F6iREST AND STREAM. 
tKov. IS, 196^. 
TUSCAKORA — ^ENGLISH-BUILT STEAM YACHT. 
Photo by James Burton. 
No. 
4- 
No. 
5- 
No. 
6. 
No. 
7. 
No. 
8. 
No. 
9- 
No. 
10. 
No. 
II. 
No. 
12. 
No. 
13. 
No. 
14. 
No. 
IS- 
No. 
16. 
No. 
17- 
W. Emien Roosevelt. 
William J. Matheson. 
Franklin A. Plumnier. 
Colgate Hoyt. 
Percy K. Hudson. 
Johnston de Forest. 
H. C. Rouse. 
Frank J. Gould. 
J. R. Burnett and F. D. Pavey. 
H. W. Gibson. 
James R. Ely. 
F. R. Coudert, Jr. 
Henry T. Sloane. 
Geo. B. Watts, Jr. 
Manhasset Bay Winter Cluh* 
New York, Oct. 28.— The Manhasset Bay Winter Club 
has been organized within the club, its object being to 
keep our members in close touclf with club matters dur- 
ing the winter months, and make the club house an objec- 
tive point, not only for members living within driving 
distance, but also for those living in the city, who appre- 
ciate the pleasure had from a trip into the country on a 
pleasant winter's day, and the added enjoyment to be de- 
rived from communing with fellow yachting cranks on 
the many debatable points of the sport. 
The sole qualification for membership, is that each 
member shall pledge himself to visit the club house at 
least two Sundays during each month from November to 
April inclusive, or failing so to do, pay a fine. The aggre- 
gate amount so collected will be disposed of as may be 
later decided. 
Arrangements will be made to keep the house warm, 
and Capt. Bird will serve dinner each Sunday at i o'clock 
P. M. E. M. MacLellan, Sec'y. 
deck houses and below deck aft, while the space below 
deck forward of the machinery is given up to officers' and 
crew's quarters and storerooms. The yacht will be very 
handsomely and completely furnished and is to be ready 
for delivery by June i, 1903. 
^ ^ 
Sir Christopher Furniss' new turbine steam yacht 
Emerald, recently launched from the yard of Messrs. 
Alexander Stephen & Son, Linthouse, Glasgow, is de- 
scribed as follows by the London Field : "The new yacht, 
which has been built to designs by Mr. F. J. Stephen, is a 
vessel of very handsome appearance, no extent of accom- 
modation having been sacrificed to obtain speed. The 
intention of the designer is to reach a speed of sixteen 
knots, with an entire absence of vibration and an ex- 
ceptionally low coal consumption. Dimensions : Length 
over all, 236ft. ; breadth, 28ft. Sin. ; moulded depth, 18ft. 
6in. The vessel has three sets of turbine engines, three 
shafts and five manganese bronze propellers — one propel- 
ler on the center shaft and two each on the side shafts. 
The hull has been specially strengthened to prevent any 
vibration in the structure, owing to the great speed at 
which the shafts revolve. In the engine room, beside the 
three turbines, with their condensers and the duplicate 
electric lighting machinery, there are a large number of 
atixiliary engines of all kinds. The main boiler is of very 
large diameter.*' 
A* C. A. Sttgfar Island. 
Brooklyn, N. Y., Nov. 5. — Any member of the Amer- 
ican Canoe Association desiring one or more copies of 
the blue print map of Sugar Island, can obtain same by 
sending to Robert J. Wilkin, President Board of Gov- 
ernors, A. C. A., P. O. Box 97, Brooklyn, N. Y., and 
inclosing fifty cents for each map desired. 
Robert J. Wilkin. 
YACHT CLUB NOTES, 
The Seawanhaka Corinthian Y. C.'s House Committee 
announce that the club's city quarters in "The Mansfield," 
at 12 West Forty-fourth street, are now ready for occu- 
pancy, and from the Secretary comes notice of the fifth 
regular meeting of the club for the year 1902, which will 
be held on Tuesday, Nov. 11, in these rooms. Various 
amendments to the by-laws will be acted upon and after 
the meeting supper will be served. 
