Forest AND Stream 
A Weekly Journal' of the Rod and Gun. 
COPYKIGHT, 1903, Bry FoREST AND STREAM PuBUSHMG Co. 
T ERMS, $i A Year. ^0 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1902 
j VOL. LIX.— No. 19. 
( No. 348 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 
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, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
A joutney on foot hath most pleasant com- 
modities; a man may gfo at hispleaswre; none 
shall stay him ; none shall carry him beyond his 
wish; none shall trouble him; he hath but one 
labor, the labor of nature, to gfo. — Petrarch. 
TO MARK OLD SITES. 
The "Record of the Old Missouri" described in last 
week's Forest and Strea can hardly have failed to bring 
ttp to the mind of many a reader a host of memories of the 
ancient times. Things move fast in this country. Yester- 
day, as it seems to some of us, we rode across dusty 
plains, here and there black with buffalo, in other places 
dotted with yellow antelope whose slender black horns 
showed like fine lines against the blue sky as the pretty 
animals stood on some near-by knoll and watched us, or 
trotted nearer and nearer to see what manner of creature 
it was that had intruded on their feeding grounds. To- 
day through the same country we pass on the hurrying 
railway train, or, if by wagon or on horseback, we are 
forced to follow the zigzag roads which by half-mile 
rectangles follow the lines of the quarter sections. Buffalo 
and antelope no longer meet the eye, but instead we see 
houses and barns and stacks, and fields in which feed 
heavy cattle, followed by rooting hogs. 
The human population has been swept away with the 
brute. Trapper and Indian and United States soldier 
have moved onward; out of existence, to a reservation, or 
to the distant islands of the Pacific. If one asks the 
modern resident about the conditions which prevailed 
before the settlement of the country, it is found that he 
knows no more about it than the conductor of a car in 
Chicago or New York. So short is human memory; so 
completely do the affairs of the present crowd out from 
the mind the happenings of the past. 
Scattered along the valleys of the Missouri River and its 
tributary streams, as well as on many rivers hidden among 
ihe fastnesses of the mountains and whose waters at last 
pour themselves into the Pacific Ocean, there existed, not 
more than fifty years ago, the remains of many old-time 
trading posts. Some of them were then still occupied 
dwellings, or, if not occupied, were ruins whose remains 
were yet plainly to be seen. For long after the wooden or 
adobe building had decayed and disappeared, the depres- 
sion which marked the old cellar and the stone chimneys 
remained as monuments of what had been. 
The people who used to inhabit these old posts, by 
whose energy they were erected, by whose study and 
laborious vigilance they were made successful, or through 
whose slackness and carelessness they failed, are dead 
now. Long, long ago the fans of the death angel began 
to winnow their ranks, and it may well be that there is 
not now left one of those sturdy men who between 1830 
and 1840 penetrated the wilderness of the great West, and 
prepared the way for the innumerable multitudes who 
fifty or sixty years later followed them, and to-day are 
.still crowding into the territory which lies between the 
Missouri River and the Pacific Ocean. 
in his excellent work on tlie. "i\merican Fur Trade," 
Captam Chittenden has- given the names of many of these 
old-time trading posts, and has described their locations. 
But for the most part the local population is ignorant, 
not only of the situation of each of these posts, but even 
of the very fact that such a post existed. 
The sites of these o'ld forts ought to be marked in an 
imperishable way. They are memorials of the early his- 
tory of nearly one-half of this country, the first sprout- 
ings, so to speak, of a plant which has grovra and 
flourished, until it has covered a vast expanse of the 
continent. 
In many of the newer States of the West there are his- 
torical societies which have done and are doing most 
useful work in collecting facts concerning the early settle- 
ment of their several States and putting them on record- 
Notable among such societies is that of Montana, in 
which Hon. Wilbur F. Sanders, and his son, James U. 
Sanders, are active. Nebraska and Kansas have each 
energetic historical societies, and only about a year ago 
the Kansas Historical Society was instrumental in erecting 
a monument on the site of the Pawnee village where the 
heroic explorer Zebulon M. Pike first unfurled the United 
States flag west of the Missouri River, and planted it 
among the Pawnees, taking down the Spanish flag, which 
had been raised there but a short time before. 
In every State and in many counties in these newer 
States, there are people who, if the idea were but sug- 
gested to them, would gladly take steps to mark the his- 
toric sites which each possesses. This is being done more 
and more in the East, and even there it is often difficult 
to establish the exact locality of a particular happening or 
a particular structure. The dwellers in the newer West 
are better oflr in this respect than are those in the East, 
because less time has elapsed since the events, and so in- 
formation concerning people and places is more accessible. 
It would be well if this matter could be taken up 
throughout the West, and arrangements made to mark, at 
least by substantial square stone .posts properly inscribed, 
the situations of these old trading posts. On the Missouri, 
the Yellowstone, the Arkansas, the Laramie, the Plattes 
and elsewhere, there should be lasting memorials of these 
earliest permanent white habitations in the West. 
THE LONG-RANGE PERIL. 
The deplorable hunting fataHties, incident to the use 
of the rifle by big-game hunters in the season of big-game 
shooting, seem to increase with each passing year-, In 
the view of the layman, big-game hunting has quite as 
much of menace to life as pleasure to the participants. 
The daily press, with regrettable frequency, recounts the 
death of some ill-fated hunter or hunters from the effects 
of rifle bullets. Either directly or by implication each 
death is ascribed to careless or reckless shooting as a 
cause. 
