Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, i 
t a Year. 10 Ore. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 12, 1902. 
( VOL. LVIII.-No. 15. 
j No. 346 Broadway, New York 
THE SUNDAY FISHERMAN. 
The Sunday fisherman in the salt waters about New 
York city is multitudinous and conspicuously in evidence 
when fish are running. On the piers of the two rivers 
from the Battery north, on the rocky banks of the Hud- 
son, on the creeks and indentations of the Sound, every- 
where the fisherman may be seen. The Staten Island 
waters, the bays of Long Island and the ocean banks are 
resorted to by steamers and yachts and small craft innu- 
merable. Each Saturday night in the season sees a pil- 
grimage of fishermen with rods and baskets going by ferry 
and train to be early on the ground; and Sunday night 
brings them home again. For the Sunday fisherman in 
this neighborhood it is to be said that as a rule he is 
an inoffensive creature, who harms no one, interferes with 
no other person, and very rarely figures in the police 
returns on Monday morning. Fishing for salt-water fish 
is the chosen Sunday recreation of thousands of men 
who work six days in the week; and most observers would 
testify that as recreations go, it is an innocent and harm- 
less one. 
But the fact remains that fishing on Sunday in New 
York waters is everywhere except in Jamaica Bay for- 
bidden by that section of the penal code which reads: 
"All shooting, hunting, fishing' playing, horse-racing, 
gaming, or other public sports, exercises or shows upon 
the first day of the week and all noise disturbing the 
peace of the day are prohibited." 
The fishing prohibition is not the only one of these 
which is made naught of. "Playing" is a somewhat com- 
prehensive term, and many modes of playing are indulged 
in on Sunday — baseball, lawn tennis, golf, yachting, row- 
ing, wheeling, automobiling, pleasure driving, roller-coast- 
ing and riding on the merry-go-round. Horse racing is 
extensively engaged in; there are in this city two speed- 
ways _one on the bank of the Harlem River and another 
on the Ocean Parkway from Brooklyn to Coney Island— 
and on both of these speedways Sunday is a favorite day 
for owners of fast horses to race them one against an- 
other, while thousands of spectators gather to look on; 
and so far are the authorities from construing this Sun- 
day horse racing as unlawful, that they provide special 
mounted policemen to give the drivers a fair field and 
fair play. 
Now no one in New York ever dreams of interfering 
with any of these several pleasure makers, except in 
specific cases, when by reason of their noise and uproar 
they conflict with the quiet of the community, or as 
the statute puts it, "disturb the peace of the day" ; or un- 
less the law is resorted to for purposes of spite. The 
Sunday fisherman is never molested under any pretense 
that he disturbs the peace of the day, but he has been 
interfered with for the gratification of spite. When the 
netters were driven out of Jamaica Bay they retaliated 
by causing the arrest of certain Sunday fishermen; but 
they did this not to preserve the sanctity of the Sabbath 
day, but to get even with the anglers for having stopped 
their netting. • 
The result of this spite action on the part of the net- 
ters was the adoption of an amendment to the fishing 
law which made angling in Jamaica Bay lawful on every 
day of the year. By virtue of this special local law, then, 
the New York Sunday fisherman who fishes in these par- 
ticular waters is immune from interference by the author- 
ities, but anywhere else he is at any time liable to arrest. 
This year the League of Salt Water Fishermen had a 
bill at Albany making certain very wise restrictions as to 
netting in the waters about New York, and in order to 
guard against the possibility of retaliatory action by the 
netters in the prosecution of Sunday fishermen, a clause 
was inserted in the bill providing that within the specific 
waters covered by its provisions angling should always 
be lawful. This clause was their undoing. The party 
managers at Albany, when they discovered the insidious 
attempt thus covertly to break down the sanctity of the 
Sabbath day as now observed on the New York fishing 
waters, declared that they could never "stand for" any 
such .revolutionary measure. It would be the ruin of 
each and every one of them as a statesman, and would 
shake the party to its foundation. Sunday fishing 1 They 
could not think of it. They would not dare to think of it. 