8^ 8^ 
The Indian Harbor Y. C. has had plans prepared for 
enlarging its club house at Greenwich to nearly double 
its present size. It is proposed to move the present house 
about a hundred feet to the northward and to build a four- 
story addition on the eastern side, thus enlarging the ball 
room, dining rooms and kitchen, and providing five extra 
rooms. Local contractors are now figuring on the work, 
Avhich it is estimated will cost in the neighborhood of 
$25,000. 
YACHTING NEWS NOTES. 
Mr. Frank M. Smith, of the N. Y. Y. C, has recently 
closed a contract with the John R. Robins Company, of 
South Brooklyn, for a new steam yacht, 211ft. long, from 
designs by Mr. Henry J. Gielow, to take the place of 
Hauoli, whose plans were given in a recent issue of 
Forest and Stream. Hauoli, though satisfactory in every 
way, was found to be a trifle too small to meet Mr. 
Smith's requirements, so the order was given for a larger 
boat of the following dimensions: Length over all, 211ft. 
3in. ; length waterline, i66ft. ; breadth, 21ft. 6in. ; draft, 
9ft. She will be built of steel throughout, and will have 
five water-tight bulkheads. The outboard profile shows a 
schooner rig with two pole masts, and two deck houses, 
the forward one being about 6oft. and the after one 40ft. 
in length. The yacht has no pilot house and is steered 
from the bridge on top of the forward deck house. The 
owner's accommodations are well arranged in the two 
Cold Comfort. 
From Ihe Waierbu-yy. 
Nervous Gentleman (who has engaged individual to 
act as guide) — But, my good man, arc you sure you have 
taken the right road? 
The Individual (gruffly) — I know I has; we are now 
close to the "Bloody Gulch," where a man's skelington 
was found last summer with bullet holes in the skull. 
They tried fix the murder on me, but (with a grin of 
great satisfaction) they couldn't prove nothin'. No* 
they couldn't prove nothin' 1 
The great python serpent of the Paris Jardin des 
Plantes has just died after fasting for two years, five 
months and three days. This finely marked python came 
from Japan. It was 21 feet long, in prime condition and 
extremely lively when it arrived, but refused all food. 
It was offered a Dahomey sheep, rabbits, geese, ducks, 
fowl. It would occasionally strangle the animals or 
birds placed in its cage, but under no circumstances 
would it eat them. The python took a bath from time 
to time. At length it lost weight and strength, and its 
scales turned a dull gray. Toward the beginning of this 
year it became extremely lean, and remained curled up 
in a corner of its cage, and quite harmless. Its keepers 
compelled it to swallow eggs, but the food apparently 
was undigested. The body was covered with ugly sores 
and the scales came off. The different organs of the ser- 
pent became inert one after another. Its weight when 
it came from Japan was 165 pounds: at the time of its 
death it weighed 60 pounds. Its loss of weight was 
thus 66 per cent., a larger proportion than has ever been 
observed hitherto in any animal. — London Daily News. 
The Function of a Telescopic Sight. 
Fbom inquiries and conversations which the writer has carried 
oil with many eminent shooters and experts, it would appear that 
the precise function of telescopic sights is not as a rule well under- 
stood, _ The difficulty arises from the fact that telescopes serve 
very different purposes, according to the class of rifle on which 
they are used; and the mistakes which have arisen can be traced to 
the practice of arguing by analogy, leading to assumptions that 
the conditions which apply to one kind of work are common to all. 
The shooter who has a telescope on a rook rifle or a .22 rim-fire 
weapon finds certain improvements in accuracy and alignment 
which he assumes will be proportionately reproduced not only 
when firing at deer-stalking distances, but also at 1,000yds. on the 
range. The need for sharpshooting in military operations has 
afforded a tiseful fillip in the development of telescopes having the 
iiecessary mechanical soundness for standing the wear and tear 
due to the recoil. 
If we start with the humblest instance of all, viz., a shooter who 
uses a .22cal. rifle for rabbits, not because he finds rim-fire am- 
munition as good as the more expensive varieties, but because of 
the reduced noise, we find that the function of the telescope works 
in the direction of increasing accuracy of alignment and pull-off. 
