on for the past five 
years. The Commission was at first at -a loss to secure a 
supply of black bass, a fish that cannot be bought in the 
market like trout, but a happy solution was found in the. 
discovery that • annually thousands of these, fish found 
their way into the Delaware and Raritan Canal, through 
which they traveled to certain destruction. Now most of 
these fish are netted and placed in the waters of the State, 
the, work all being done by the wardens. The reports 
'show that the Commission has distributed 256,300 yearling 
brook trout, 326 channel catfish, 13,318 black bass, 5,955 
pike-perch. 180 strawberry bass. 2,510 pike and pickerel. 
13.688 yellow perch. 3,393 white bass and 411 white perch 
These were all adult fish and these figures do not include 
many thousands of "fish transplanted from one pond to 
another,- and of which no record was kept. In addition 
.to this, the- waters bf the State were supplied with mil- 
•hons of bait fish, food for the fish which had been intro- 
duced. 
The Commissioners serve without pay. The State 
allows them $800 a year for expenses, but the Commis- 
sioners have annually turned this amount into their treas 
ury and have paid their own expenses. Of the original 
board only one remaiits, Mr. Frothingham. The rest 
either resigned or failed of reappointment on account of 
political influence. 
