Forest ani> Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and 
Copyright, 1903, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Gun. 
Tekms, H a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, |2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 24, 1903. 
( VOL. LX.-No. 4. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York. 
The Forest and Stream is the recognized mediuin of entertain- 
inent, 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, S2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
MAN AND NATURE. 
The economic value of wild life to man is as yet very 
imperfectly understood. Very few people think of or 
appreciate the fact that the wild creatures that civilization 
i.s constantly crowding more and more out of existence 
have to this same civilization a value in dollars and cents 
which is very great, though as yet we do not know how 
to measure this value. 
Owing to the labors of persons'" interested in birds 
during the last fifteen or twenty years, many people have 
come to comprehend in slight measure the great services 
rendered to humanity by birds of almost every kind. 
Less than a generation ago an oriole singing in the gar- 
den in spring was thought to be destroying the peas, a 
robin in the cherry tree in early summer was regarded 
as an enemy because of the fruit he ate, while hawks and 
owls," no matter how small and feeble they might be, were 
thought of as capable of carrying off the farmers' geese 
and turkeys. In the face of many discouragements the 
bird lovers kept on preaching their doctrine. Nearly 
twenty j'ears ago the Forest and Stream gave birth to 
the Audubon Society idea, which now, taken up by a 
hundred associations throughout the land, is doing a vast 
amount of good. It is realized that not only insect 
caters, but hawks and owls and gulls and terns and many 
olher birds have a useful place in nature, and should not 
be wantonly destroyed. These are the more familiar . 
aspects of the protection afforded to human society by 
wild things. But there are many others. And as our 
knowledge of nature and its processes increases, we are 
learning, though slowly, which are our friends in the 
animal world and which our enemies, and are learning 
also how to make use of one against the other. 
It is not so verj' long since the California orchards 
were attacked by a scale insect which promised to c^estroy 
the trees and so to ruin their owners, but by the introduc- 
tion of certain beneficial insects which preyed on the 
noxious ones, the California orchards were largely pro- 
tected and a great encouragement was given to further 
attempts to protect plants from their enemies by setting 
upon these enemies their enemies — creatures which preyed 
on them. 
In the same way, a few years ago the orange and. 
lemon groves along the river Tagus in Portugal were at- 
tacked by a scale insect thought to be an immigrant from 
Australia. It Avas apparently without enemies in Por- 
tugal, and increased so as to threaten appalling injury 
to the orchards. Nevertheless, by importation from this 
country of a few specimens of a little predaceous beetle, 
known as Novitis, which were at once bred in large num- 
bers in captivity in Portugal, the ravages of the scale 
insect were checked. Colonies of the beneficial insect 
were established on about 500 estates, and these colonies 
sent out others, so that gardens and orchards that were 
completely infested by the scale insect and had been al- 
most ruined, became clean and free from the pest that 
had so nearly accomplished their destruction. 
The ravages of these minute injurious creatures are 
scarcely known except to those people whom they directly 
affect and to students of science. But cases of this kind 
are continually occurring. Only recently it is announced 
that the authorities of a parish on the Mississippi River 
in Louisiana have passed a local law forbidding the 
further destruction of alligators. This low-lying 
parish is protected from flooding at high stages of water 
in the Mississippi by the levee — a great dike which keeps 
the river from overflowing the fields and making the 
country uninhabitable. Muskrats abound along the river, 
and burrowing into the levee weaken it, and if their bur- 
rows pass entirely through it, cause leak^ which are 
likely to destroy the structure. 
Alligators were formerly very abundant here, and, ac- 
cording to the authorities, fed chiefly on the muskrat, 
tjUt since the hides of the alligators became valuable 
they have been so closely pursued by hunters^ that 
Ihej' are almost exterminated. The muskrats are now 
without enemies to check their increase; their injury to 
the IcA'ce becomes constantly greater ; more repairs are 
needed, and the inhabitants of Plaquemines Parish have 
10 pay for these repairs. The authorities are now calling 
on nature to help pay their taxes. 
CAVIAR. 
