Forest AND Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun, 
Copyright, 1902, by Forest ahd Stream Pubushikg Co. 
Terms, fi a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER IS, 1902, 
J VOL. LIX.— No. 20. 
1 No. 846 Broadway, New Yomif, 
The Forest aw Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruct' Dn 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, 
SQUIRREL-SKIN CLOAKS. 
One of the yellowest of the yellow journals has worked 
itself up to a high state of excitement over the discovery 
of a certain squirrel skin cloak intended for the adorn- 
ment of the person of a society woman in New York. 
The instigating garment is composed of bits of skin 
from the heads of 5,000 squirrels killed in Norway; and 
the newspaper writer thinks it intolerable that so many 
innocent creatures should have been slain for the gratifica- 
'tion of feminine vanity. When the possessor of the robe 
puts it on, he piously suggests, it should give her the 
horrors and burn her flesh. If other women are intent 
upon indulging in like garments, he entreats of them 
first to repair to Central Park and watch the squirrels 
there, and by contemplation of their playful and confiding 
ways to learn the great lesson that squirrels were created 
to live their lives unmolested and unsought for the gratifi- 
cation of woman's whims. 
If the women who can afford to wear such costly gar- 
ments have common sense in proportion to their purses, 
they are unlikely to experience pangs of remorse oyer their 
extensive collections of squirrels' skins. They will reflect 
that the only considerations involved are those of econ- 
omy with respect to the source of supply. The one im- 
portant question is whether the animals will hold out to 
furnish the garments; and if it shall prove that the stock 
is limited, so that there may be few cloaks, so human is 
woman that she will take increased satisfaction in the 
possession of a garment which cannot be common. 
To speak of squirrels in the wilds of Norway or any- 
where else as innocent creatures which have a right to 
live is to talk at random. The Central Park squirrels 
are accorded a right to live only so far as their existence 
is agreeable to the people of the city. Left to them- 
selves, they would so multiply as speedily to become a 
nuisance. At intervals the park employees turn out with 
shotguns and kill off the surplus. The squirrel trappers 
in Norway and elsewhere are doing the same thing. In- 
herently there is no more of reason in the contention that 
a Norway squirrel is innocent and has a right to live than 
that the Norway pine in which the squirrel frisks is inno- 
cent and entitled to enjoy existence. Each is a living 
organism, a part of nature. Mankind holds toward the 
pine and the squirrel precisely the same attitude, regard- 
ing them as of utility to the human /ace and to be used 
for its benefit. This is the rule which has been followed 
for ages with animals and with trees, and will be followed 
for ages to come. Man is a carnivorous creature ; he eats 
flesh; to supply himself with food to keep himself alive 
he slays and eats those wild creatures which are good for 
food. He propagates by millions and tens of millions 
other creatures which he has reduced to domesticity. 
Chickens, ducks, geese, pheasants, pigeons, cattle, sheep, 
hogs and dogs he breeds to kill and eat, generation after 
generation of them, through cycles of time. Other forms 
of wild animal life man utilizes to keep him warm; cap- 
turing them and taking their clothing for his own 
clothing. There have been and are sentimentalists and 
cranks who eschew flesh, but there are none who are 
permitted in civilized society to go without clothes; and 
there is not in principle the slightest distinction whether 
the material for the clothing of the httoan race is de- 
rived from slain domestic creatures, or from slain wild 
animals. To prate of the cruelty of killing squirrels for 
cloaks, or 'coons for caps, or seals for coats, is not only 
mawkish sentimentality, but it is quarreling with the whole 
scheme of creation so far as that scheme includes man and 
other animals and their relations to each oth^. As Dr, 
Watts sings: 
How proud we are, and fond to show 
Our. clothes and call thero rich and new; 
When the poor shs*^ and silkworm wore 
That very clothing long before. 
To declare that animals have & right to live is a pleas- 
ing abstraction, but the proposition is one which is not 
accepted in practice. The right of an animal to live is 
never recognized when the abrogation of that right may 
be of any advantage to mankind. The human race farms 
the animal products of the earth precisely as it does the 
vegetable- products, using whatever is of good for sub- 
sistence, for clothing or for ornament. 
No healthy-minded wearer of a squirrel skin cloak feels 
rem-orse over the death of the squirrel which contributed 
to the making of her robe, no more than she does for 
the bird — wild or domestic — that gave the plumes for 
her bonnet, the tortoise that contributed the comb in her 
hair, the mollusks that yielded the pearls for her brooch, 
the silkworm larvse that perished to give the silk for her 
dress, the kids that supplied her gloves and boots. 
AWAY FROM THE BUSTLE. 
The village looked just as it had looked twenty years 
ago, with the elms gracefully arching the main street, and 
the comfortable houses set amid their gardens and 
orchards. There was the same pleasing picture of the 
apple and pear trees bending down with their loads of 
fruit, the barns with bulging mows, and the herds of 
cattle on the hill slopes. It was good for the eyes, 
the seeing again this quiet, peaceful, contented place, away 
from the unrest and drive of the surroundings the man 
was used to; and it was all the more grateful to him 
because everything was just as it had been twenty years 
before. 
"The place has not changed a bit," he said, reflectively 
and musingly, aloud. 
"No; and do you know why?" said the driver. "It's 
the Quakes" — meaning the Quakers. "They just sit and 
rock on their rag carpets, and think they are comfortable, 
They don't know no better." 
The man was not in a mood for argitment, and so 
contented himself with unspoken dissent. But the double 
Tiegative, he said to himself, just expressed it — "they 
don't know no better." And pray why should they know 
better? Why should they wish to know anything better, 
cr anything diflferent, for themselves or for the old vil- 
lage? They have houses and gardens and orchards, and 
pastures and meadows and grain fields. They have 
enough, and what is better, sense to know that they have 
ejiough. 
