Forest and Stream 
A W EEKLY J GURNAL OF THE RoD AND GuN. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
ERMS, $4 A Year. 10 Cts, a Copy. ) 
Six Months, $3. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 22, 190B. 
j VOL. LXV.— No. 4 . 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
nent, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
jages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
)f current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
iorrespondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
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larticulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre- 
ition, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
ibjectSm Announcement in first number of 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
■A WASTE OF MONEY. 
The Committee on Legislation of the New York Citi- 
ens’ Union has been investigating the cost of Albany 
egislation. There were introduced last winter 2,600 bills, 
)f which 760 passed both houses and became laws. Of 
he whole number of bills 1,720 were of strictly local 
:haracter. There were ninety-nine bills to amend the 
"orest. Fish and Game law, and many of these were of 
he local class. Governor Higgins has pointed out that 
t costs $750 to pass a bill; these ninety-nine, relating to 
ish and game, then cost $74,250, a sum which the com- 
nittee considers an inordinate expenditure. It suggests 
hat the Commissioner of Forest, Fish and Game might 
setter be given the power to change the open and close 
season for game rather than waste legislative time and 
noney. The committee is right. To spend $74>250 for 
inhering with the fish and game laws is stupendous folly, 
better than giving the Commissioner power to change 
he seasons would be the strict and severe letting alone of 
he seasons, to stand as they are for a half century. The 
local changes, when it is considered that they cost the 
State $750 each for enactment, are not worth the public 
noney spent for them. Take this example, an amend- 
nent of Section 59 to provide that bullheads, catfish, eels, 
perch and sunfish may not be taken with tip-ups “in that 
portion of Canandaigua Lake beginning at the edge of 
the swamp on the west shore of the head of the lake, and 
running thence northerly along the west shore about one 
hundred rods to Hazel Dell cabin, thence southeasterly 
across the lake to a buttonwood tree just north of the 
large land slide, and about forty rods north of the Sunny 
Side dock, thence southerly along the west shore of the 
lake, to the edge of the swamp, thence westerly, following 
the edge of the swamp to the place of beginning.” 
If the “buttonwood tree just north of the large land 
slide” should tumble down, the law would be undone, and 
the $750 it cost would have been spent in vain. 
COL. W. F. SANDERS. 
Week before last there passed away at Helena, Mont., 
Col. Wilbur F. Sanders, a pioneer of the West who, in 
many ways, had left his mark on his State, which he 
helped to make, and on the time in which he lived. 
Born in Cattaraugus county. New York, in May, 1834, 
[he was successively school teacher, lawyer and soldier in 
the Civil War. Ill-health obliged him to leave the ser- 
vice, and in 1863 he went to Montana, where he became 
a . lawyer and miner. During the stirring days of the 
early mining camps, when for a time’ law and order were 
mere traditions and the rifle and the revolver of bandit, 
gambler, ruffian and bad man ruled the camps, Wilbur F. 
Sanders, made desperate by the outrages of the time and 
place, with some other law-abiding souls, organized the 
Vigilantes of Montana, whose storj^ has more than once 
been told, but best — so far as we know — by Mr. Langford 
in his “Vigilante Days and Ways.” By his courage, his 
coolness and his knowledge of the law. Colonel Sanders 
stood foremost among the Vigilantes and became a terror 
to evildoers ; and after a short but bitter fight his organi- 
zation succeeded in putting the lawless element to flight. 
Active and successful in his profession and iii politics, 
he became a leading figure in the Territory, and in the 
State. He was United States Senator from 1890 to 1893, 
he was president of the Historical' Society of 'Montana 
for twenty-five years, he stood foremost ever for good 
■iyork ^a.nd for good, things,- , ' . ' ' • • ' 
Most men have views as to the qualities which go to 
make up the best American citizen; the type of man 
whom we should wish to see imitated and emulated by 
the young men of to-day, and there is practically unan- 
imity as to these ideals. First among these qualities come 
honesty, so thoroughly ingrained that there never can be 
question as to whether a thing is right or wrong, never 
a mental argument as to whether a little yielding may 
not rightly be made to expediency. Courage comes next, 
a devotion to the right so strong that no public clamor, 
no persuasion of friends, no temptation of any sort, save 
that supplied by reason, can sway the man; and joined to 
this courage a love for justice, together with a chivalrous 
sympathy for weakness which will lead its possessor to 
take up the cause of the friendless or oppressed and to 
battle for his rights with the earnestness that the able 
lawyer exercises in behalf of his wealthy client. Near to 
these comes perseverance, a dogged determination to 
carry through to the very end a task undertaken, to fight 
for it in the face of difficulty and discouragement, but 
to carry it through, even though the completed work may 
show failure as a result. If to this be added a good mind, 
keen intelligence, ready wit, education and the long ex- 
perience that comes with a full life time, we have a men- 
tal and moral equipment which should carry a man to 
great heights in his profession, in the estimation of his 
friends, and in service tO' his fellows and to his country. 
Wilbur F. Sanders possessed all these qualities. An 
uncompromising friend of truth and honesty, a brave 
man, a good citizen, a splendid lawyer, and a politician 
of the best type, against whom no evil word was said, 
even in politics, he set up a standard for Montana and 
for his country that we may all point to as one to be 
imitated. 
GYMNASTICS. 
The Birmingham Daily Mail reports a lecture by Dr. 
