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. 
Six Months, |2. 
NEW YORK^, SATURDAY, MAY 2 7, 190B. 
( VOL. LXIV.— No. 21. 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
jThe 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 
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. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful Interest in outdoor recre- 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
obiectS Announcement in fii'st number of ' 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE HAY BOX IN CAMP. 
United States Consular Clerk George H. Murphy 
sends from Frankfort, Germany, a description of a fire- 
less cook stove which is well worth the attention" of the 
man in the woods. The device is not new. It was .shown 
in the Paris Exposition of 1867, being then known as the 
"Norwegian automatic kitchen," but only in recent years 
has it come into general use. A propaganda to familiarize 
the public with its merits is now being successfully pushed 
in Berlin, Munich and other cities; and Mr. Murphy 
believes that it should be known on this side of the 
Atlantic. 
The tireless cook stove or hay box is devised on a recog- 
nition of the principle that various kinds of food require 
but a few minutes of actual cooking, and if then they are 
put away and surrounded with such conditions that the 
heat cannot escape nor the air get to them the process of 
cooking will be completed. In its simplest form the stove 
is a wooden box in which vessels containing hot food are 
packed in nests of hay or shavings or paper or some 
similar material to retain the heat. The box may be 
lined with wool or felt, but this is not essential. Almost 
any wooden box that has a tight cover will answer the 
purpose. The advantage of the use of the hay box is 
that the time of cooking food is very greatly reduced; 
thus two or three minutes of actual boiling on the fi^re are 
amply sufficient for vegetables; at the end of that time 
the pots containing tliem are transferred to the hay box 
and covered up, and the process of cooking there con- 
tinues ; roasted meats require from twenty to .thirty 
minutes of roasting, and the process is then completed 
in the hay box. After the preliminary cooking on the 
stove the articles are kept for two or three hours in the 
hay box, although they may be left there for ten or 
twelve hours. All the usual dishes, such as boiled and 
roasted meats, fish, sauces, soups, vegetables, fruits, pud- 
dings, etc., may be cooked in this way. Dried beans and 
dried fruits are first to be well soaked in water; then, 
after being allowed to boil for from two to five minutes, 
they will be thoroughly prepared for the table after being 
kept from one to two hours in the hay box. The formula 
for the use of the box is very simple. The pots being 
transferred from the fire to the box are set in the nests 
prepared for them, the hay is packed tightly under and 
around them, a pillow of hay is placed on top and the lid 
of the box is securely closed. 
The advantages of the system in domestic use are 
obvious ; some of them, as summarized by Consular Clerk 
Murphy, are: 
"i. The cost of fuel can be reduced four-fifths, or even 
nine-tenths. 2. The pots are not made difficult to wash; 
they are not blackened, and they will last for an almost 
indefinite period of time, 3. The food is better cooked, 
more tasty, more nutritious, and more digestible. 4. 
Kitchen odors are obviated. 5. Time and labor are saved. 
6. There is no need of stirring nor fear of scorching or 
burning. 7. The cares of the housewife are lessened, and 
her health and happiness are thus protected. 8. The 
kitchen need not be in disorder half of the day. 9. Warm 
water can always be had when there is illness in the 
house and during the summer when fires are not kept up. 
10. Milk for the baby can be kept warm all night in a pot 
of water. 11. Where workmen's families live crowded in 
one or two rooms the additional suffering caused by 
kitchen heat is obviated by the hay box, for the prelimi- 
nary cooking can all be done in the cool of the morning. 
12. At picnics the appetites of young people are only half 
satisfied by sandwiches and other - cold food. The hay 
box can furnisti a hot meal anywhere and at any time. 
13. Similarly, men and women working in the fields or 
having night employment can take with them hot coffee, 
soup, or an entire meal, thus avoiding the necessity of re- 
turning home at a fixed hour or having it brought to them 
by another member of. the family. 14. When different em- 
ployments make it necessary for the various members of 
a family to take their meals at different hours, this can 
be arranged without a multiplication of work with the 
assistance of the hay box. Of course it is necessary that 
the box be kept perfectly clean, as otherwise it. may be- 
come sour or musty." 
The hay box system might well be adapted to camp 
use. Any old box will do ; for purposes of transportation 
it mjght be collapsible, of wood or of tin. The dishes 
could be a set which would nest one in the other. For 
hay there are leaves, grass, pine needles and what 
not. Many of the conditions of its use which are so ad- 
vantageous in domestic practice would prove not less so 
in the field. Tnstead of one member of the party remain- 
ing in camp or returning early to do the cooking, while 
the others were hunting or fishing, the meal could be 
prepared in a few minutes before starting out for the 
day, and the food put away in the hay box to be found 
cooked and warm on the return. The task of keeping up 
the camp fire would be reduced to a minimum. And the 
probabilities are that the food that came out of the hay 
box would be better cooked and more nutritious than the 
ordinary product which the average vacation camper now 
submits for judgment before a jury of his peers. 
IN LITTLE OLD NEW YORK. 
We may go very far back in the chronicles of Man- 
hattan Island and we shall find in a surprising degree a 
similarity between the game and shooting conditions of 
that time and the present. The sportsman who flourished 
in; the early, part and middle of the eigbteenth century 
was very much the make of man of to-day; and a picture 
of those times would show him to have been— except as 
to dress and field equipment— astonishingly modern, if by 
modern we mean having the characteristic's of these 
modern days. The questions which trouble us troubled 
him, and among them the problem of where in the world 
one might find any shooting if the taking' up of .lands 
open to the public were to continue. 
