Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, |4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $3. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 22, 190B. 
j VOL. LXIV.-No. 16, 
i No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
-jjThe Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen, 
i he editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages 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. 
There is not any* excercise more pleasing or 
more agreeable to a truly sober and ingenious 
man, than this of Angling; a moderate, innocent, 
and salubrious and delightful excercise: It wear- 
ieth not a man overmuch, unless the waters lie 
remote from home: It injureth no man, so that it 
be in an open large water; he being esteemed a 
Beast rather than a Man that will oppose this 
excercise; neither doth it in any way debauch 
him that useth it: The delight also of it rouzes up 
the Ingenious early in the Spring mornings, that 
they have the benefit of the s^^eet and pleasant 
Morning-Air, which many through sluggishness 
enjoy hot; so that Health (the greatest Treasure 
that Mortals enjoy) and Pleasure go hand in 
hand in this excercise. What can be more said 
.cof it, than that the_most Ingenious most use it? 
John Worlidge Gent., 1675. 
THE SILZ GAME CASE. 
A CASE of very great importance has come up in the 
Supreme Court of New York city. It is that of the 
People against August Silz, in which suit has been 
brought for the possession of imported game during the 
close season. The evidence upon which the suit was 
based was obtained April 29, 1904, and the case having 
been pushed as rapidly as possible, it was on the calendar 
for last week and again for this week, but at the time 
of our going to press (Tuesday) it had not yet been 
reached. 
The importance of the suit lies in the opportunity it 
affords to make a test of the constitutionality of that 
provision of the law which forbids the possession in 
close time of game imported into the State from abroad. 
Mr. Silz is a game dealer of this city who imports large 
quantities of game from Europe, comprising woodcock, 
partridges, pheasants, golden plover, Egyptian quail (the 
migratory quail of Europe), and other species. The 
claim is made in his behalf that he deals exclusively in 
imported birds and does not handle native game. 
Whether this be true or not is beside the mark in so 
far as the present case is concerned, for the question here 
to be tried, out is as to the lawfulness or unlawfulness 
of the possession in close time of what is conceded to 
be game of foreign origin. 
The traffic in game in New York city is continuous in 
season and out. It may be found listed on the menus of 
practically every important hotel and restaurant in town. ■ 
To such of these concerns as buy their stock from Mr. 
Silz he gives a guarantee that they shall not get into 
trouble with the authorities for the possession of any 
game which they can prove they obtained from him. In 
a circular offering game for sale, he says : 
"The game warden has visited most of my customers, such as 
Louis Sherry, Hotel Astor, Delmonico's, Hotel Manhattan, Cafe 
Martin, Imperial Hotel, Victoria Hotel, etc., etc., and is so well 
satisfied that all the game I sell is the real imported game, and 
I am ready to give you a guarantee to that effect, which would 
give you the right to sell and put on your bill of fare all the im- 
ported game that you wish without interference from any game 
warden or association for the protection of game, provided you 
can prove that you purchased your game from A. Silz." 
We question most emphatically, however — and just here 
lies the objection to the traffic to imported game — that it 
is possible for the game warden who visits the hotels and 
restaurants and inspects the game he finds there to satisfy 
himself that it is "the real imported game." As a matter 
of fact, many of the varieties of game now upon the mar- 
ket said to be imported, the game warden is totally un- 
able to distinguish from the domestic birds, either with 
or without their plumage. Notably is this true of phea- 
ants and ducks; nor, indeed, upon these varieties in par- 
ticular is an expert naturalist able in every case to pass 
judgment. With some such species as the golden plover 
it is extremely difficult for one though a naturalist to 
say where they came from ; and if they are plucked, as is 
customary, it would be impossible to tell this. We have 
then this condition, that there is a vast traffic in game 
birds in the close season, and it is beyond the range of 
practicability for the authorities on the spot to determine 
by such inspection as is open to them, whether the game 
conies from abroad or from the United States. Granted 
that all the birds supplied by Mr. Silz are iinported, the 
door still remains open for the consumption of vast 
amounts of other game which is not imported. It is a 
truism that an open game market means the provision 
of a supply to meet the market demands. If New York 
can consume American woodcock and grouse and plover 
and ducks, American woodcock and grouse and plover 
and ducks will flow into the metropolis. Every device 
that cunning and cupidity can invent to bring it into the 
market will be made use of. This is not a fanciful 
theory; it is a plain statement of what we all of us know 
to have been going on for years. 
The Silz prosecution is one of many now in the hands 
of the Attorney-General. The utility or futility of these 
prosecutions will depend in a large measure upon the 
result of the present suit. Game Protector Overton, the 
local protector upon whose detective work the suits are 
based, has expressed the opinion, "Should the courts sus- 
tain the contention of this dealer that imported game can 
be sold at any time, there will be practically no closed 
season in this State, because after the feathers are re- 
moved, the condition in which it is found in the hotels, 
foreign birds can't be told from domestic birds." 
The Audubon Society is interested in the case because 
the principles involved in it apply also to the various 
prosecutions undertaken by the Society to suppress the 
traffic in plumage of foreign origin ; and it is understood 
that the Audubon legal talent will be at the service of 
the prosecution in the Silz case in carrying the suit up 
to the higher courts; and if it shall be feasible, to the 
Supreme Court of the United States. 
COL. NICHOLAS PIKE. 
The death last week of Col. Nicholas Pike at the ad- 
vanced age of eighty, removes another of the men, who 
in their time played a prominent part in matters of sport 
and of nature study. Col. Pike was author, mathemati- 
cian and naturalist, besides being a very keen sportsman. 