The New York Evening Post recently printed a report 
of the growing scarcity of caviar, and of the importance 
of the snpplj^ furnished by the United States. The Post's 
figures and deductions have been widely copied, and it is 
worth while, perhaps, to note their lack of accuracy and 
to correct the erroneous notions created by them relative 
to the part America plays in the supply of the world's 
caviar. The artfcle ran: 
The time is said to be not far off when caviar will be as ex- 
pensive as canvasback duck or diamond-back terrapin. Though 
supposed to be a foreign delicacy, it is almost exclusively Ameri- 
can. At one time all the caviar on the market was of European 
origin. European waters have been nearly fished out of sturgeon, 
however, and to-day the German and Russian manufacturers who 
have a practical monopoly of the finished product, rely upon the 
United States for the sturgeon's eggs, out of which the finished 
delicacy is made. The same process of extinction is going on in 
this country at a very rapid rate, and thus far no steps have been 
taken by either the National or the State Government to regulate 
the industry. At the present time the three centers of sturgeon 
catching are the Delaware River, the Great Lakes, and the 
Columbia River. A limited number are caught in Puget Sound, 
and according to ship captains, there is still a vast and untouched 
supply in the waters of Southern Alaska. The waterways which 
run from Vancouver northward along British Columbia are an- 
other field of considerable promise. 
But the first quality, and the one which all epicures prefer, 
comes from the Delaware. That of the Great Lakes is inferior in 
flavor, while the Pacific article is altogether too rank and coarse for 
the most refined palate. It was the latter which was described by 
an Irishman as a shad roe dressed in cod liver oil. Up to the 
present century there were many sturgeon in the Hudson and 
Connecticut, in New London and Narragansett bays, as well as 
Long Island Sound, but the number has grown steadily smaller 
and to-day is scarcely worthy of consideration. 
That caviar is almost exclusively a delicacy our own, 
and that to-day Germany and Russia rely upon this coun- 
try for the material forming the finished product is a bit 
of misinformation that will surprise most intelligent 
Americans, who hardly need to be told that the output 
of the two countries mentioned is vastly in excess of that 
of our union. In the ten months ending November i, 
1895, the Russian export alone was of a value of $726,160, 
while in the eleven months ending December i, 1902, the 
export from the United States was only $39,763, being 
about one-half that of the previous year. European 
waters,' or at least those of ' Russia, are very far from 
being fished out, as alleged by the newspaper writer. In 
connection with Russia's great fishery exposition of last 
year it was stated that the export of caviar for that 
twelveinonth was in the neighborhood of a million dol- 
lars' value. It will be news to the epicures that the first 
quality, the caviar that they prefer, comes from the Dela- 
ware. Our consul at Hamburg, Germany, reports offi- 
cially in 1897 that nearly one-half of the caviar imported 
from the United States comes from the Delaware River, 
and that it goes to cheap restaurants. The best Russian 
caviar sells for four or five times the price of the Ameri- 
can or German, neither of which last assumes to compete 
v/ith even the second grade of the former. 
Nor is the vaunted Delaware product wholly from that 
stream, a large proportion coming from South Carolina 
waters, the Edisto and tributaries of Winyah Bay, where 
the earlier season invites the operations of the Delaware 
fishermen before the opening of their own, the southern 
product being sold as Delaware caviar. Another outgiv- 
ing of this writer, "that lake caviar is inferior," is op- 
posed by the assertion of the United States Consul that 
"our lake caviar is preferred to that of the rivers on ac- 
count of its larger roe, the latter being small and black 
in the river caviar." Furthermore, it may be said that 
no small proportion of the alleged United States product 
is and has been of Canadian waters. Our consul states 
that there are three sturgeon fisheries on the ' Fraser 
River in British Columbia that in 1897 exported over a 
million pounds of sturgeon flesh to the United States, 
and that with each carload of 20,CX30 pounds there was 
sent a thousand pounds of roe which went to Germany to 
appear as caviar. Even the salt with which it is cured is 
? German product, being shipped to tlie far Pacific for 
that special purpose. The sturgeon fishery of our Great 
Lakes is substantially exhausted, even the Lake of the 
Woods, lakes Winnipeg, Manitoba and other waters of 
the far Canadian wilderness have ceased to furnish a fair 
supply. Another inexact statement is that neither our 
State or Federal Governments have taken steps to regu- 
late the industry. The Delaware fishery has been sub- 
jected to specially restrictive legislation by the States of 
New Jersey and Delaware, and the general government has 
endeavored, but with ill success, to resuscitate the ex- 
hausted fishery by artificial propagation. Finally, it may 
be said that while the caviar output has very seriously de- 
clined in this country, that of Russia still holds out, and 
there is seemingly no more danger of a caviar than there 
is of a lobster famine. 