This is effected because of the optical advantages that arise when 
the sighting device and the object aimed at are both in one focus. 
An additional but more gradually operating cause of accurate align- 
ment with telescopes is that the apparent movement of the rifle 
due to the natural motions of the body is increased in proportion 
to the magnifying power, and the shooter has therefore an extra 
inducement to control unsteadiness that would be barely appar- 
ent with ordinary sights. It is astonishing how quickly the muscles 
and nerves learn to obey the teachings of the brain, for at the end 
of a very few days the movements are reduced, so as to seem about 
the same as_ those which are experienced with ordinary sights. "At 
the short distance at which sporting telescopes are used they are 
clearly not of much service for finding game. Admittedly, they 
enable one to pick out the details of an animal's anatomy, so that 
the shooter is more clearly assured that he is aiming at the center 
of an animal's head when he has the cross-hairs nicely placed 
thereon than he would be were he aiming over the ordinary fore- 
sight, or even through a hollow bead. This facility for picking out 
the details of a small animal is most marked when the destined 
quarry is partially obscured by intermediate foliage or vegetation. 
In the case of deer-stalking, very much the same kind of in- 
fluences are at work to increase the effectiveness of the shooting, 
though in this instance mention must necessarily be made of the 
great value of a telescope for correcting those defects of vision 
which would make ordinary sights difficult to use, even with the 
aid of spectaicles. In deer stalking, however, especially at the 
longer distances, the power of picking out one's beast is a material 
advantage, because it may frequently happen that only so much of 
the body is visible as will lend itself to telescopic sighting when 
ordinary sights would be at a disadvantage. Doubtless the modern 
telescope is seen to its greatest advantage when applied to deer 
stalking rifles, because the cost of this kind of shooting, and the 
high quality of the weapons used, enable the" finest glasses to be 
chosen, the cost of which is not disproportionate to" the benefits 
gained. It is almost impossible to get a really high class telescope 
with properly achromatized lenses for less than about 7 guineas 
before fitting. The subsequent adjustment of the telescope to the 
rifle, so that the hairs shall be in strict agreement with the barrels, 
is by no means a cheap piece of work. In fact, while on this 
subject, it would be well to point out that the efficiency of many 
telescopic rifles is sadly marred by the impossibility of correcting 
various little defects of adjustment which are liable to develop in 
use. In all these rifles used for short-range work the adjustments 
for range should be effected by the raising of the cross-hairs 
within the telescope, the flatness of trajectory over sporting dis- 
tances enabling a very moderate elevation of the hairs to do all 
that is necessary to correct the effect of the bullet's fall. It would 
seem reasonable to expect that the two hairs should be separately 
mounted, so that a so-called wind allowance could be effected by 
the separate movement of the vertical hair. Of course, it would 
be immaterial whether the cross-hairs are independently mounted, 
the one with vertical and the other with horizontal power of 
adjustment, or whether the disk carrying the two hairs be movable 
bodily in the two directions. In either case it would be possible, 
■with a fixed mounting between telescope and barrel, for the sports- 
man to insure in advance that the bullets are flying truly with his 
own particular method of pull-off and firing. 
In summarizing the effects of telescopes when used for sporting 
purposes, it will be seen that their function is almost exclusively 
limited to improving the accuracy of alignment. With telescopic 
sights fitted to target rifles for shooting at long ranges this advan- 
lage no longer exists. With a well adjusted pair of match sights 
the shooter can hold on to his bull so that the amount of error is 
little more than Sin. at 1,000yds. A telescope may do better in 
theory, but in practice it cannot, and if it could, the advantage 
would be immaterial. The difliculties of giving absolute adjust- 
ment in degrees, of maintaining the axis of the lenses in conformity 
with the markings on the scale, and of protecting the elevation of 
the glass from disturbance by the recoil, prove that match sights 
aj-e more perfect as aligning instruments that the best telescopic 
sights that have ever been made, this, of course, applying only to 
shooting at long ranges. There is another source of wrong align- 
ment with telescopes, which is known as parallactic error, viz., that 
due to variable position of the eye in reference to the eyepiece, a 
fault that may be in excess when there is a large field of view. 
