Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 28, 1902. 
j VOL. LVIII.-No. 26. 
1 No. 846 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 
pages 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. 
BITS OF TALK. 
"He was a beauty, plump three pounds, and as hand- 
some a fish as ever came, out of Long Island." 
"Where did you find him?" 
"In my own brook." 
"I thought as much. In these days one does not catch 
three-pound trout on Long Island waters unless he owns 
a stream or knows somebody else who does, and will let 
him in for an hour or two. It is a condition of things 
which has made an entirely new definition of the success- 
ful angler." 
"Yes? What do you call a successful angler?" 
"A successful angler is one who successfully fishes for 
an invitation to go fishing in a preserved stream." 
"Do you call yourself successful?" 
"That is for you to say." 
"Well, come down next Wednesday. I guess there is 
another three-pounder where I got that one." 
FLORIDA GREEN TURTLE EGGS. 
We note with regret a certain obtuseness on the part 
of the Florida press with respect to the necessity of put- 
ting an end to the robbing of green turtle nests on the 
Florida coast. When we called attention to the sub- 
ject some time ago, the Florida Times-Union and Citizen 
responded that our reasoning had been misapplied, be- 
cause the only turtle of which the eggs were taken was 
the loggerhead. And the other day, when Didymus wrote 
in our columns that the responsibility of preventing the 
extermination of the green turtle in Florida rested with 
the press and the State authorities, the St. Augustine 
Record, which took the Didymus suggestion as applying to 
itself, made a rejoinder like that of the Times-Union, 
that it was only the loggerhead and not the green turtle 
that the eggers destroyed. "The quest of turtle eggs along 
the Florida coast," the Record said, "has about as much 
to do with the extermination of the green turtle as the 
consumption of hens' eggs has upon the multiplication 
of ducks." 
In such a statement as that, of course, the Record is in 
error. The fact is that the taking of the eggs of the 
green turtle on the Florida beaches has had a direct effect 
upon the turtle supply. Dismissing as of no particular 
moment the circumstances of the particular incident which 
prompted Didymus to write, it is worth while pointing 
out that this reply to him which the Record makes shows 
a most unfortunate unfamiliarity with the life history of 
the green turtle— unfortunate, because so long as the edi- 
tors of Florida papers are ignorant of the actual facts 
we may not expect them to recognize the reform which is 
demanded and which they might do so much to bring 
about. 
The green turtle resorts to the sea beach and to the 
shores of inlets and rivers where it deposits its eggs in 
the sand, to be hatched by the heat of the sun. In 
former tiroes, if not now, the green turtle, like the logger- 
head and others, nested on the Florida coast, and on the 
shores of such arms of the sea as Bay Biscayne and the 
Indian and Halifax rivers. Just how far north its nest- 
ing range extended in earlier days we cannot say, but 
south it was found to the Tortugas. Of late years the 
green turtle supply on the Florida coast has decreased at 
such a rate as to engage the serious attention of both 
fishermen and Government officials. Some of the results 
of an investigation by the United States Fish Commis- 
sion are quoted in another column. The taking of the 
eggs is there put down as one of the prime causes of 
diminution— indeed, it would seem to require no official 
Government propoun cement to teach us that if we destroy 
the egg \ve cannot have the turtle, An appreciation of 
this great truth prompted- United States Fish Commis- 
sioner Brjce \q reeornmend the prohibition of taking the 
eggs. "The green turtle," he wrote in the report quoted, 
"one of the most valuable of the 'State's fishery products, 
needs protection to prevent its extermination. For a 
term of years, at least, the animal should be unmolested 
during the period when it seeks the shores to lay its eggs. 
There should be a minimum limit of weight for turtles 
that are taken to be shipped or sold locally, in order that 
the destruction of immature turtles may be prevented. 
The pernicious and destructive practice of gathering the 
eggs of this and the loggerhead turtle should be pro- 
hibited." 
Now it would make for good if the Florida press should 
address itself to the task of instructing the public on this 
subject, and to securing the legislation which is impera- 
tively demanded to put an end once and for all to the 
foolish destruction of green turtle eggs. With the signifi- 
cant facts of turtle diminution to enforce the teaching, 
this simple primary lesson in fishery economy should not 
be impossible of inculcation. But first — if the Florida 
press is to aid in the good work — the press itself must be 
enlightened, and we trust that Didymus will persevere in 
his work of instruction. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The latest freak of sentimentality and artistic street 
decoration in New York city consists in a number of small 
iron bowls affixed to lamp posts and fire' hydrants and 
designed for use as drinking fountains for dogs and 
cats. The subscription raised by a newspaper for this 
purpose, the editor announces with enthusiasm, is already 
sufficient to provide seventy of the dog bowls, and the 
S. F. P. C. A. president expresses a hope that before the 
contributions cease there may be so many bowls that 
every street in New York will have its fountain for small 
animals, "for no one knows their sufferings in the hot 
weather." This dog and cat fountain scheme has just 
enough plausibility to appeal even to people who have no 
ulterior advertising purpose to serve; but the fact is that 
it is entirely wrong in principle, and if carried out will 
be mischievous in its effects. What New York needs is 
not a supply of fountains for stray dogs and cats, but 
some effective system of exterminating these vermin. 
Dogs and cats which have owners and homes should be 
kept at home and watered there as often as necessary. 