It may fairly be conceded that a certain percentage of 
this mortality is due to carelessness or recklessness, but 
it is unfair and imsound to ascribe all of it to either 
cause. There is no occupation in life which is free from 
accident. Wherever high-powered forces are employed by 
man, accidents will happen to men. accidents which are 
beyond the power of human beings to foresee or to guard 
agamst. Even in the commercial world, where men are 
duly trained and tried, accidents are numerous. The 
electrician, the engineer, the miner, and other skilled 
artisans, kill and are killed. Out of the lot of destruction 
so-called accidents happen which, by proper care, could 
have been avoided. Such are not accidents in the true 
sense. In the commerc'al world, he who kills or maims 
carelessly or recklessly is considered guilty of a criminal 
act. with all the grave legal consequences to the offender 
which, in the eye of the law, is befitting the case and its 
circumstances. 
The same, or even harsher, judgment is gradually taking 
legal form concerning hunting accidents. Indeed, there 
have been so many deaths or woundings which were due 
to carelessness or recklessness, that on the part of the 
public there is an assumption of reckless shooting when- 
ever a death or wounding happens, and a prejudgment of 
the offender accordingly. Such prejudgment is. in a 
measure, unjust, since accidents cannot be entirely elimi- 
nated from the use of firearms afield. 
However, conceding that there are accidents which are 
beyond the power of man to prevent or foresee, and con- 
ceding that with the increase in the numbers of the 
lutnters who engage actively in the sport of big-game 
shooting, there consequently would be an increase in the 
number of accidents, there nevertheless are indisputably 
manj'' deaths and maimings due to ignorance concerning 
the use of the rifle and its powers, and carelessness and 
recklessness in its use, with a full knowledge of the rifle's 
jjossibilities for harm. 
There is a growing public belief that most of the acci- 
dents, apart from mistaking a man for a deer, are caused 
by the modern high-power rifle. This belief is confirmed 
and disseminated broadly and convincingly by the daily 
press. The signs of the times indicate that, if the fatalities 
continue in the future as in the past, public sentiment will 
restilt in an entire prohibition of high-power rifles within 
civilized limits, other than military and club grounds. 
Aside frwn the menace to life and limb, big-game htftiters. 
for the sake of the sport and the guild, should eschew 
the full- jacketed bullet and the high-power charges. The 
manufacturers provide proper cartridges for high-power 
rifles when used in settled sections, thus reducing the 
danger to the minimum. Manufacturers, for their own 
self-interest, should strenuously preach the doctrine of 
special loads for special sections, for the matter of what 
will kill big game in the most deadly way is secondary to 
the safety of the community. It should be clear to the 
nianufacturers that the use of high-powered rifles in a 
qualified way is much better than a prohibition of their 
use entirely. 
The conditions governing big-game shooting at the pres- 
ent time differ widely from those governing a few years 
ago. The game area is much less, so that, even if there 
were no more hunters, there would seem to be more 
owing to their being more concentrated. Towns, farms, 
homes, have so reduced the wilderness that it is no small 
task to journey out of sight of a home, and even when 
out of sight of the hunter, a home may not be out of range 
of his rifle bullet. Hunters have multiplied, the game 
area has become less, rifles have become more power- 
ful, hence the dangers have been multiplied. Beginners in 
big-game hunting add to the danger. The perils would 
be greatly reduced if the hunter used a cartridge which 
was sufficient to meet the necessities of the case; if he 
exercised special precaution about shooting in the vicinity 
of houses, and if the manufacturers in their own interest 
advised hunters to use proper ammunition in settled com- 
munities. 
JAMES C. MERRILL. 
Major James Gushing Merrill, widely known as a 
surgeon, and as an ornithologist who has done much to 
reveal the secrets of bird life in the West and -Southwest, 
died Oct. 27 at his home in Washington, D. C. 
Dr. Merrill was born in Cambridge, Mass., graduated 
at Harvard, and received his medical degree from the 
University of Pennsylvania in 1874. Not long after this 
he was appointed assistant surgeon in the army and was 
stationed for many years at various posts on the ^Western 
frontier. During his service on the Texas-Mexican bor- 
der, he made an extended study of the birds of the re- 
gion, and introduced to the fauna of the United States a 
number of species never before found within our borders. 
Afterward, he was stationed for some years at Fort 
Klamath, in Oregon, and again at Fort Shaw, in Mon- 
tana, and in both places devoted much time to the study 
of birds and published many interesting notes about the 
less known species. Later he served at Fort Reno in the 
Indian Territory— now Oklahoma— where he continued 
his work on bird life. For more than twenty years his 
name was a very familiar one in the annals of North 
American ornithological literature. 
Dr. Merrill was also an ardent sportsman and big-game 
hunter. With the love of pursuit he combined the keen 
observation of the trained naturalist, and for this reason 
his writings on any subject connected with sport had an 
interest far deeper than commonly attaches to a mere 
narrative of adventure. His contributions to Forest and 
Stream, and to some of the^ Boone and Crockett books 
are of extreme interest. 
Personally Dr. Merrill was one of the most attractive 
of men, genial, kindly, hospitable, the very man one would 
desire for a companion in the home or in the field. He 
was modest to a fault concerning his own achievements, 
accurate in his scientific work, and stood in the front 
in his own profession. 
After his many years' service on the plains and in the 
mountains, he was detailed as Librarian in the Surgeon 
General's Office in Washington, and there he has been for 
the past few years. The confinement did not altogether 
agree with him and of late his health had been unsatis- 
factory, yet we imagine the possibility of the fatal termina- 
tion never occurred to his friends. 
Among army men and among naturalists. Dr. Merrill 
had a wide circle of loving friends, by whom his loss 
will be deeply felt. 
On Friday, Oct. 31, the . New York Aquarium was 
formally transferred by the city . to the New York 
Zoological Society. The transfer took place in the 
lecture room of the aquarium, and ther^ were present a 
number of city officijals and members of the board o£ 
managers of toe Zoological Society. In a formal spe*chi 