A MOMENTOUS FISHING TRIP. 
In the spring of 1899 two anglers went on a fishing 
excursion in the Sapphire country of North Carolina. 
The fishermen were Dr. C. P. Ambler, of Asheville, 
N. C. and Judge William R. Day, of Cleveland, O. So 
impressed was Judge Day with the beauty of the scenery, 
the grandeur of the forests, the mountain ranges and the 
lakes of exquisite loveliness, that he readily fell in with 
Dr. Ambler's suggestion that the Government should step 
in to secure control of the region and preserve it for all 
time in a condition of nature. 
From that fishing excursion dates the movement to 
establish the Appalachian Park. Others were interested 
in the scheme. An association was organized to press it 
before the public and upon Congress. Dr. Ambler, as 
the secretary of the association, did heroic service in in- 
forming the public, answering objections, enlisting sym- 
pathy and support, and making the demand for the forest 
preserve national in scope and powerful in intensity. 
The outlook is bright for a favorable action of Con- 
gressman the forthcoming session. The Appalachian Park 
promises to be an assured fact. When the full history 
of the movement which led to its establishment shall be 
written, the first chapter must be begun with that chance 
Sapphire angling trip which proved to be so momentous.. 
THE PLANK IN MASSACHUSETTS. 
This 3'ear is the last one of the term of three years 
during which the sale of woodcock and ruffed grouse 
("partridge) is forbidden by the Massachusetts law. The 
period has been ample to demonstrate completely the 
excellent working of the system. Those skeptics who 
professed to question its utility in the beginning, were, if 
honest, long since convinced that the absolute stopping 
of the sale means a decreased killing, a replenished sup- 
ply. We have not the slightest doubt that a poll of the 
sportsmen of the Commonwealth would show public 
sentimetit traanimously in supped of the system. 
As for the game dealers, by whose co-operation or ac 
quiescence the statute was adopted, it may fairly be as- 
sumed that in the three years which have elapsed they 
have found that their business could be adapted to the 
new conditions, and that they were not dependent upon 
making merchandise of these two native game birds. It 
is to be assumed that having adjusted their trade to the 
changed conditions they will be quite as ready now as 
they were three years ago to join in the protection of 
woodcock and partridge, and will make no opposition to 
a renewal of the anti-sale system for another term of 
years, or to the adoption of the plank in perpetuity. 
For the sake of the country at large, so far as it may 
be affected by the example of Massachusetts, a readoption 
of the anti-sale law is extremely desirable. The Massa- 
chusetts Association and the allied organizations which 
are working in sympathy with it, and Commissioner Col- 
lins and his associates, are all alive to the demands of the 
situation, and may be depended upon to work for the ex- 
tension of the present law. 
There was recently found in West Virginia, near 
Steubenville, O., the skull of a musk-ox which came from 
the glacial terrace found in that neighborhood. Since its 
discovery, the nearly complete shoulder blade of a mam- 
moth has been found close to where the skull was dis- 
covered. Of this skull only the back part with the horn 
core remains. The specimen has been broken and 
polished, as if the bone had been carried some distance 
before it was finally imbedded in the terrace from which 
it was recently unearthed. Dr. J. B. Hatcher, of the 
Carnegie Museum, who has examined it, sa3's that it be- 
longs to Ovibos cavifrons Leidy. He adds that "the chief 
interest attached to the present specimen comes from the 
additional evidence it affords as to the faunal changes 
brought about over this region during the glacial period." 
Specimens belonging to this animal have been found at 
Fort Gibson, in Indian Teritory; St. Louis, New Madrid 
and Benton county, in Missouri ; Humboldt county, Ohio ; 
Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, and from localities in Pennsyl- 
vania, Iowa and West Virginia, These remains have al- 
\vays been found in glacial deposits, or in deposits that 
have some relation with some stage of the glacial period. 
It appears, therefore, that since the musk-ox presumably 
always preferred a climate such as they now inhabit, they 
moved southward before the advancing ice until they 
reached Indian Territory, Missouri and Kentucky, always 
keeping just ahead of the ice. It may be presumed that 
when the ice <heet retreated again they closely followed 
it northward. 
•5 
The case of the People of the State of New York vs. 
the Arctic Freezing Company, of this city, which is the 
celebrated cold storage of game case, is making its way 
through the courts. As has been recorded in these col- 
umns, the case was carried to the Court of Appeals. There 
it is No. 340 on the calendar made up for the term, which 
began on Monday of this week. Despite the long time 
which has been consumed, the progress made with the 
cold storage case has not been slow, when measured by 
•that of other cases in New York's congested courts, and 
it does not appear that the Forest, Fish and Game Com- 
mission or the counsel representing the prosecution are 
in any degree censurable for their conduct of the affair. 
An Adirondack hunter mistook a companion's brown 
hat for a de^ and killed his man. Another shot at a 
plaid shirt wrach he thought was a deer, and killed 
his victim. And so the record grows. If human beings 
do not escape being taken for deer, how may immunity 
be expected for a chance elk or moose sighted by one of 
these premature shooters? The Forest, Fish and Game 
Commission have placarded the woods with poster warn- 
ings against the killing of the introduced game; and they 
might well add' a warning against shooting before the 
shooter knows that it is a deer and not a man nor 
m.oose. 
M - . - 
That is a very suggestive note which Mr. Durlln sends 
from Wisconsin of the shooting grounds of Lake Met^- 
dota, which have been planted with wild celery, with th^ 
result that the canvasbacks now resort thither in a good 
supply. This is one expedient of practical game stocking 
v/hich is open to shooters in very many localities; andi 
the success of the Madison sportsmen should point tl*? 
way to others, ^ 
