Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
'''^'^^"'^s1x^SirNTH\°?r^^°'"[ NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 190B. \m. m°ko\^ll^^iJ\o... 
JThe Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on tlie subjects to whicli its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. Wliile it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, tlie 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. 
SPRING IN THE ZOOLOGICAL PARK. 
The persons who advocate the abolition of spring 
shooting on the ground that birds undisturbed in the 
spring, and attracted by a locality, act as decoys which 
will call down other birds, which are likely to remain 
with them and to breed there instead of going further 
north, should visit the Zoological Park in the Bronx dur- 
ing these days of the spring migration. There they would 
see — as others have seen lately — facts which would give 
them ammunition for their campaign. The large ponds 
in the Zoological Park are occupied by many wild geese 
and ducks of various species. It will be recalled that one 
spring a few years ago a flock of geese came down out 
of the sky, and alighting with the tame Avild geese were 
finally captured, and became a part of the society's collec- 
tion. 
It is not uncommon now to see wild ducks flying about 
over the ponds in the park, on the one hand anxious to 
alight with their brethren floating on the water below, on 
the other hand alarmed and suspicious of the people who 
are moving about, and of the buildings and fences which 
stand near the water. The other day a pair of mallards, 
male and female, were seen flying over the large pond, 
and it was twenty minutes or half an hour before they 
could make up their minds that it would be safe to join 
the throng below. Finally, however, they did so, and 
dropped down from a height of fifteen or twenty yards to 
mingle with the bustling birds on the water. Even after 
they had alighted, they were for a little time suspicious, 
and occasionally swam out away from the flock, and 
looked about them with heads held high and an air of 
much alertness. The inattention of the domesticated birds 
to their surroundings, however-, soon lulled their fears, 
and after a time they became as much a part of the .flock 
as any wing-clipped bird in it. An extraordinary number 
of nature's pleasant and interesting sights may be seen 
by the visitor to the Zoological Park. 
Within a short time the collections of the Zoological 
Society have been increased by several rare and interest- 
ing American specimens. Among these are twO' white 
goats and a mountain, sheep from British Columbia, a 
California vulture and a white gyrfalcon. The society 
already had two white goats, and the arrival of this other 
pair brings together the largest number of, these curious 
animals ever exhibited at one time. The sheep is also- a 
valuable addition to the collection, which already contains 
a number of old world sheep, but none from our own 
West. The California vulture — sometimes called the con- 
dor of the north — is one of the largest birds in the world, 
almost equalling its cousin of South America, concerning 
W'hich so many fabulous tales have been told. This speci- 
men is young, and has not yet attained its full size. When 
it shall be full grown it wall be interesting to compare it 
with the South American condor which has long lived 
in the Park. The California vulture is one of the birds 
that is well on the way toward extinction. Never very 
numerous, it has several times been reported extinct, yet 
a few still live in the high Sierras, though much pur- 
sued and growing fewer every year. 
The white gyrfalcon is seldom seen in captivity, for it 
is a bird of the farthest north. The present specimen 
alighted on an ocean steamer 800 miles off the coast of 
Newfoundland, and was captured there. It is said that 
but 0]ie other specimen is known in captivity, which is at 
the Zoological Gardens in Philadelphia. 
Take it all in all, spring is a good time to visit the 
Zoological Park, where the w^oi-k of enlargement and 
improvement is constantly going on. About now the 
little buffalo calves are beginning to make their appear- 
ance, the birds are mating, ' animals are shedding their 
Aivinter coats, and there is much to be seen, 
THE FUR BEARERS. 
Some months agO' we called attention to the extraor- 
dinary manner in which the fur-bearing animals of the 
world persist, notwithstanding their continual pursuit by 
man and the vast multitudes annually destroyed. 
All over the Nearctic and Palearctic worlds man is con- 
tinually shooting or trapping or .snaring the wild animals 
riative to the section to which he belongs, and yet as re- 
gards all except the largest of these animals, the supply 
seems to keep up from year to year, without anything like 
the marked changes that this continued destruction and 
pursuit would seem to call for. 
Attention is again drawn to the matter by the receipt 
of the list of skins to be sold at auction by one of the 
largest London fur dealers during the March just past. 
These people oft'ered for sale 1,000,000 muskrat skins, 
310,000 skunk skins, 170,000 raccoon, 110,000 opossum, 
75,000 mink, more than 92,000 foxes, of which 38,000 are 
I'ed, 3,500 blue, 1,800 cross, 500 silver, 10,000 white, 21,000 
gray, and 18,000 Japanese. There are 20,000 wolf skins, 
8,000 beaver, 2,500 otter, 320 of the rare sea otter. All 
these, besides many thousands of the skins of other and 
less well known animals, have by this time been sold in 
the London market. 
So it would seem that the race of the small creatures of 
the world is not soon to die out, and indeed those of our 
readers who have the luck to be country dwellers, know 
very well that the woods and swamps and mountains and 
lields which surround their homes, are the homes of a 
great multitude of these small folk, which, though seldom 
seen, are always there and always known to be there. 
Sometimes the farmer loses patience with fox or weasel 
because a few of his fowls are destroyed; sometimes the 
damage done by the muskrats' chisel-like teeth provoke 
the landowner and lead him to set a few traps. 
Usually, however, the town or section or district con- 
tains a single man who makes more or less of a business 
of .trapping, and it is he who gathers up the fur taken 
in a district and whO' finally ships it to the towns, whence 
in turn it goes to the big city, and then perhaps crosses 
the sea, and at last brings up in London, one of the 
greatest fur marts of the world. 
THE FLORIDA LICENSE. 