The only animals which need suffer from thirst on the 
streets in the hot season are the homeless waifs and strays 
which are public nuisances. The thing to do with them 
is to capture them and send them to the pound for humane 
destruction. 
Mr. Wm. Wade, who is greatly interested in the educa- 
tion of blind deaf mutes and is constantly devising new 
ways to lighten their lives, has demonstrated that the 
tandem bicycle is admirably adapted to their use for exer- 
cise and pleasure. Denied the seeing and hearing which 
make up for others so much of the gratification of wheel- 
ing, they have yet the exultation of swift motion which 
the wheel affords, and they enjoy this all the more be- 
cause they are deprived of the rest. With the two con- 
ditions met which Mr. Wade insists upon — that the wheel 
shall be perfectly sound and the rider who controls it shall 
be competent — the blind member of the tandem team can 
reel off the miles with perfect safety and unbounded pleas- 
ure ; and of course for one who is blind just as much as for 
any other, the beneficial results of wheeling as physical 
exercise are very great. Recent quest by Mr. Wade for a 
new wheel for one of his proteges develops the fact that 
tandem wheels are no longer in the market. From a 
manufacture, which in the year 1000, according to a 
census bulletin just at hand, amounted to 3.640, the in-' 
dustry in 1902 has dropped to absolutely nothing. 
As we have no dangerous wild animals in this country 
except the grizzly bear— and he is not dangerous if we 
keep away from his secluded haunts— it is difficult for us 
to realize the constant apprehension and terror of wild 
beasts which must possess the unhappy country dwellers 
in the tiger and panther infested regions of India. The 
statistics relating to wild beasts and venomous snakes in 
the central provinces of that country for the year 1901 
have just been published by the authorities. The lists 
show that 313 tigers were killed, as against 357 human 
beings killed by tigers. A curious effect of game extermi- 
nation is noted in one province, where, because of the 
famine, the game in the forests had been killed for food 
for man, and the tigers, being deprived of their wild 
game food, had had recourse to human prey. In another 
district the gruesome theory is propounded that man-eat- 
ing by tigers was stimulated by the fact that the wild 
beasts consumed the corpses left in the cholera-stricken 
villages, and thus acquired a taste for human flesh. 
Among the tigers whose depredations are reported are a 
number which, because of their record, have won special 
notoriety as man-eaters, one which was killed had a 
score of thirty-seven deaths. Of panthers there were 
killed 519, and the, deaths of human beings attributed to 
panthers were 295. Jackals killed, 75- A considerable 
mortality is reported as the result of hydrophobia conse- 
quent upon people being bitten by rabid jackals. The 
total number of people killed by wild beasts in the year 
was 795 ; and when the deaths attributed to snake bite are 
included, the total amounts to 1,942. The conditions are 
said to be growing worse, instead of improving; and in- 
creased appropriations to reward the killing of man-eaters 
have not been effective to check the destruction of human 
life. 
Some of the thrifty folk who make a business of being 
more humane than the rest of us are wont to, express 
their pious trust that a time will come when birds will be 
no longer killed for sport. It is a vain and foolish trust, 
and they might know it. Grouse and woodcock and 
quail and wild duck will be shot for sport just so long as 
birds are good to eat, and as there is satisfaction in "re- 
ducing them to possession" by shooting them. The 
world is not going to give up flesh eating, nor to turn 
vegetarian, nor fruitarian, nor nutarian. If the senti- 
mentalists who decry shooting have any just cause of 
quarrel with the bird shooters, they must find it in the 
original plan of creation, in that very nature of things 
according to which the birds we call game were made to 
be eaten and man was made to eat them. The human 
animal has been killing and devouring other animals from 
the beginning; and it will go on doing the same thing 
to the end; and the carping of the professional humane, 
though kept up for a thousand years, would have no more 
effect on the system than the voices of so many frogs in 
the swamp. 
Dean Hoffman, who died on Tuesday of last week while 
on his way from the Ristigouche to this city, was a notable 
example of the many-sided man of affairs, who with all 
his multifarious labors, finds time to indulge his taste for 
angling. Dean of the General Theological Seminary of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church in this city, Dr. Hoff- 
man also managed extensive city real estate holdings 
estimated to be worth $10,000,000, was President of the 
New York Historical Society, a fellow of the American 
Museum of Natural History, and was a member of many 
learned and scientific societies throughout the country, 
and of numerous boards and church and charitable organi- 
zations, and belonged to the Century Association, City 
Club, Robins Island Club, South Side Club, Jekyl Island 
Club and the Ristigouche Salmon Club. He was an en- 
thusiastic angler, and spent two or three weeks every year 
on the Ristigouche. 
When a notorious old Wall street miser fell ill the 
ether day so that he could not get down to his office, the 
papers reported that his secretary had improved the op- 
portunity to take a day off — his first vacation in twenty- 
six years. We are not told how the holiday was spent; 
if the facts were known, probably we should find that as 
with the long-term prisoner who, when released from his 
dark cell, was overwhelmed by the sunlight and begged to. 
be taken back again, this Wall street drudge made a sorry 
mess of his vacation, and was glad to get back on chain 
once more. 
Dean Sage, of Albany, who died of apoplexy on his 
preserve on the Ristigouche on Monday of this week, was 
one of the best known anglers of the country, and of him 
it may be said that by his scholarly contributions to the 
literature of angling he did much to adorn, his favorite 
recreation, . _ ■ _ 1 ,.. 