He was the friend of Agassiz and many other scientific 
men, and was deeply interested in everything connected 
with nature. He was one of the first people in this coun- 
try to advocate the importation into the United States 
of European small birds, and perhaps the first to bring 
over and set free any considerable number. The enthusi- 
asm which he felt for this project was at that time shared 
by everyone who wrote or spoke on the subject. It was 
not until twenty-five or thirty years later that the action 
came to be regarded as a mistake. 
Colonel Pike was one of the last men who had killed 
the extinct Labrador duck. His account of this, printed 
in Forest and Stream of Dec. 5, 1903, was as follows : 
"I have in my life shot a number of these beautiful 
birds, though I have never met more than two or three 
at a time, and mostly single birds. The whole number I 
ever shot would not exceed a dozen, for they were never 
plentiful. I rarely met with them. The males in full 
plumage were exceedingly rare ; I think I never met with 
more than three or four of these; the rest were young 
males and females. They were shy and hard to approach, 
taking flight from the water at the least alarm, flying 
very rapidly. Their familiar haunts were the sandbars, 
where the water was shoal enough for them to pursue 
their favorite food, small shellfish. I have only once met 
this duck south of Massachusetts Bay. In 1858 one soli- 
tary male came to my battery, in Great South Bay, L. I., 
near Quogue, and settled among my stools. I had a fair 
chance to hit him, but in my excitement to procure it, 
I missed it. The bird se'fems to have disappeared, for an 
old comrade,' who has hunted in the same bay for over 
sixty years, tells me he has not met with one for a long 
time. I am under the impression the males do not get 
their full plumage in the second year. I would here re- 
mark, this duck has never been esteemed for the table, 
from its strong, unsfiYory flesh," _ . 
For many years Colonel Pike was a contributor to the 
Forest and Stream and a frequent visitor at its offices. 
His earnestness, enthusiasm and simple heartedness. lent 
a great attraction to a strong personality. Colonel Pike 
had lived in Brooklyn for much of his life. 
TEXAS DUCKS. 
On Monday last good news for game protectors 
reached New York city. It is remembered that in 1903 
the Texas Legislature passed a law forbidding the ship- 
ment out of the State of ducks and other game. This 
action was an entire surprise to the market men and 
market shooters, who were greatly outraged by it, and, 
declared that it should be at once repealed. Texas, tljie 
winter home of vast multitudes of wildfowl, has been, 
also the winter working g round of the market shooter, • 
who, killing wildfowl by the tens of thousands, put them 
in barrels and shipped them to northern markets, St. . 
Louis, Chicago, and even New York. V-' . 
Last autumn, when the Legislature met, it was well 
understood by those interested in game protection and by 
the market hunters, that a bitter fight was on, and both 
sides were prepared for it. The leader of the forces for 
game protection, the man who was going to fight tooth 
and nail to prevent the law's repeal, was Capt. M. B. ' 
Davis, Secretary of the Texas Audubon Society. He 
did not stand alone, but Avas ably supported by Mr. T. J.: 
Anderson, G. P. A. of ihe G., H. & S. A. R. R. Co., who 
has printed a number of letters on this subject, and by' 
many others. The fight was long and strenuous; the 
market interests did their best, but now the Legislature 
has adjourned, and on Monday Mr. William Dutcher, the 
President of the National Association of Audubon' 
Societies, received from Captain Davis a telegram declar- . 
ing that a complete victorv had been won. In . other: 
words, the law forbidding the shipment of wildfowl and 
game out of the State of Texas still stands, and one of 
the greatest causes of the destruction of our wildfowl is": 
removed. 
The Texans who have carried on this splendid fight are 
to be congratulated. They have done a great thing for 
their own State; but they are entitled to the thanks of 
the whole country as well, and even- duck shooter; 
throughout the land should feel a sense of gratitude for 
them, because they have done something for him as well' 
as for the Lone Star State. 
NIAGARA. 
The situation at Albany with respect to Niagara Falls 
is this: The Niagara and Lockport water jobbers are i 
reputed to have bought enough votes to insure the suc-^ 
cess of their bill; but confidence is widely expressed that: 
Governor Higgins will veto the measure. All then will, 
have been saved except legislative honor. That being: 
a merchantable commodity is of trifling account in com-r 
parison with the priceless work of nature which will have 
been preserved to us by an upright Executive. 
A story of woodcock shooting in the spring when the;, 
birds are mating, may sound strange to American ears ; 
and yet in Norway, where, as a correspondent relates, it 
is the custom of the country, the spring woodcock shooter , 
might retort that the practice differs in no essential prin- 
ciple from the killing of mated wildfowl on their way 
north, a sport which has been followed and sanctioned in 
the United States from a time whereof the memory of 
man runneth not to the contrary. Nor if the story as 
here told be of a typical shoot, may the sport be said to be 
particularly destructive. These bits of experience in the 
fields and covers of distant countries are extremely in- 
teresting, not only because they describe novel methods 
of pursuit, but as well because they demonstrate that the 
sportsman is the same creature in all lands and under 
all skies. 
The meeting of representatives from the States bor- 
dering the Great Lakes, notice of which is given on an- 
other page, promises to lead to a substantial reform in 
legislation relating to those waters. There is nothing 
but folly in diversity and disagreement of protective laws 
for adjacent States. The interests represented at Chicago 
are of such weight that we may with confidence expect 
the attainment of the purpose of the meeting. 
