Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1903 »v Forest and Stream Publishing Co, 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. ' 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 2, 1903. 
j VOL. LXI.-No. 8. 
I No. 846 Broadway, New York 
GOOD WORDS FR0A4 MONTANA. 
College professors are not usually supposed to be 
greatly interested in game protection. That they some- 
times are interested, and very deeply so, is shown by an 
extract from the speech of one of them delivered some 
time ago before a learned society. 
Prof. Morton J. Elrod occupies a chair in the Uni- 
versity of Montana, and he is also the director of the 
Biological Station work, which for several years has been 
so well carried on at the Flathead Lake as to be a very 
great credit to the State. At the first meeting of the 
Montana Academy of Sciences, Art, and Letters, Prof. 
Elrod delivered an address, in the course of which he 
said: "The Academy should aid in the protection of 
those relics of the past which are of common value and 
interest to the people of the State. I refer to the preserva- 
tion of the forests, fish, and game, and of historic places 
and objects. The sentiment for game and fish protection 
in the State is small. I make this statement after careful 
deliberation and several years of close study of the ques- 
tion. There is a desire for game protection, but little 
sentiment. The minimum, penalty is usually imposed on 
the offender, and not infrequently the penalty is less than 
the amount specified by law. The members of the 
Academy should be radiating centers from which senti- 
ment emanates for game and fish protection. They should 
have a keen eye open for the senseless persons who ruth- 
lessly slaughter song birds in the vicinity of cities or 
towns. There are in the State many places of historic 
interest. The members of the Academy should be on the 
alert for such, and should use diligent effort to have them 
preserved. Historic relics grow more valuable with age." 
It is gratifying to see in Montana, where especially such 
instruction is needed, a man of the standing of Prof. 
Elrod expressing sentiments which the Forest and 
Stream has been teaching for so many years. It is char- 
acteristic of Americans that they do not seem to value 
their good things until they have wasted and destroyed 
them beyond the hope of reparation. Montana is still too 
near to the time when game was plentiful to care for her 
game. It has still extensive forests, and the average man 
cares nothing for them. Happily, within that splendid 
State is a leaven of wise and far-seeing men ; and on the 
influence of these men the future of her forests, her 
fish, her game, and her historic relics in large measure 
depends. We have confidence that the efforts of these 
men will lead to an awakening of sentiment in favor of 
such preservation before it is yet too late, but there is 
much work to be done before such feeling will be 
aroused. 
THE CLOSED AND THE OPEN MIND. 
Many wnfortunate folk deprive themselves of innumer- 
able opportunities to participate in beneficial enjoyment, 
to acquire us<?ful knowledge, to make pleasing and valu- 
able friendships, because of what may be termed a closing 
of their minds. Of the closed minds, there are varying 
degrees, from the partially to the wholly closed. With 
many people prejudgments, preconceptions and prejudices 
are so strong that they interpose an impenetrable barrier 
to advancement in any paths of knowledge, pleasure or 
sociability other than those to which they are narrowly 
confined by locality or habit. Their every day life, 
thought, and interest become a standard of values by 
which all else is judged. 
Let a person afflicted with a closed mind journey into 
strange sections of his own country or into foreign coun- 
tries, and everything which is new or novel is therefore 
wrong. For no other reason than that anything is dif- 
ferent from the environment to which he is habituated, 
he condemns it. Instead of entering heartily and freely 
into a life associated with new surroundings, he endures 
the new experiences much as one might endure a mar- 
tyrdom for conscience sake. From the citadel of his 
closed mind he plans and executes all his defenses against 
the invasion of new ideas and the escape of old ideas, 
and the big gun of the citadel is no more a thing of limi- 
tations in its work than is the man of closed mind in his 
mind's action. Of this nature are the intolerantly opinion- 
ated, the blase, the vain and the provincial men. From 
this class come the most importunate and most persistent 
disputants, for they most strenuously maintain the frac- 
tional part they do know against all the rest they do not 
know, and, by virtue of clamor, come near to proving that 
the part of anything is equal to the whole of it, 
How different is the progress in the affairs of life 
of him who can discern and concede that there is 
good everywhere, that prejudice or habit of life is not 
any standard of progress, and that true knowledge or 
enjoyment means the unlearning of what is past and 
useless as well as the learning of what is new and 
valuable. The man with an open mind willingly listens 
to the opinions of his fellows and weighs them dis- 
passionately, fairly and amiably. If sound, he frankly 
accepts them, even at the cost of wrecking some of 
his own pet fads or fancies. 
If he goes for a boat ride, he does not spoil the 
pleasure of it for himself or his companions by de- 
scanting on how much better he enjoys golf, or shoot- 
ing or fishing. If he finds himself in camp with men 
of dress and speech and ways unlike those of his con- 
ventional surroundings, he finds in this very novelty 
qualities to interest and very likely something to in- 
struct him and enlarge his knowledge of the world, 
and to broaden his views and to enlarge his sympa- 
thies. The sportsman tourist, who with open mind 
enjoys what fortune brings, is more and more a citi- 
zen of the world, as he mingles with the people he 
meets on his pleasure trips, and learns the lesson that 
under the various guises of I'dcal peculiarity the human 
heart is the same, north and south, and east and west. 
PRESERVES AND SANCTUARIES. 
That subject of game preserves would be profitless of 
discussion if the consideration of it were confined to a 
debate on abstract ethics. However cogent and convinc- 
ing might be the argument on either side of the question, 
we apprehend that nothing practical would come of the 
exchange of views. After all had been said that might 
be said, things would go along just as they had been 
going. The result Avould be like that of St. Anthony's 
sermon which so edified the fishes — 
The sermon now ended. 
Each turned and descended; 
The pikes went on stealing, 
The eels went on eeling; 
Much delighted were they. 
