Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest and Strkam Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. IOTCts. a Copy. 
Six Months,'$2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 9, 1902 
j VOL. LIX.— No. 6. 
I No. 846 Bro.\dway, 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 dme. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
Every believer in manliness, and therefore of 
manly sport, and every lover of nattire, every 
man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of 
the wilderness and of wild life, shotfid strike 
hands with the far-sighted men who wish to 
preserve otir material resources, in the effort to 
keep oar forests and oar gfame beasts, gfame birds 
and g:ame fish — indeed all the living: creatures of 
prairie, and woodland, and seashore — from wan- 
ton destruction. — Theodore Roosevelt in **The 
Deer and Antelope of North America/' 
PLAY. 
Play, amusing, exercising and recreative, is essential 
to the wellbeing and development of mankind, mentally 
and physically, from childhood to the years of senility. 
Indeed, of the phenomena of all animal life, none other is 
more conspicuously or more universally displayed. To 
the youth, in the formative stages of mind and body, it 
is a factor which is constant in activity and paramount in 
importance. It is a popular fiction that, with the advent 
of maturity, play should cease. It is not considered by the 
-average man or woman that for every stage of life there 
is a befitting developmental diversion. 
Adult men and women periodically need relaxation and. 
recreation. In such manner do they best renew and re- 
pair their energies, dulled by workaday cares, or ' relieve 
the ennui of purposeless existence. To each stage of life 
there is some one or more forms of play best befitting it. 
Some of them are so well defined and established as to 
be considered as being conventionally standard. They 
may be obscured, in their play significance, by their nomen- 
clature, though the golf and other games signify much 
the same to the adult that blind man's buff does to the 
child. One is recreative and diverting; the other is de- 
velopmental and -diverting. In each there is the dominant 
principle to excel one's fellows, to succeed better than 
one's opponents; to be distinguished as the conqueror 
among the conquered. 
From the viewpoint of mature life, the play of children 
is commonly considered as being a frivolous and mean- 
ingless display of childish traits. That it is a wise and 
useful provision of nature for the development of the 
physical and mental powers of children is not commonly 
known. Yet by play, and play only, is the young of ani- 
mals, man included, developed and educated by nature's 
most beneficent methods. A characteristic so universal 
cannot be meaningless. 
Play, in most of its aspects, is mimetic of life's most 
serious activities. The play of puppies and kittens, while 
devoid of actual hostility, is a realistic counterpart of 
actual attack, defense and strategic maneuvering for ad- 
vantage in destroying or capturing prey or enemy, such 
as is seriously applied in adult life. The play of the 
boy is similarly mimetic. The mass plays and individual 
plays of the football teams have all the elements of force 
and strategy, peacefully applied, that are used in actual 
combat. 
Nearly every game that can be mentioned, if con- 
ceded to be a manly sport, has the dominating principle 
of competition, man against his fellows, which embodies 
the factors of greater physical force, greater mental re- 
sourcefulness, and a general manipulation of means to 
ends to insure success in life's struggle. 
The playful competitions of childhood fit children for 
engaging in the actual competitions of youth. The playful 
competitions of youth in turn qualify" for adult occupa- 
tions. By engaging in competition with one's fellows, the 
limitations both of one's own powers and those of one's 
fellows, are learned; self-reliance and discipline are in- 
culcated; the habit of initiative becornes characteristic; 
and respect is conceded and exacted when mingling with 
associates. 
The best manhood is not attained where the powers and 
activities of youth are balked or entirely checked. In 
city streets, where boys are restricted in their natural 
inclination and opportunities to engage in wholesome play, 
their energies, so restricted, are sure to burst out in mis- 
chievous or lawless acts ; or, if the restriction is passively 
accepted, the boy develops into a passive nonentity. 
But the dormant, subserviently deferential boy, with no 
initiative or aggressiveness of his own, is not of the ma- 
terial of which the best men are made. The powers of 
mind and body are both developed by exercise. The best 
men and women are those who develop according to na- 
ture's own laws. No artificial systein of mankind can im- 
prove on that of nature. Life is an endless competition. 
To engage in it at one's best, full capacity of mind and 
body should be secured. The play of the boy therefore is 
as importantly essential to him in his developmental life 
as the play of the man, be it termed golf, fishing, shooting, 
yachting, or what not, is to the recreative life of the 
adult. —=-=====:= ' 
THE TREE-PLANTING STATE. 
There are not a few men who can remember the State 
of Nebraska when it was absolutely without timber, except 
in a few places along the streams. At that time, say 
thirty years ago, the wooded area of the State is esti- 
mated as having been, only three per cent, of its area. The 
chief cause of this absence of timber is believed to have 
been the frequent prairie fires which swept over the land. 
Not very long after the completion of the Union 
Pacific Railway settlements began to creep westward 
along the Platte Valley, and each farmer who made his 
home there planted a few trees, willows or cottonwoods. 
These trees acted as windbreaks, protecting from cold 
and snow in winter and from hot winds and consequent 
evaporation and injury to crops in summer. They were 
useful for shade, and after a few years began to yield 
more or less fuel to the land owner, a yield which in that 
treeless country was a matter of the very greatest in- 
terest to the settlers. 