The nets ought to be driven out, there was no question 
of that; but not at the terrible price of legalizing the 
Sunday fishing which is now practiced by thousands on 
the salt waters of Manhattan and Staten Island and Long 
Island. And so they killed the anti-netting bill. And 
so they have afforded in their, action and in themselves a 
new exhibition of the rare virtue of holding out for the 
shadow where there is nothing of the substance. This 
forbidden, illegal and unlawful Sunday fishing they must 
needs acknowledge and condone ; but the flouted law 
which forbids it and makes it illegal and unlawful they 
will retain; the goodly fronted pretence they will main- 
tain. This may be politics, but it is neither common sense 
nor honesty nor religion. They may delude themselves 
and their fellow legislators and their constituents and the 
community. But it is a sure thing that they do not hood- 
wink the Almighty. "Be not deceived. God is not 
mocked." 
FEDERAL GAME BILLS. 
Two measures of especial interest to big-game hunters 
are advancing slowly toward legislative action. It is 
believed that Mr. Lacey's bills to protect Alaska big 
game, and to authorize the President to establish game 
preserves .in forest reserves will be favorably reported 
from the committee, and will pass the House of Repre- 
sentatives. Mr. Lacey is deeply interested in their suc- 
cess, and will unquestionably make every effort to secure 
favorable action on them. 
In the Senate, however, their prospects are not so 
favorable. It is true that in Senator Redfield Proctor 
game' preservation and all other matters dear to the 
sportsman's heart have an ardent and able friend. Yet 
Senator Proctor is occupied in many ways, and it is pos- 
sible that it may not be practicable for him to give to 
these bills the attention which they may need. On many 
matters the United States Senate holds broader views 
than does the House of Representatives, but for that very 
reason it is sometimes easier to defeat a measure in 
Senate than in the House. It is understood that as to 
one of these bills politics is playing its part, and that 
the transfer of the forestry force from the Land Office 
of the Interior Department to the Bureau of Forestry of 
the Agricultural Department, is likely to be opposed, be- 
cause such action may reduce the patronage of certain 
United States officials. 
Americans have become quite accustomed to seeing the 
public good subordinated to party profit, but it is earnest- 
ly hoped that in # a matter where such vast interests are 
at stake a measure of this importance will not fail of 
enactment merely because it may possibly deprive a few 
small politicians of their jobs. It has been thought worth 
while to set aside as forest reserves over 45,000,000 
acres of the territory of the United States, to pass laws 
for the care of this territory, and already to spend much 
money in behalf of this object. The work is universally 
acknowledged to be important; it should be done in the 
best way. This best way, all who are genuinely and in- 
telligently interested in the forest preserves would be to 
turn over the whole matter to the Secretary of Agri- 
culture. 
There is another class to be reckoned with beside the 
people interested in forestry matters. The nature lovers, 
the zoologists and the big-game hunters are deeply in- 
terested in seeing the slaughter of cur big game put an 
end to, and in furthering the establishment of "refuges 
where this game may be free from molestation and where 
a perpetual stock of it may be preserved forever for all 
the purposes for which such wild game is useful. 
It would be well if every reader of these lines, who 
feels an interest either in forests or the preservation of 
natural conditions in this country, or merely in the big 
game, should write without delay to his Senator urging 
favorable action on this bill. Unless those who are really 
interested in such matters are willing to bestir themselves, 
and to make manifest their interest, we cannot expect our 
legislators to give much consideration to the subject. 
The two bills referred to do not give all that foresters 
and game protectors would like to have, but they make a 
beginning. After they have been passed, as experience 
is had of their workings, changes may be made in them 
which will render them constantly more efficient. 
For twenty years the American people blundered along 
in their usual careless way, knowing that, somewhere, 
they possessed a National Park in which swarmed a multi- 
hide of big game, which it was forbidden to destroy. 
