FOREST AND STREAM. 
[May 6, 1905. 
the Bartletts having bought whatever other alleged inter- 
ests there vi^ere in the specimens, brought a replevin suit 
against the sheriff for their possession. This suit for 
some reason hung fire until April, 1905. 
In the meantime a new district attorney and sheriff had 
been elected, and the case was set for trial April 17 and 
Mr. Beaman, the author of the game law, was employed 
by them to assist in the defense. . 
On this trial one of the Bartletts testified that he and 
his brother bought the hides, etc., of one Foster in Feb- 
ruary, 1897. On cross-examination he admitted that he 
last had them in possession in August, 1901, and that the 
sheriff then seized them, and then the attorney for plain- 
tiff rested his case. 
The defendant's counsel then, without offering any evi- 
dence, moved the court to direct the jury to return a ver- 
dict for the defendant. The motion was argued by Mr. 
Beaman on the game law of 1899 to the effect that in 
August, 1901, when the sheriff found these specimens in 
possession of Bartlett, such possession, by that law, was 
prima faCie unlawful, and that there never was a day or 
a moment since the passage of that law when Bartlett 
could have lawfully bought or held them in possession, 
and that Bartlett's own evidence on cross-examination 
was fatal to his case. 
Mr. Beaman also cited, among other authorities, the 
decision of the Court of Appeals of Colorado last year 
in the Hornbeke-White case, which involved 300 deer 
hides purchased by a hide buyer in Rio Blanco county, 
and which the buyer lost by that decision. This latter 
case was also argued in the Appellate Court by Mr. Bea- 
man after the hide buyer had been successful in the lower 
court. 
The motion of the defendant in the Bartlett case was 
sustained and judgment was rendered for the sale of the 
buffalo hides and skeletons by the sheriff, as provided by 
the game law. Their value is variously estimated at from 
$1,500 to $3,000. 
An appeal was asked by the plaintiff, the bond being 
fixed at $2,500, but it is probable that the case is ended 
forever, as it will be impossible for him to show any right 
of possession. 
It is a shame that the murderers of this remnant of the 
buffalo in Colorado, whoever they are, were permitted to 
escape the penalty of the law; the only. redeeming feature 
being that no one was permitted to get away with the 
proceeds. 
The decision of the Court of Appeals in the deer hide 
case, and the following of that decision in the buffalo 
case,«sho:W the strong features of the existing game law 
of Colorado, which mark a radical departure from the 
laws of other States. The distinctive features of the 
Colorado law are : 
First. It declares that all game and fish in the State 
are the property of the State, and that no right, title, in- 
terest or property therein can be acquired, transferred or 
possession thereof had or maintained, except as therein 
expressly provided, and that such prohibition extends to 
every part of such game and fish. 
Second. That possession at any time of game or fish 
unaccompanied by a proper and valid license, certificate, 
permit or invoice, as in the law provided, is prima facia 
evidence that such game or fish was unlawfully taken and 
unlawfully held in possession. 
Third. The law then proceeds to state the open seasons 
on all kinds of game and fish, and under what circum- 
stances they can be held in possession for a limited time 
after the season's close. 
The Court of Appeals in the deer hide ease in discuss- 
ing the law said ; 
"It therefore follows that * * * plaintiff's fight to 
the possession of the deer hides Could ilot be established 
by showing that possession thereof was not prohibited by 
law, but it was incumbent upon hini to point oiit some 
provision of law whidi permii'tM him to have possession, 
and that a failure upon his part to allege and prove faets 
which would entitle hint, to possession uilder the law 
would defeat his recovery." 
It will therefore be feadily Seen that when on Cross- 
examination Bartlett admitted that he had these buffalo 
specimens in possession in August, 1901, and did not go 
further and show facts which entitled him under the law 
of 1899 to have such possession, which he could not do, 
his case was defeated. 
Under most other game laws it would have devolved 
on the sheriff to have made proof that the buffalo were 
unlawfully killed at some time prior to the date when 
Bartlett claimed to have bought them, or that some other 
fact or law then existed which rendered such purchase 
unlawful, which it might have been difficult to do, saying 
nothing about the effect which the statute of limitations 
might have had. 
It will be well for the game protectors and lawmakers 
to note and follow those peculiar features of the Colorado 
game law, which after possession is shown, places the 
burden of proof oil the accused to establish his fight to 
do what he claims to have donC; 
This kind of procedure fenders tile pfosecutioii of ganie 
law violators easy, as it is under other methods difficult. 