Walter Jordan on the subject of “Fatigue,” although the 
real theme was hostility to gymnastics. Professor Muir-, 
head, of the Birmingham University, who acted as chair- 
man, indorsed the lecturer’s strictures by declaring that 
“gymnastics were the most exhaustive and demoralizing 
kind of exercise that could be engaged in, and that he had 
suffered from the exercise himself and knew what it 
meant.” This was qualified afterward to mean that 
gymnastics are a brain as well as a muscular exercise, 
and to indulge in it could not be regarded as a rest for 
the student. • ' 
The learned Professor did not know, or else ignored it 
if he knew, that the powers of the mind for soundness 
and vigor are dependent on the powers of the body, and 
that during the formative period of growth, exercise is an 
essential to their best development. His reasoning, too, 
was faulty, inasmuch as his universal conclusions were 
drawn from his own personal experience. Many people 
find gymnastics repugnant to them, some from indolence, 
some from physical unfitness to engage in them; yet it is 
self-evident that to consider the whims and infirmities of 
the habitual croakers as a standard by which to measure 
what is good or desirable for all mankind is the extreme 
of absurdity. 
The great improvement in the physique of men and 
women since the general adoption of gymnastics' in their 
many forms, is in itself a material refutation of the stric- 
tures uttered by the men whose ideals are the passive and 
the effeminate. 
That gymnastics may be harmful when indulged in to 
excess, or when there is organic weakness which incapaci- 
tates one for active exercise, there is no doubt; but the 
same m.ay be said of everything else of value in life. 
A sound mind in a sound body is a precept good in the 
past, present and future, and both are to be attained only 
by the development which comes from physical culture, 
whether derived from work in the gymnasium, or work 
fishing, rowing, shooting, or indeed sawing wood. 
BIRD AND CAT. 
It has been recorded in our correspondence columns 
that Professor Clifton F. Hodge, of Worcester, Mass., 
having succeeded in raising a brood of ruffed grouse, has 
found himself confronted with the very homely problem 
of the domestic cat. Other difficulties have been over- 
come, but' in the cat the partridge breeder has met” his 
match. It is. no wonder that, his birds having succumbed 
to th^ rapacity of the marauding cat, Professor Hodge 
should advocate the German system extensively adopted 
of waging municipal war on the pest. Baron von Berlebsch, 
the German scientist, who has written a book on the pro- 
tection of birds, declares that outside of buildings and 
the home the cat is a wild beast. Many German cities 
have adopted this view, and acting on it have under- 
taken systematic plans of cat extermination. Hamburg, 
for example, according to Baron von Berlebsch, has for 
certain periods, maintained 300 cat traps every night, and 
in a year has destroyed 30,000 cats. Other cities have 
like records; and Professor Hodge urges that American 
towns should engage in the enterprise. Speaking, after 
several years of observation of the relations between the 
supply of cats and that of birds. Professor Hodge is 
quoted as saying : 
“I have given much attention to the subject, and I am 
firmly convinced the cat is the worst enemy the bird has. 
Not excepting the severities of winter, scourges of dis- 
ease which might prevail in bird families, heat of an un- 
usual summer, and all other enemies of bird life com- 
bined, the cat is the arch-fiend of them all, and stands at 
the head of the list as the destroyer of bird life. This 
has become a matter of national consequence, and de- 
mands the attention of people of cities as well as people 
of the country.” 
This estimate of the destructiveness of the domestic 
cat will be sustained by the facts which are within the 
common knowledge. In the garden, on the lawn, in the 
fields and thickets the cat is the unrelenting scourge of 
the birds. The aggregate of killing is enormous. If there 
be anything in the protection of birds as allies of man in 
his everlasting contest with the insect plagues, the 
diminution of the cat tribe, which is all the time fighting 
on the side of the insects, is of far greater importance 
than is usually accorded to it. Professor Hodge has not 
overstated the case. 
From New York to England in an hour — that is a 
travel achievement open to anyone who cares to improve 
the opportunity. At the Brooklyn Bridge take a trolley 
car for Flatbush, or an elevated Brighton Beach train. 
At Church avenue change to a car going east and leave 
the car at Rugby. This is a stretch of old farm lands, 
plotted off into streets and building lots, but still for the 
most part meadow. Lie down on the grass and look up 
in the blue and watch the skylarks mounting and descend- 
ing, and hear them sing. Under such conditions as those 
at Rugby one who has known the bird in its home across 
the sea might very readily persuade his fancy that he was 
back in England with the larks on the downs. 
In a consideration of “Trawlers and Ely-fishers,” the 
Boston Herald exclaims: “With what fine, superior 
scorn — as of a fluting wood-thrush for a quacking duck, 
a lyric poet for a Grub-street hack — does the consummate 
angler for trout or salmon regard the man who catches 
fish solely for the market.” 
Does he? If he does, why does he? What reason is 
there for regarding with fine superior scorn the man who 
catches fish solely for the market? The fisherman, who 
makes a business of taking an “intermitting succession of 
skates, dogfish, cod and haddock,” is no more to be re- 
garded' with scorn by an angler who is at the same time 
a man, than is the farmer who hoes corn, the carpenter 
who- saws boards, the lawyer who draws briefs, or the 
shoemaker who cobbles shoes. . Of course, no one may 
say with what feeling— whether of scorn or envy— an 
individual fly-fisherman may look upon the toiler of the 
sea, but fly-fishermen, as a class, have no such foolish 
sentiment. Why should they? 
The Massachusetts authorities ar? making war , on The 
mill owners who pollute streams with sawdust. Several 
prosecutions have been instituted this summer, the deputy 
game wardens winning, and many more' are to follow. 
As some of the streams affected are among the best troiff- 
ing waters in the - State the results of the vigorous cam- 
paign will be of decided advantage to the fishing inter- 
ests. The old notion that a stream of water was created 
for the express purpose of carrying off mill and faefoTy 
waste has been so deeply ingrained that it -is not easily 
overcome-; but the.' Massachusetts mill owners are . now in 
a way to gain instruction, which, as it costs something 
Substantial, is" 'Ii^^ely to be heeded and' reiriemhered. 