In 1765, it having been recited that. "it has long been 
the practice of great numbers of idle and disorderly per- 
sons in and about the City of New York and the Liber- 
ties thereof to hunt with firearms and to tread down the 
grass, and corn', and other grain standing and growing 
in the fields and inclosures there, to the great danger of 
the lives of His Majesty's subjects, the ruin and destruc- 
tioii of the most valuable improvements, the grevious 
injury of the proprietors, and the great discouragement 
of their industry," an act was passed to prevent hunting 
with firearms in said City of New York and the Liber- 
ties thereof, and a fine of twenty shillings was incurred 
by anybody but the owner or his servants "that fires a 
gun in any orchard, garden, cornfield or other inclosed 
land or enters into or passes through it." 
This naturally called out loud complaint, and vigorous 
pleas were made for shooting privileges. It is interest- 
ing to note that a stock argument then was the one so 
familiar now, that if we do not have a chance to go shoot- 
ing we shall forget how to shoot, and the country will 
be at the mercy of our foes. "Since we are prohibited 
from hunting or shooting upon other men's lands," wrote 
a sportsman of that day, "it is necessary that the citizens 
should have some other place for that manly diversion 
or exercise; otherwise they will be in danger of forget- 
ting to use their firearms with dexterity, however neces- 
sary they may be for their own defense, and of sinking 
into effeminacy and meanness." 
Nor were the Manhattan Island sportsmen of the days 
of George III. less enterprising than their successors in 
practical ways of saving the birds. The winter of 1764-5 
was bitterly cold, the mercury falling to 35 degrees below 
zero. A newspaper of the time records: "The severe 
weather having destroyed great numbers of small birds 
and threatening an extinction of several species for years 
to come, especially quails, we hear several gentlemen 
have caught and purchase^ considerable numbers of th»m, 
which they keep in cages properly sheltered from the cold, 
and feed, in order to set them at liberty in the spring to 
preserve the breed." 
Some years before this foreign game importations had 
been undertaken with success. In 1753 Bedloe's Island 
(in the old days Love Island), on which the Statue of 
Liberty now stands, was described in an advertisement 
as abounding in English rabbits. A much more valuable 
importation of game for stocking preserves was that of 
Governor Cosby, who sought to acclimatize the English 
pheasant. 
Governor's Island, then known as Nutten Island, taking 
the later' name from the circumstance that the Council 
set it apart as a private domain for the use of the Gov- 
ernor of the province, was used by Governor Cosby as 
a game preserve ; and in one of the acts of the Legislature 
of the time is an extremely interesting record of what 
must have been one of the earliest enternrises of intro- 
ducing European game into America. This act, of 1738, 
declares that "whereas the late Governor did place about 
a half a dozen couple of English pheasants on Nutten 
Island, and first pinioned them, to the end that they might 
remain there to propagate their species with a view that 
their increase would spread from thence and stock the 
country with their kind; and whereas, the said fowls not 
only have increased vastly on the said island, but many 
of them already spread over to Nassau Island [Long 
Island] and in all orobability will soon stock the country 
if people are restrained from destroying them for a few 
years. The present Governor being also desirous that 
the whole colony may be stocked with these birds" — it 
was enacted that no birds should be killed and no eggs 
taken for a year. 
What became of the birds we have been unable tO' as- 
certain • nor do the records inform us whether or not the 
worthy Governor and the Manhattan sportsmen who re- 
sorted to Long Island ever enjoyed their anticipated 
pheasant shooting. 
Moreover- — and this is the human failing in which the 
sportsmen of the eighteenth century and his successor 
of the twentieth are most nearly akin — there was in those 
days in frequent evidence the fellow who shoots before 
hs knows what he is shooting at and whether it is game 
or human. The newspapers of the day recorded his 
doings. "We hear," says a journal of 1734, "that on 
Tuesday last one Reymer Sickelse, at Gravesend, on Long 
Island [now a part of Greater New York], being at a 
Hunting and by Chance espied a Fox, which he pursued, 
and after some time thought he saw the Fox, behind 
some Bushes, and F'ired at it; but when he came to the 
Place (without doubt to his great amazement) he found 
that he had shot a Woman, who was busy gathering some 
Berries. The fatal mistake was occasioned by her wear- 
ing an Orange Brown Wast-Coat. The Man is in a 
very melancholy condition." 
Again, in 1754, o*ie Jacob Kool, on his rounds near the 
city a gunning, noticed something moving in a thicket of 
bushes and not readily distinguishing the object imagined 
it to be a bear. His gun being loaded with small shot, 
he repaired to a near by house and enlisted the assistance 
of Johan Baltas Dash and a negro man. The three, 
armed with guns loaded with ball, went back to the 
bushes, and Kool discharged his gun in the middle of the 
thicket, as did likewise the others, "when hearing a groan 
and seeing the motion of a man's leg they found their 
mistake." It proved to be Cornelius Vonk, who was 
walking out from the city to refresh himself, and lying 
down in the thicket to rest, had fallen asleep. "The jury 
brought in their verdict Chance medley." 
Each recurring anniversary of Decoration Day lends 
new emphasis to the growing tendency to make this, as 
other holidays, aa occasion of outdoor recreation and 
sport; and here and there effort is made to check the 
movement and preserve the original solemnity of the ob- 
servance. Nebraska has a new law which prohibits all 
outdoor sports which are forbidden by the Sunday ob- 
servance law, such as horse racing and baseball. 
The Forest and Stream will go to press next week on 
Monday instead of Tuesday, as usual, because of Decora- 
tion Day, . , _ ,. _ 