But preferred the old way. 
If any good can come of the discussion we think that 
it is to be found in the renewed attention drawn to the 
expediency of setting apart public game preserves for 
public use. The suggestion contained in the communica- 
tion of our Toronto correspondent this week is the one 
practical lesson to be drawn from a study of game condi- 
tions as they now prevail in North America: The State 
should set apart available territories as permanent breed- 
ing grounds for its game and permanent hunting grounds 
for its citizens. The proposition is not new; in fact, it is 
already in operation here and there throughout the coun- 
try, but the importance and urgency of the system are 
such as to entitle it to continued discussion and to con- 
stant claims upon public attention. 
As a rule, such game preserves can be provided more 
cheaply and conveniently now than in the future. There 
are at this day in most States large territories of unoc- 
cupied lands which either already belong to the State or 
may be acquired very cheaply; and which are capable of 
sustaining a game stock if reasonably protected. 
The initiation of any movement in this direction must 
be made by the sportsmen. The provision of State game 
preserves should have recognition as an object of atten- 
tion and effort with every sportsmen's organization in the 
land. 
We should have not only public game preserves in 
which shooting is allowed under restriction, but game 
sanctuaries, dedicated as permanent and inviolable game 
refuges, where the deer, the grouse, the quail, or the 
wildfowl may at all times and under all circumstances 
enjoy absolute immunity. Let us take a lesson in this 
from the European system of game preserving. Every 
Avell appointed European deer forest has its sanctuary. 
This is a section set ^part as a safe refuge to which 
stags and hinds may retire at all seasons of the year 
and where they are never molested. The deer verv 
quickly come to recognize the nature of the sanctuary; 
and in the hunting season are likely to repair to its 
security, "so much so," writes an English deer stalker, 
''that toward the end of a late and backward season it is 
more than tantalizing to go out stalking day after day 
to find outside the sanctuary only hinds and stags not 
worth a shot, and perhaps to have to pass the sanctuary 
on the way out or home and to see with the glass, or, 
iTiaybe, with the naked eye, heavy beasts with coveted 
heads still occupying their wonted places in the sanctuary. 
Sooner or later, driven by pressure of the season of rut- 
ting, they are bound to quit their safe refuge and seek 
their hinds upon the hills; but perhaps your stay on the 
forest is limited, or the fateful day of closing is approach- 
ing, and then it must be admitted that the sight is, indeed, 
a tantalizing one." 
The purpose of the sanctuary is not to spoil sport, but 
precisely the opposite of this, to save the game and per- 
petuate the hunting. The sanctuary is recognized as an 
indispensable factor in the maintenance of a deer forest. 
Without it there could be in the end no deer stalking. A 
condition worthy of note is that although adjoining for- 
ests may not be divided by boundary fences, and passage 
from one to another may be entirely unrestricted, the deer 
of one park when alarmed by the stalkers, do not flee to 
another forest, but seek the accustomed sanctuary on 
their own range. In other words, when such a refuge 
exists, the hunting does not drive game out of the coun- 
try but keeps it home. 
Why might not sanctuaries be established in the 
Adirondacks, comprising districts designated by the 
Forest, Fish and Game Commission? 
New Zealand wateirs have been stocked with Ameri- 
can brook trout and rainbow trout. The rainbows have 
not done well, and it is thought that the temperature 
of the waters may not be suitable. California quail 
have been put out, and in some districts are doing well, 
while in others their disappearance is ascribed to an in- 
crease of stoats and weasels. The American Bob 
White and pintail grouse have been added to the 
New Zealand game resources. 
From Europe there have been introduced many 
species of insectivorous and song birds, wild ducks, 
wild geese, partridges and black game and barn owls; 
and Australia has contributed minahs and plover. As 
is well known, the red deer and the fallow deer have 
long been established in New Zealand. This work of 
introduction and protection has been carried on for 
thirty-seven years by the Otago Acclimatisation So- 
ciety; and the results have been substantial and promise 
to be permanent. It is to be noted as a curious cir- 
cumstance, that the fame of the New Zealand deer 
hunting is such that sportsmen from Great Britain 
have made the trip to the antipodes to engage in it. 
A license is required for fishing, deer shooting, and the 
shooting of imported game, the revenues going to the 
society and being expended by it in its work. 
»S 
Two French zoologists, Messrs. Lartet and Gail- 
lard, have been studying the mummified fauna of an- 
cient Egypt, for a comparison of animal forms of that 
period with those of the present; and the conclusion 
reached by them is, that the ox, the dog, the cat, rats,, 
antelope, gazelles, sheep, falcons, eagles and owls of 
to-day are in no wise different from their prototypes 
of thousands of years ago. The Egyptian sheep of the 
twentieth century is the sheep that was domesticated 
in the neolithic period. There has been no transfor- 
mation, no evolution in all this time. Nor, say Messrs. 
Lartet and Gaillard, is this fact in conflict with the doc- 
trine of evolution. For, in order that species may be 
changed, their environment must be modified; and the 
Egyptian environment has been remarkably constant 
during the period in question. In this environment, 
very uniform, very constant, very stable, animals have 
not varied for five, six, and, perhaps, seven thousand 
years. 
le 
Mr. C. C. Worthington, of this city, who owns a deer 
park at Stroudsburg, Pa., began eleven years ago with a 
stock of nineteen deer, which have now increased to 
2,000. The preserve comprises only i,ooo acres, and the 
food supply is inadequate. Last winter public attention 
was called to the starvation of some of the deer. Now 
Mr. Worthington announces his intention of turning out 
i,ooo of the superfluous animals to forage on the sur- 
rounding country. If his purpose shall be executed, there 
should be some good deer hunting in the vicinity of 
Stroudsburg this year. 
