Forest and Stream 
A W 
EEKLY Journal of the Rod and 
Copyright, 1908 by Fobkst and Stkbah Publishing Co. 
Gun. 
Tbrms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 1 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1903. 
( VOL. LXI.— No 21. 
■j No. 846 Broadway, New York 
OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER. 
The Christmas Number of the Forest and Stream 
uill be the regular issue of December 5. It will be en- 
larged to fifty-two pages and will be profuseW and hand- 
somely illustrated. Among the features will be the foi- 
Icwing: • • 
The State Dining Room of the White House. Two 
full-page views showing the game heads with which, 
under direction of President Roosevelt, the I'oom has been 
decorated. 
Audubon's Portraits of Birds. Three full-page repro- 
ductions direct by photography from the originals of 
Audubon's plates of the wild turkey, male and female, 
and the Labrador duck. 
Mule Deer in the Yellowstone Park. Five pictures 
from photographs from life. 
When the Frost is on the Pumpkin. A full-pag'j 
drawing by W. P. Davison. 
The Home of the Albatross. An account with pic- 
tures from life photographs of the great albatross colonies 
cn the island of Laysan. 
And other contents to be- announced in our next issue. 
The Christmas Forest and Stream will be of excep- 
tional interest and value. The number will be among the 
handsomest publications of the season. The price will be 
25 cents. Order from )'our newsdealer in advance. 
FLOATING DOWN THE MISSISSIPPI. 
We print to-day the first, preliminary, chapter of the 
story by Raymond S. Spears of the expedition which he 
has undertaken for the purpose of giving the readers of 
Forest and Stream many columns of good reading. Mr. 
Spears has already and abundantly demonstrated his 
pecuhar equipment for such a trip, 'and the Mississippi 
series will not fail to be a welcome part in following 
numbers. 
WHAT OF THE WOODCOCK? 
To-DAY we talk or write of the lordly grouse, of Bob 
White, game bird of America, or of English pheasants, 
springing from the ground almost under the feet and 
shaking their long tails at the gunner, who in his aston- 
ishment and half alarm, is likely to fire both barrels in the 
air as the bird sails slowly away. Two generations ago 
it was not so. Then the men who wrote and talked about 
shooting spoke of another bird which then was their 
favorite, the most highly esteemed game bird of the land. 
In those days as, in the estimation of the- gunner, the 
canvasback was the chief of all the ducks, so to the heart 
of the upland shooter there was no bird so near as the 
woodcock. He is little and round and ruddy of coat, and 
jf you see him on the ground he seems to carry his long 
bill awkwardly and with difficulty, but as he twists away 
through the branches of the swamp with eccentric but de- 
liberate flight, he still stirs the heart of the sportsmen ot 
the older generation as does no other bird, except the 
rufTed grouse. 
The woodcock is so easily killed and flies so slowly 
against the guns and the dogs of modern times that he 
<ioes not have half a chance for his life. Moreover, he is 
■subject to dangers that never threaten gallinaceous birds 
•cn- ducks, and his nature is so simple and confiding that 
lie is really unfitted to take care of himself. 
When you start him in the swamp, or by the little 
•spring hole where he has been seeking for worms, he 
flies away, not because he is frightened, but because h.: 
wishes to be by himself; and. when you invade his soli- 
tude he simply gets up and moves away because he does 
not wish to be bothered by disagreeable strangers. He 
acts, in fact, much as you might act if, when sitting in a 
car, a drunken man should come in and drop down into 
the seat beside you. You would probably move to another 
seat. 
'A year or two ago.4ittenti.un=,\\HT§..cal!ed to the infere^t- 
ing paper on the disappearance of the woodcock by Dr. 
u\. K. Fislier, of the Biological Survey. Dr. Fisjier is not 
only a scientific man. of eminence, but a keen sportsman 
as well, and having given special attention to the wood- 
cock he could tell better than most of us how rapidly this 
species is disappearing. What with summer shooting in 
some States at the north, winter shooting all over the 
south, and the occasional recurrence of cold storms ex- 
tending far enough south to freeze the woodcock's winter 
feeding grounds and so to cause him to starve, this charm- 
ing little bird has been growing more and more scarce 
until now it is seldom seen. 
It would be interesting to learn from Forest and 
Stream readers what their experience has been with the 
woodcock during this autumn. Have many of them been 
seen? Have many been Idlled? We know that cover 
which a dozen or twenty years ago was favorite fall 
woodcock ground, has been worked over this season with- 
out starting a single bird: and there is no doubt that the 
woodcock are few by comparison with years ago. Still, 
there may be more this season than we imagine, and if 
any group of men can give us facts about this, these men 
will be found among the readers of P"orest and Stream. 
Early November is the time when most shooters of 
New England and the middle States have been accus- 
tomed to look for the woodcock, picking up in their wan- 
derings of the day a few of these birds, to add to the bag 
of quail and rufiied grouse which reward the hard but 
pleasant labor of a day's shooting over rough hills 
or through tangled swamps. Among the white birch 
sprouts that grow on the steep hillside, and in the little 
openings among them, where are to be found low cedars, 
sumacs, bayberry bushes and blackberry vines, the wood- 
cock like to lie at mid-day and rising from there with 
twisting flight, to plunge down at evening to the wet 
spring holes where the grass remains green late in the 
fall, and the rich black soil furnishes a home for the 
worms on which they feed. 
If you are happy enough to live in the country, and to 
do your shooting near your home, you know all the spots 
for miles about where at the different seasons you will 
find the woodcock. You are not obliged to waste time 
beating over a great lot of unknown country in the hope 
of running across a bird here or there, and you can tell 
v.diether this autumn there have been woodcock about you. 
