Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. I 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1904, 
j VOL. LXII.— No. 1?. 
■j No. 846 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. 
SUNDAY FISHING. 
New Jersey is considering the adoption of a law to 
prevent Sunday fishing. The merits and demerits, claims 
and counter-claims, of such a statute, discussed from a 
Sabbatarian point of view, have been pretty thoroughly 
threshed out, and there would be no good purpose in go- 
ing over them again. The three things to remember and 
consider in regard to a law against angling on Sunday 
are these : 
First — Fishermen will fish on Sunday, law or no law. 
Second — A law which is unenforced is demoralizing, 
in that its contempt breeds a spirit of contempt of all 
law. 
Third — Experience has demonstrated that while a Sun- 
day fishing law is as a rule a dead letter, it is on occasion 
resorted to for the collection of blaclanail or for the in- 
dulgence of spite. 
These are the principles which hold good elsewhere. 
They would hold good in New Jersey. 
THE BOY AND THE GUN. 
Senator Armstrong's two measures in the New York 
Legislature, Senate Bills Int. 27 and 28, make it a mis- 
demeanor to sell a gun or other firearm, or ammunition, 
to any person under eighteen years of age, or for any 
person under eighteen years of age to have any gun or 
other firearm in any public place; or for any person to 
have in his possession any firearm of any kind in any 
public place without a police certificate. 
To state these two measures is to show their absurd 
and objectionable character. 
There is no good reason why boys under eighteen 
years should be forbidden the possession and use of 
firearms. The proper age at which any given boy may 
have a gun is something to be determined by parental 
discretion. It is purely a matter of the individual judg- 
ment of father and mother. Some boys show themselves 
to be perfectly safe handlers of firearms before they are 
in their teens ; others should never be trusted with a 
gun, not even if they lived to the age of Methuselah. 
But whether early or late, the gun age is something 
properly outside of the sphere of the State to determine, 
and something properly within the domestic regulation of 
the family. 
Moreover, shooting is as, good sport for boys under 
eighteen years of age as for those over eighteen. It 
is a healthy, sensible mode of outdoor recreation, essen- 
tially manly in its nature, and when taken up by boys is 
man-making. It is of benefit to the individual and of 
inestimable value to the aggregate of society. 
Boyhood is the golden age when tastes are formed and 
fixed for life. The majority of shooters now gray- 
haired owe their life-through enjoyment of shooting to 
the taste for it formed in boyhood days. No recollec- 
tions of youth are more vivid or more pleasurable than 
those of the days afield. No field companionship is more 
delightful than that of father and son in the game covers. 
To forbid the boy shooting, then, would be not only 
to deprive him and his elders of a wholesome pleasure 
while the boy is a boy, but it would prevent the forma- 
tion of tastes whose indulgence would give him pleasure 
when he gets to be a man. Any such widespread depriva- 
tion as is contemplated by the Armstrong bill could be 
reckoned as nothing short of a public wrong. Forbid the 
boy shooting! Forsooth, whoever originated that notion 
■ could never have been a boy who knew for himself the 
innocent pleasures of the field. 
As for those of us who have a vivid recollection of 
early days afield, who, now that we are old, find a new 
and different pleasure in inducting our youngsters into 
the art of shooting-flying, who believe that the oppor- 
tunities we valued and enjoyed should be maintained for 
the enjoying and valuing of the new generation, it be- 
hooves every such one, who is a citizen of New York, 
to enter his protest against the enactment of the Arm- 
strong bill. , . . • 
The further propositions incorporated in the Arm- 
strong measures, to require every gunner to take out a 
police license before he can go shooting, is a fantastic 
scheme which should not be considered seriously by any 
legislative committee that has not taken leave of its 
senses. 
FISHING NOT PUBLIC USE. 
The New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals has ruled 
that the right to fish in an inland lake "cannot be 
separated from the ownership of the lake and taken under 
the power of eminent domain, because, first, the natural 
supply of fish therein is so small as to be incapable of 
meeting a public demand; and, second, the object of 
acquiring such a right is not use, which implies utility, 
but mere sport or pastime." 
This is the final outcome of the celebrated Swartswood 
Lake case, which was brought by Andrew Albright, the 
owner of the lake, against Joseph A. Cortwright, for 
fishing trespass. Mr. Albright's fight to 'establish his 
right to his own has been a long one. It began six 
years ago, when, having come into possession of the lake, 
he built a summer home on an island and settled down 
10 enjoy the view and the quiet. The anticipated repose 
and seclusion were not realized. Swartswood had from 
time immemorial been the free fishing ground of the 
people round about; and the fishermen were now not in 
the least deterred by the new owner's trespass sign from 
continuing to enjoy their time-honored privilege. Mr. 
Albright tried polite pursuasion, impolite threats, a 
license system which failed, and finally a lawsuit. He 
brought action against one of the trespassers, Joseph A. 
Cortwright, a farmer of the vicinity, and secured his con- 
viction. This aroused popular indignation. Mass meet- 
ings were held. Free fishing was made a political issue, 
and the Assemblyman of the district secured the enact- 
ment of a law which declared public the fishing of any 
lake exceeding 100 acres in extent. Nothing daunted, 
the owner of Swartswood took the case before the Su- 
preme Court for a determination of its constitutionality. 
Here the statute was upheld. Then Mr. Albright car- 
ried the case up to the court of last resort, where he has 
just obtained the decision reported in another column. 