Florida's game attractions are among those which al- 
lure winter, visitors to the State and induce them to pro- 
long their sojourn. The deer, the wild turkey and the 
quail are not so plentiful in many districts as they w-ere 
in the earlier days of Florida sportsman-tourist travel, 
but the climatic conditions and the generous food supply 
of all seasons will always assure a replenished stock, pro- 
vided reasonable protection shall be afforded by the laws 
and their enforcement. The State has shared in the gen- 
eral awakening to the necessity of taking care of its game, 
and has adopted certain of what may be called the ad- 
vanced principles of protection. The number of deer one 
person may take in a season is limited tO' five; only four 
wild turkeys may be taken by one person in a day, or 
six by a party of shooters ; and of quail the individual 
limit, for the day is twenty-five or fifty for a party. The 
shipment of game beyond the county where it is killed is 
forbidden, except that sportsmen may take their game 
home with them, but not for sale. Such regulations are 
reasonable and effective. 
There is another feature of the Florida law, however, 
which is open to criticism. This is the non-resident shoot- 
ing license provision. In these days of non-resident dis- 
criminations and taxes, Florida is only keeping step with 
other States in exacting a fee from the visiting shooter; 
but the law is peculiarly vexatious, because, not content 
with one tax good for the State at large, the statute re- 
quirement is of a separate payment for each individual 
county. The section reads : 
That all non-residents of the State, before hunting for the pur- 
pose of killing any wild game in this State, shall apply to the 
clerk of the Circuit Court of the county the said non-resident pro- 
poses to hunt in, and upon the payment of $10 to the said clerk 
by the applicant, the clerk shall issue a permit to hunt in said 
county, and the same shall not be transferable, and it shall be 
unlawful for any non-resident of this State without first obtaining 
said permit, which permit shall expire on the 1st day of March 
next following the date of its issue, to hunt in this State. Pro- 
vided, That the provisions of this act shall not apply to counties 
having special game laws. 
Such a regulation is no special hardship for those whp 
go to one place and remain there. But the East Coast 
and the West Coast are so adapted to cruising, and the 
several districts are so inviting that many winter visitors 
make extended cruises, going from the Halifax down the 
Indian River and through connecting waters to Biscayne 
Bay. In like manner extended excursions of this charac- 
ter are made on the West Coast. On the East Coast the 
sportsman going south from St. Augustine to Biscayne 
Bay, who cares to look for game, on the w,ay, at St. 
Augustine must take out a license for St. John county; 
when he reaches Ormond or Daytona or New Smyrna, 
he must procure another license for Volusia county ; then 
if he extends his course on the Indian River to Titus- 
ville, another license is required for Brevard county, 
which holds good so i far as Palm Beach; and if he goes 
on tO' Miami and Cocoanut Grove or any of the points 
on Biscayne Bay, lie must have another license for Dade 
county. Each new license means a payment of $10, to- 
gether with the time and trouble of procuring the docu- 
ment. Such a license system, it goes without saying, has 
been a constant annoyance to sportsmen visiting Florida, 
and there have been loud complaints concerning it. The 
law is unreasonable and should be changed. The Legisla- 
ture of Florida will convene next week, and those who 
are interested should take steps to secure an amendment. 
THE CURTIS INDIAN PICTURES. 
While these lines are being written, there is on exhibi- 
tion at the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York city, a collec- 
tion of photographs of Indians and Indian life which 
is worthy the attention of all our readers. These pic- 
tures have been taken by Mr. Edward S. Curtis, of Seat- 
tle, Wash., and cover a number of Western -. tribes, and 
wdiile there are a thousand of them here on view, these 
constitute only a beginning of the work to which Mr. 
Curtis has devoted his life. 
President Roosevelt saw some of the pictures some 
time ago, and wrote of them : "Not only are Mr. Curtis' 
photographs genuine works of art, but they deal with 
some of the most picturesque phases of the old-tiiiie 
American life that is now passing away. I esteem it a 
matter of great moment that for our good fortune Mr. 
Curtis should have the will and the power to preserve, 
as he has preserved in his pictures, this strange, beautiful 
and now vanishing life." 
These pictures are photographs, and so are necessarily 
true to life; but they are much more than photographs, 
in that the artist who took them has been able to put into 
them the feeling which he himself experienced when 
taking them, and in such a way that one who looks at the 
pictures shares that feeling. Those who have seen them, 
including artists, ethnologists and persons familiar with 
wild life, agree that no such pictures of Indians have 
ever been made before. 
It is Mr. Curtis' purpose to carry on his work of illus- 
trating the Indian by photography until he shall have 
covered all the tribes and fragments of tribes still found 
in North America ; and it cannot be doubted that if he 
shall have the means and the health and the strength to 
carry out this proposed task, he will have performed a 
most valuable work for history, for art and for science. 
One who wrote recently of these pictures said : "To-day 
they are of high scientific and artistic value, what will thev 
l)e a hundred years from now v.^hen the Indian has utterly 
vanished from the face of the earth? The pictures will 
show to the man of that day who and what were his pre- 
decessors in the land. They will tell how the Indian 
lived, what were his beliefs, how he carried hiinself in 
the various operations of life, and they will tell it as no 
word picture could ever tell it." 
The opportunity to see these pictures should not be lost 
by one who is interested in outdoor life. The exhibition 
began on Monday, IMarch 27, and will last through the 
week. On Friday afternoon and evening and Saturday 
afternoon and evening Mr. Curtis purposes to give an ex- 
hibition of his lantern slides and to talk about certain of 
the tribes which he has met. 
We shall print next week an illustrated paper on some 
of the more familiar wild flowers of the woods and tro'ut 
streams of this latitude. This is only one of many valu-, 
able papers to come which will make the Forest and 
Stream, as always, the angler'.s indispensable companiQii, 