)ne fine morning in 1894 they woke up to learn that the 
only band of buffalo living in their country had been 
wiped out of existence. The horse having been stolen, we 
proceeded to lock the door by enacting a proper law for 
the protection of the Yellowstone National Park, but 
this did not bring back the buffalo, of which now there 
remain alive, so far as known, only twenty to twenty-five 
individuals. To-day in certain forest reserves of the 
United States there are species of big game which are 
on the point of extinction — if not already gone. A strong 
effort should be made to preserve these vanishing races, 
GENERAL WHIPPLE. 
Major-General William D. Whipple, U. S. A., re- 
tired, died last week of pneumonia, after an illness of 
only two days. General Whipple was seventy-seven years 
old, and had been a soldier for more than fifty years. He 
graduated from West Point in August, 1851, and from 
that time until the breaking out of the Civil War he saw 
service on the plains, chiefly in the Southwest, where 
he took an active part in the Indian fighting against the 
Apaches and Navajos. For those ten years of service on 
the plains in those early days, he was living in the abso- 
lute wilderness, when the only white travelers ever seen 
in the country were wandering trappers, or the trains of 
the Santa Fe traders. 
At the breaking out of the Civil War General Whipple 
was in Washington, attached to the Adjutant-General's 
office. He was at once detailed to active service; saw 
the battle of Bull Run; was made Brigadier-General in 
July 1863 ; was then ordered to the West, and saw fighting 
at Missionary Ridge and about Chattanooga. He was 
present at the capture of Atlanta, in September, 1864. 
At the close of the war, having been mustered out of 
volunteer service, he served as Assistant Adjutant-Gen- 
eral of the Department of Tennessee and the Cumber- 
land, and of the Division of the Pacific, until 1870. His 
subsequent service was in Washington and in St. Louis. 
He was retired in 1887.- 
General Whipple received his Brevet Major-General- 
ship in March, 1865, for gallant and meritorious service 
in the field before Nashville, Tenn., in the Atlanta cam- 
paign. He was a man of splendid courage, and of great 
•readiness of resource. His experience had been wide, and 
he told of it most entertainingly. A man of most attrac- 
tive personality, he left behind him a host of friends. 
He was a keen sportsman, and in his long life had done 
much big-game hunting. He was a member of the Boone 
and Crockett Club. 
The bill providing for the transfer of the administra- 
tion of the New York Aquarium from the city to the 
New York Zoological Society having passed both Houses 
and been approved by the Mayor, remains now to be acted 
on by both parties. A meeting to receive the report of 
the Executive Committee of the New York Zoological 
Society with regard to the matter is called for next 
week, when it is presumed that action will be taken. 
The possibilities of the Aquarium under proper scientific 
management are unlimited, and in this case — as with the 
Zoological Park — the Society unites the functions of giv- 
ing pleasure and instruction to the general public, and 
of encouraging investigation and research into problems 
of the highest scientific and economic importance. It is 
a fact that in some matters of progress the State of New 
York stands behind her sister States, but in this particu- 
lar matter she has shown an example that other States 
might well follow. 
Senator McKinney's bill, carrying out the Forest and 
Stream's suggestion of a State park for, Long Island, has 
been signed by the Governor. Under it a commission of 
three will be appointed to examine wild and forest lands 
in Suffolk county with a view to the establishment of a 
public park. This means that the Long Island deer will 
have a refuge; and if the right system shall be adopted, 
the Long Island park will constitute a permanent source 
of supply for restocking the Catskills and the Adiron- 
dacks. There are Cassandras who prognosticate the end 
of deer and quail and grouse and other game; but that 
end will not come in our day nor in that of our children's 
children, unless by failing to make provision of supply 
we bring the deprivation upon ourselves. Common sense 
and common prevision will retain a game supply fog 
generations to come. 