Point Loma. ■• 
On the Overland Limited, on my way borne from 
Point Loma, Cal, April 27. — The writer and his better 
half for six weeks have been tenting on the shores of the 
blue Pacific. Point Loma reaches into the ocean for 
nine miles, more or less, standing well out of the water 
fully 350 feet. 
When fog prevails elsewhere brilliant sunshine, tem- 
pered with the ocean breeze, is granted to Point Loma. . 
Day after day as I gazed out upon the rainbow sur- 
faced Pacific I could not help imagining myself far out 
in the sea on a rose-embowered island, where the air was 
fragrant with the odor of the orange and lemon blossoms 
blended with the rose and where, out of the nodduig 
palms, the mockingbirds sang a welcome each morning 
to the" rising sun. 
Wandering along the slopes I frequently put up quail, 
little smoky-hued balls of feathers, smaller to my idea 
than their brown cousins of the Eastern States. I was 
not impressed with the ground, for the cactus, prickly- 
pear and Spanish bayonet, wherein the quail sought cover, 
would have made it interesting for a dog. 
Strange to say, the California weed is almost altogether 
a flowering plant and as a result the hillsides, after the 
rainy season, present almost a solid mass of yellows, pur- 
ples and greens. 
Point Loma and vicinity repay the shell hunter with 
abundant finds. The rainbow never gave more varied or 
brighter gradations of color than are tO' be found in the 
shell of the abalone. Gazing out upon the surface of the 
Pacific when but a slight breeze stirred its surface I there 
saw reflected, in brilliant patches, every color of the rain- 
bow. Upon its gorgeous surface was here a patch of 
velvety green, there royal ourple, pink some other place, 
deep red, yellow and delicate grays, the changing breeze 
shifting and graduating these colors until the surface of 
the ocean at times seemed'to be one great rainbowed sheet 
of color. We now and then hear that color photography 
is an accomplished fact, and after gazing upon the kalei- 
doscopic-hued surface of the ocean I wondered whether 
the water, acting as a lens, was not in some way re- 
sponsible for the fixing of the colors on its surface in the 
shells of the abalone. The coloring of the abalone shells 
is one of nature's mysteries, explainable of course, but 
yet unexplained. 
They tell me that the flesh of the abalone per se is be- 
yond human mastication, but beat it and grind it to a 
pulp and it is delicious. 
I heard outside my tent the plaintive peeping of a 
fledgling linnet a few hours out of its nest. Presently 
the mother bird flew down to it and transferred its beak- 
ful to its hungry chick. The mother flying to a nearby 
perch gave forth musical notes of encouragement to its 
little one.^ Like a falcon from the sky down swooped a 
butcher bird. A grasp of its cruel claws, a stroke or two 
of its lance-like beak, a flurry of its wings and butcher 
bird and its prey were in mjid air. The brave little mother 
made one dash for the, tnurderer and .with a plaintive cry 
gave up the chase, Tpfesume it sa,jv its young one was 
already dead in, lh.9 grasp of th^: enemy. ' ^puld I have 
followed up the pirate bird, I no doubt would have found 
the fledgling's body impaled on some thorn or hanging 
dead by the neck from some Crotched branch. 
This incident reminded me of an engraving, by Audu- 
bon, I think, of a sortie of eagles upon the nesting 
grounds of the swan. It was a scene of ferocious_ cruelty, 
but not so much so as that of the butcher bird incident, 
whose killing was done for the sake of killing and where- 
in killing for food formed nO' part. 
San Diego Bay is the home of wildfowl. Loons can be 
seen by the score, diving ducks by the hundred, and gulls 
and pelicans uncounted. 
I was amused at the antics of some pelicans. They 
would leave the water and soaring twenty feet or more 
above relax their muscles and fall to the water all of a 
heap, making a great splash. I have seen swallows when 
killed stone dead fall in just such a heap. Straightening 
themselves out in the water they would go through this 
operation of lofty tumbling again and again. 
I saw the pelicans disporting themselves as I bade 
goodbye tO' San Diego Bay — on my way to the Golden 
Gate. Having an hour in Frisco the first thing I did 
was to hunt up the Pacific News Company and there 
buy some back numbers of the Forest and Stream, mak- 
ing up my mind tO' catch up in my reading on the train. 
It was very pleasant tO' shake hands mentally with_ the 
tribe of Forest and Stream once more. I see friend 
Hallock has been a close neighbor of mine down at- 
National City. The world is pretty small after all. 