The Russians make a considerable portion of their 
caviar from the roes of other fishes than the sturgeon, 
that of the white sturgeon {A. huso) selling for the 
highest price. If the roes of our cod, pollock and many 
other fishes could be thus utilized, instead of being dis- 
carded as offal, the life of a now almost extinct industry 
might be indefinitely prolonged. The myriad salmon 
slaughtered on our Pacific Coast should alone constitute 
the basis of a flourishing trade, for the roes of the Baltic 
salmon afford the Russians material for their coveted 
delicacy. Our moribund industry was initiated in 1867 
by a consignment to Hamburg of twenty-five kegs of 
caviar, where it brought only two cents a pound; but so 
scarce and so highly valued is the same article to-day that 
it commands from $l to $1.25 a pound in the home 
market. The development of an American taste for this 
foreign tit-bit has materially contributed to the diminu- 
tion of our export trade, of which next year may see the 
entire extinction. To the home purchaser the domestic 
product masquerades as foreign, and he accepts as Rus- 
sian an article that in price and quality is much below the 
genuine. Nevertheless the absorption of our entire out- 
put is unlikely to check advancing prices or to arrest the 
lamentable decline of the fishery. 
In Russia the semi-barbarous Cossack of the Don 
freely and willingly imposes upon himself a set time for 
his sturgeon fishery, and only during three weeks of the 
long year is the harvest sought to be gathered. Lack of 
respect for the law is unfortunately a failing of the 
average American, and his contempt of restrictive fishery 
statutes seems to render the local extinction of various 
forms of aquatic life almost inevitable. Living men can 
recall the time when our noble Hudson abounded in 
sturgeon, when the loud splash of the leaping monster 
was a familiar disturbance of the nocturnal stillness ; but 
that sound is now hushed and its awakening all but hope- 
less. 
The "gentle art of woodcraft," as Frank Forester 
styled it, is rapidly lapsing into one of the lost arts 
in this country. The settlement of the country, the 
passing of the frontier, the lessening of the numbers 
of pioneers and wilderness settlers, all these mean a 
smaller proportion of the population which by force 
of stern necessity learns the tricks and expedients of 
woodcraft. The town and the city still draw from the 
country, but there are fewer men of this day than there 
were a half or even* a quarter century ago whose 
youth was a schooling in the lore of field and wood; 
and there are fewer to whom, in mature years, an out- 
ing means taking up once again the woodcraft ac- 
quired in boyhood days. The sportsman is all the 
time growing more dependent upon his guide. The 
guide's occupation is all the time, in corresponding 
degree, becoming more important and filling a larger 
place. It is a widening field which will enlist the men 
who. in the conditions of an earlier stage, would have 
been fur trappers or market hunters, or just back- 
woods dwellers. With the new importance of the 
work, we are likely to see an increased efficiency in 
the guide service, and a conventional recognition of 
the calling as one demanding ability and training. 
We printed last week a note from a correspondent writ- 
ing from North Carolina, who related how his setter 
Toby had the dog-sense to return out of the thick cover 
to report that the other dog was holding a covey there. 
The story brings up the account of the reporter dogs of 
Sweden, which was sent to us some years ago by Minister 
Thomas, and which is good enough for another read- 
ing, and so has nlgce on another page tliis week, 