That this error may be a serious one can be demonstrated by any 
one who will fix a telescope sight on a tripod. It will be seen that 
the position of the cross-hairs in relation to the background varies 
according to whether the eye is looking through the center of the 
eyepiece, or from a point near the edges of it. When the various 
errors and losses of adjustment of even the best telescopes are 
borne in mind, it will be seen that they have points of inferiority 
when compared with match sights, which are solidly fitted to the 
rifle, and whose adjustments remain intact after years of use. 
The question then arising is as to the use of telescopic sights at 
all when they are shown to be incapable of improving on match 
sights as instruments of precise alignment. The answer to this 
query is that, while the ordinary aperture back sight and hollow 
bead foresight can be perfecUv held on a black bull on a white 
ground, the strain on the eye is too great to allow for using them 
against obscure backgrounds, where the point to aim at is hardly 
distinguishable from its surroundings. For military purposes it is 
necessary to be able to aim a rifle at some particular portion of a 
piece of country where the distinguishing marks are few. In the 
case of men. for instance, who may be only occasionally in evi- 
dence when viewed through a glass, it is extremely difficult to find 
with the naked eye the precise spot at which to aim, and even more 
difficult to get satisfactory alignment thereon. With the telescope, 
however, the finding and shooting are both effected while llie rifle 
is at the shoulder, and, however small the actual mark fired at 
may be, the alignment is perfect by comparison with the errors 
that must occur in range estimation and deflection due to wind. 
At the ordinary long-range target the match sights must remain pre- 
eminent, but if the target is indistinguishable with the bare eyes 
the telescope can still afford very nearly as perfect alignment as 
though the target were of regulation pattern. There can never be 
any likelihood of picking off small marks at long ranges. All that 
can be expected is that the bullets shall be scattered around a spot 
known to be occupied, the actual liitting and moral effect to be 
left to the law of averages working in combination with rapid 
fire. It is in this light alone_ that the use of telescopes for long 
ranges should be regarded. — Field (London). 
All communications intended for Fokest and Stkeam should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., New 
York, and not to any individual connected with the paper. 
Columbia Pistol and Rifle Club. 
San Francisco, Oct. 19,— The Columbia Pistol and Rifle Club's 
scores, made to-day, on the Columbia target, oft'-hand shooting, 
200yd. range, follow: 
Rifle match, 10 shots: Mannel 53, 64, 66, 68, 71; Young 60, 64: 
Hovey 69, 75, 83, 84, 86, -fl?; H. Hinkel 72 . 73, 75, 76, 93. 
Three-shot match: Mannel 14, 14, 15; Ilovey 17, 18; Young iH. 
Military and repeating rifle, Creedmoor count: Twist 44, 37, 35; 
Hunsaker 44, 44; Rape 44; H. Kroeckel 45, 44, 48, 43, 43, 42; Knost- 
man 42, 42, 42, 41. 
Fiftv-vard range, pistol: Brannagan 35, 39, 40, 40, 42, 44, 44, 45, 
45, 47, 48; Barley 46; Young 46, 50; L. Hinkel 58, 57; Twist 61, 63, 
72; Mrs. Mannel 62. 62, 66, 67, 67, 69; Hunsaker 65, 67, 78; Gimmel 
67, 69; Mrs. Walthajii 67, 79; Rnostman 59. 63. 71, 77, 79, 81, 81 85, 
87: Allen 89, 91, 99;Trego. revolver, 80. 82. 82, 83; Scott 94. 
Revolver: L. Hinkel 38, 45; S. Carr 78. 
.22 and .25 rifle: Young 17, 21, 26; Daiss 19, 26, 29; Kroeckel 22, 
22, 23; Hunsaker 24, 26; Gimmel 27. 
Nov. 2.— Rifle, 10 shots: Hovey 60. 71, 79. 88, 94: Mannel 61, 65, 
67; Hinkel 66, 91; Kroeckel 68, 69, 87, 94. 