As settlements extended further and further, more and 
more trees were planted. Beside this, the prairie fires be- 
came constantly fewer; the tender seedlings were no 
longer destroyed in their first year, and from the stream 
valleys and the canons which had long supported an 
ancient growth of trees and brush, this forest growth 
gradually began to extend itself up the sides of the 
ravines, and even to the prairie. 
These conditions have been studied by Dr. Chas. E. 
Bessey, who, writing some years ago of the counties of 
eastern Nebraska, says : "In practically every case where 
one travels up the streams, passing out to the side 
branches, to the little temporary rills which water the 
upper basins, the trees are of smaller size and are much 
younger. It is a very rare occurrence to find large trees 
near the upper end of a forest belt. I have seen a few 
such cases, but their rarity is such that one is always 
surprised when they are found. The general rule is that 
near the upper limit of the tree area there are many 
shrubs, and mingled with them many young trees no 
larger than those which under cultivation are known to 
be not more than fifteen to twenty years old. * * * 
No one who has seen and studied the forest areas in 
eastern Nebraska will be able to doubt that they are 
spreading where they are given a fair opportunity, and 
are not prevented by man or his domestic anirnals." 
At first practically all the planted timber of Nebraska 
v/as Cottonwood, set out either for wind protection, shade 
or fuel, but in recent years many thousands of acres have 
been planted with orchards, and in not a few cases black 
walnut, black locust, red cedar, mulberry, and osage 
orange have been set out, to the great advantage of the 
land owner and the State. 
In the northern and northwestern portions of Nebraska 
is the "sand hill" country, well known once as a hunting 
region, and later as a cattle country. Investigations made 
in the sand hills show that this barren region will support 
certain species of pine, which are doing well, and which 
will ultimately attain a size suitable for lumbering. 
It is suggested that tree-planting reservations should be 
set apart in the sand hill region, and an extensive forest 
there wogld be likely to be of great value to the neigh- 
boring region, as modifying wind and temperature over a 
large part of western Nebraska. In the course of fifteen 
or twenty years such a forest would begin to yield a 
revenue from the sale of fuel and posts, and a little later 
it would furnish larger timber, and thereafter would be 
self-supporting. 
LIVE QUAIL FOR STOCKING. 
The stocking of depleted covers with quail brought 
from other districts has been an important factor in re- 
storing and maintaining the game supply in several States. 
Numerous individual owners of shooting grounds, game 
preserving clubs and State game commissions have in 
times past secured thousands of birds and put them out 
on private and public lands for private and public benefit. 
When the Lacey Act was adopted by Congress, it was 
hailed by many persons interested in this work of restock- 
ing as a measure which would enlist the co-operation 
of the Federal Government in the restoration of depleted 
game grounds. The text of the act declared: "The 
object and purpose of this act is to aid in the restoration 
of such birds in those parts of the United States adapted 
thereto, where the same have become scarce or extinct, 
and also to regulate the introduction of American or 
foreign birds or animals in localities where they have 
not heretofore existed." 
But any notion that the restoration of the -game supply 
would be advanced through the agency of the Department 
of Agriculture has by this time been dissipated. No game 
birds have been brought into the country from foreign 
lands by -the Department, nor have any American game 
birds been transported from regions of abundance to those 
of scarcity. On the contrary, the Department has inter-- 
fered in a manner which is claimed to be wholly arbitrary 
and without warrant of law in various private enterprises 
of live quail transportation for stocking purposes. By 
what those who feel themselves aggrieved characterize as a 
sheer assumption of an authorization which the ^Lacey 
law nowhere contains, it has interfered with a lawful 
traflSc in live game, and by the seizure of such quail 
passing through the States has thwarted numerous at- 
tempts to restore shooting. 
The business of transplanting quail has in past years 
been conducted on a large scale by a New York city 
dealer, who has acted as an agent for obtaining and for- 
warding live birds to a large number of clients, among 
them many well-known game associations and the New 
Jersey Commissioners. The birds have come from the 
Indian Territory, whence, under the existing United 
States statute relative to game, their export is not for- 
bidden; but United States marshals, acting under the 
direction of the Department of Agriculture, have seized 
the birds en route, and practically broken up the business 
of quail transplanting. Now one of the dealers in live: 
quail whose interests have been affected, has sent to the 
Forest and Stream for publication an advertisement 
calling on the sportsmen of the country to secure an 
amendment to the Lacey Act, to permit the transportation 
of quail for stocking purposes. But if the Lacey Act now 
contains no provision respecting the transportation of 
live quail between the States, no amendment of it is re- 
quired to permit such transportation. If the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture in its present interference with live 
quail transportation is acting without authority conferred 
by the Lacey Act, to amend the Act would not reach the 
Department, unless the amendment should be so worded 
as to prohibit interference by the Department. 
On the other hand, if there is any provision of law under 
which the Department acts, this should be made patent 
to the understanding of the sportsmen who now feel 
aggrieved because they cannot obtain the birds they want 
for stocking. 
The mosquito pest at a Long Island town bordering 
a salt marsh has been abated by a system of some five 
miles of shallow ditching, which by removing the stand- 
ing water left from high tides has destroyed the breeding 
grounds. There are scores of places where some simple 
action like this would materially add to the comfort of 
living, to the value of real estate and to the prosperity of 
towns; and the public is gradually being educated to a 
point where mosquito-plagued places will work out thei?! 
speedy salvation. ' ^ _j 