It would be interesting to know as to this, and we 
should like to have those who can do so, tell us what 
they know about the woodcock in the autumn of 1903. 
But since this little bird is now so scarce, if you set out to 
make investigation as to the numbers, why not leave the 
gun at home and take only the old dog, who will show 
you now, as he has shown so many times before, whether 
or no there are woodcock in the covers. 
PISECO. 
Rear-Admiral Lester A. Beardslee died at Augusta, 
G'd., November 11, aged sixty-seven years. Admiral 
Beardslee's death removes one of the Old Guard of the 
Forest and Stream's contributors. The first number of 
the paper, printed August 14, 1873, contained a sketch of 
"Wild Fishing Among the Kroos," off the coast of West 
Africa, bearing the signature Com. L. A. Beardslee, U. 
S. N. ; and for a quarter century following the nom-de- 
plume of Piseco was a familiar one in these pages. The 
career of a naval officer gave opportunities of observing 
interesting phases of life in all quarters of the globe; and 
wherever Piseco sailed he found material for papers 
^< hich were among the most entertaining features of this 
journal. 
Born in Little Falls, N. Y., in 1836, Admiral Beardslee 
was in 1898 placed on the retired list for age, and after 
spending some time abroad, made a home for himself at 
Beaufort, S. C. 
The Beardslee trout which happens to be mentioned in 
our columns to-day, is the b4ue-back trout of Lake Cres- 
cent, which takes its name from Admiral Beardslee. 
While in command of the Pacific Squadron, 1894-1897, 
Admiral Beard|slee explored the fishing of Crescent Lake. 
Clallam county. Wash., and there discovered a variety of 
the Salmo gairdneri, which was first described by him 
m the angling columns of Forest and Stream. The fish 
was named Beardsleei by Messrs. Jordan and Evermann 
"for Admiral L. A. Beardslee, U. S. N., in recognition of 
his active and intelligent interest in American garive 
•fiBhes." . ^ - - . 
And now comes the case of Willard Ames, of Malone, 
N. Y., who the other day, with the help of a female com- 
panion, drowned a buck in Indian Lake by holding its 
head under water until it was dead. The incident is one 
of the manifestations of human brutishness which at 
first blush might seem to call for comment ; but it is diffi- 
cult to perceive what comment could be more forcible 
than the bare statement of the facts. Right minded per- 
sons abhor such a deed; alienists would probably diag- 
nose it as the act of a pervert; and all of us would pray 
to be delivered from ever falling into the company of the 
assembled guests of the house party who congratulated: 
the deer drowners on their success. The Adirondack ^ 
law should follow that in many other States and forbid 
the killing of deer in the water. The statute now pro- 
hibits crusting, which means killing deer when there is 
a snow crust through which the deer break and thus be- 
come an easy prey. There is no essential difference be- 
tween clubbing to death a deer in the snow and drowning 
a deer by holding its head under water in a lake ; and the 
law might well take cognizance of the deer drowners. 
The little girl's composition described pins as things 
which saved people's lives by their not swallowing them. 
In like manner glass bottles may be described as things 
which save the forests by not setting them afire. The 
beer bottle and the whisky bottle have been inveighed 
against before now as non-essentials in one's camp outfit ; 
and now the new charge is made against the bottle 
thrown away by campers, that it is of an incendiary- 
nature, and fires the prairies and woods. A case is re- 
ported from France of the burning of a haystack which 
was ignited by the focusing of the sun's rays by an empty 
beer bottle left behind by a party of picnickers. In 
Queensland and other grass countries great care is used 
to avoid the leaving of glass where it might kindle a fire. 
The San Francisco Bulletin suggests that some of the 
forest and grain field fires which break out spontaneously 
are started in a similar way. If there is reasonableness 
in the theory, we shall have to add to the injunction to 
put out the camp-fire another to bury the bottles. 
Without any ulterior purpose of converting, or per- 
verting, the Forest and Stream into a journal of literary 
criticism, we have given free rein to the participants in 
the Kipling debate, and both sides have had full oppor- 
tunity to say their say. This is to give notice that after 
to-day we shall have room in only one more number, 
that of November 28, for further discussion of the sub- 
ject. With that issue the debate will be closed, not to be 
reopened until Patti shall make another farewell tour. 
The Kipling controversy has been attended with much 
interest. Those who have taken part in it have repre- 
sented a wide geographical range, from Kansas to New- 
foundland. The substance of the debate has been copied 
into our English contemporaries and the merits of the 
question have been taken up by correspondents of those 
journals. It may reasonably be assumed that many a 
reader has been prompted to turn to Kipling's Red Gods 
in the" original volume who otherwise would not have 
m.ade their acquaintance. 
K 
In his report on the Yellowstone National Park, Major 
John Pitcher, the acting superintendent in charge, 
strongly recommends that adequate provision may be 
made for feeding the game in the Park in the winter. 
He points out that the settlement of the country adjacent 
to the Park is constantly restricting the food range, and 
the danger of loss by starvation is increasing in corre- 
sponding degree. The antelope and sheep now winter so 
near to Fort Yellowstone that it would not be difficult. 
Major Pitcher thinks, to provide for feeding them. 
That is an unusual and neglected field of exploration 
and adventure which Mr. Kephart writes of this week; 
and amateur cave explorers will not fail to appreciate the 
value of the hints drawn from our contributor's ex- 
perience for their guidance. 
N 
Correspondents are requested to observe that the only 
address to which communications intended for this jour- 
nal should be sent is No. 346 Proadway, New Yo-rk, We 
have no other pffice.- . „ - 