It is interesting to note that the view taken by the 
Court is substantially identical with the opinion ex- 
pressed by Kenneth Fowler, Esq., of the Hudson County 
Bar, in our issue of June 6, 1903. 
THE SHIPMENT OF AMMUNITION. 
The transportation of dynamite and other high ex- 
plosives is conducted under the close supervision of gov- 
ernment inspectors, and is rightly regulated by a code of 
rigid rules governing its handling and shipment. Rail- 
road companies make many restrictions as to the traffic 
and the rate classification is very high. Express com- 
panies are forbidden to handle high explosives. All this 
is as it should be. 
In a bill introduced in the United States Senate by Mr. 
Elkins (S.4319), relating to the subject, the extraordinary 
mistake has been made of classing with high explosives, 
and so including in the scope of the bill, shotgun, re- 
volver and rifle ammunition. This inclusion' we term 
a mistake, because it is impossible to conceive that such 
a classification of ammunition with high explosives could 
have been made deliberately and with full information. 
This product is not of a nature to require any such re- 
striction. Past experience and present practice demon- 
strate the perfect safety of the shipment of these low 
explosives by the ordinary channels of freight and ex- 
press, along with other commodities. Ammunition is 
carried by railroads under a low freight classification; 
express companies handle it, fire departments and in- 
surance companies have made exhaustive tests as to 
danger in case of fire, and have determined that there is 
absolutely none. No accidents have happened in trans- 
portation, either in original packages or in broken lots. 
Shotgun and rifle and revolver ammunition is shipped 
in numberless packages every day, and it is within the 
personal experience of tens of thousands of users that 
the shipment is perfectly safe. 
There is absolutely no good reason for making^ any 
such change as that proposed by the Elkins bill with 
respect to the transportation of ammunition. To put the 
contemplated restriction in practice would mean mea- 
sureless trouble to shippers and users, and vastly in- 
creased expense to the consumer. In vie-^ of the need- 
lessness of the restriction and the hardship it would en- 
tail upon all concerned, the Elkins bill should be amended 
in committee by the elision of the clause "such cartridges 
as are ordinarily used in sporting or fowling pieces 
or in rifle or revolver practice." ' 
This is a matter which may very properly be taken 
up by individuals, and concerning which letters of pro- 
test should be written to Senators. 
ROBIN REDBREAST- 
The plea which Assemblyman Scovel, of Camden, 
made on behalf of the robin in the New Jersey Assembly 
last week must be counted as one of the curiosities of 
legislative debate. There , is in New Jersey - some such 
prejudice against the robin on the part of fruit growers 
as Mr. W. B. Mershon tells us exists in. Michigan; and a 
bill was before the Legislature legalizing the killing of 
robins as fruit destroyers. In opposition to the bill Mr. 
Scovel said : 
"The robin was first a magpie and gray in color and 
unprepossessing in general appearance, but with a most 
sjmipathetic nature. He approached the Cross of Cal- 
vary at the time of the Crucifixion, timidly uttering cries 
of grief. With his wings he tried to wipe off the face 
of Jesus, and with his beak he tried to draw forth one 
of the thorns from the forehead. A single drop of blood ' 
fell on his breast, and from then until now he has been 
called 'red breast' He is the bird of God, the herald 
of the glad tidings of spring, and I shall vote to protect 
him if every man in the House votes against him." 
The press despatches say that the House was carried 
away by the eloquent plea, and straightway rejected the 
bill by a unanimous vote. 
Now the fact is — though this is of slight consequence — 
that the robin, which the legend associates with the 
Cross, is the European robin, which is another bird, 
altogether distinct from the American species. The 
European bird is in classification nearer a warbler , than 
a thrush, in size is half as large as the robin, in color 
is of a very different and brighter breast color, and in 
characteristics is, as Oliver Wendell Holmes once wi-ote, 
"a little domestic bird that fed at the table, instead of a 
great, fidgety, jerky, whooping thrush." • There is a 
further contrast in song. "The songs of the two are as 
different as possible," wrote Mr. Francis Moonan, in his 
•charming sketch of the English robin, in our issue of 
January 9. 
So much for the European Erythacus ruhecula and the , 
American Turdus migratorius. They are two birds ; ' 
yet as our species was so like the one they had known 
at home that the English settlers gave it the familiar 
name, it were just as well that it should share all the 
superstitions, legendary regard and protective sentiment- 
alism unto the name appertaining. If New Jersey legis- 
lators be unconvinced by the statistical arguments of the ! 
economic ornithologists, may there always be a Scovel 
to beguile them with the legend of the robin breast dyed 
blood red at Calvary; or, as another superstition has it, 
scorched by the fires of hell, whither it flies daily, with 
one drop of water at a time, in the hope of quenching: 
them. If the small boys of our enlightened age are not 
amenable to the Band of ' Hope humane teachings of 
to-day, instil in them the eighteenth century belief that 
gave immunity to the English robin: 
I found a robin's nest within our shed, 
And in the barn a wren has young ones bred: 
I never take away their nest, nor try 
To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die. 
Dick took a wren's nest from the cottage side, 
And ere a twelvemonth pass'd his mother dy'd. 
Among the contents of our next issue will be a continu- 
ation of "The Trails of the Pathfindei-s," and an illus- 
trated paper descriptive of the strenuous life of the 
Glouscester fishermen. 
The annual banquet of the Massachusetts Fish and 
Game Protective xAssociation was held at the Hotel 
Brunswick, Boston, on Tuesday evening of this week. 