I had but an hour in San Francisco and saw little or 
nothing of anything but the main street. I regretted that 
I could not have gone out ahd visited the real Kelley- 
Monarch Grizzly. I had read about the fake, doped one 
and would much have liked to have seen the genuine ar- 
ticle in propria persona'. It would have given me pleasure 
to have thrown him a box of undoped honey with Allan 
Kelley's compliments and best wishes. Could I have un- 
derstood bear talk no doubt Monarch would have told 
me that he was trapped fair and square, and would have 
laughed outright at being fooled on atropined honey. 
But tO' return to Grizzly Adams. I think somewhere 
years agO' I saw a print in which Adams and a whole 
tribe of grizzlies were mixed up. Two bears lay dead at 
Adams' feet and four or six more giant animals, standing 
within paws' reach on hind legs, waited for Adams to 
place his leaden peas behind their ears where they would 
do the most good — for Adams. If I am correct in stating 
that I saw this in Adams' book then I am afraid, the artist, 
as well as the preacher who wrote the book, took liber- 
ties. As a boy I had read of the ferocity of the grizzly, 
and when I saw this picture of Adams calmly thrusting 
down a patched bullet in his trusty Kentucky rifle and the 
grizzlies ranged around like a troop of trained dogs wait- 
ing for the band tO' start up, I felt concerned and uneasy 
about Adams, But seemingly he lived through it. And 
then I too^ saw him on Broadway and Ann street under 
the management of the late lamented P. T. Barnum, 
where old Samson kept up the traditions of his tribe for 
ugliness that ended in the death of Adams. 
And before I close, may I ask if the Comanche chief 
recently written about by Cabia Blanco as his hunting 
companion and the Indian Chief Parker, yvho fecently 
met President Roosevelt on his hunting trip, are one and 
the same Indian? Charles CrIstadoro. 
A Free Country, 
Shasta, Cal., April 5.— In Forest and Stream of 
March 18 editorial comment alludes to the injury done 
by a smelter plant in Shasta county, California. I feel 
that this subject coines within my domain as an old corre- 
spondent from this region, and I do not rest peacefully 
when I omit an opportunity to condemn the open and 
widespread destruction of public and private property, as 
well as the menace to health and life itself, that these 
smelting operations are responsible for. 
The smelter operated by the Mountain Copper Com- 
pany at Keswick, Shasta county, has been at work for 
seven or eight years. The smelter and town are located 
in the canyon of the Sacramento River, six miles north- 
west of Redding. It has destroyed in this time nearly 
all vegetation within a distance of six to eight miles of 
its works. It has practically destroyed the homes of a 
thousand people, for some of which it has paid an arbi- 
trary valuation fixed by the corporation, for some it has 
avoided payment by prolonged legal evasion, and in other 
cases it has insolently ignored complaints where it deemed 
its victims could not help themselves. It has been sued 
by individuals, and by a number of farmers and fruit 
raisers collectively, with the result that it has been uni- 
versally victorious in proving that these small farmers 
and common people have no rights that they can main- 
tain. Lands and orchards have been condemned by 
scientific witnesses, brought from abroad by the corpora- 
tion, who' have testified in court that the lands were not 
adapted to products that have been profitably grown upon 
them for half a century. In a region where every man, 
woman and child knows the deathly effect upon vegeta- 
tion of the smelter fumes, the corporation finds juries 
that visit orchards and give verdicts that the fumes do 
no damage. 
Over one-half the land affected is Government or pub- 
lic land, nearly all of which is timbered, or was timbered, 
with many varieties of deciduous and coniferous trees. 
Thousands of acres upon which timber grew have been 
burned over by forest fires after the fumes had deadened 
the timber until it was as inflammable as kerosene. Thou- 
sands of acres, thickly covered with valuable trees and 
mountain shrubbery, that mantled this region protecting 
natural springs and retaining the soil upon steeps and 
slopes, now stand incontrovertible evidence of the de- 
struction that is extending further and further, leaving 
the summits and slopes of ranges of mountains denuded 
of everything except rocks. The soil itself, in this region 
of heavy rainfall, is swept to the water courses, into the 
Sacramento River, and carried by it to the valley and to 
the Pacific. That the same poisons that destroy forests 
are also destructive to human life is unquestionable. 
In this area at the present time, fully a dozen miles in 
diameter, the natural flora and fauna hitherto abundant 
have been utterly swept from existence. The waste precipi- 
tations of chemical products upon this area, together with 
slag and poisonous material from the smelters, all find 
theif way into the principal river of the State, In fact, 
