Forest and Stream. 
A W^EEKLY Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Pubusmikg Co. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, 
Six Months, $2. 
1 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 190B. 
( VOL. LXV..-NO. 16. 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
RETALIATORY LAWS. 
The scheme of taxing a non-resident sportsman is 
now practically in operation through the country. The 
States which do not exact the payment of a license 
fee are the exception. Some of the laws are so com- 
plicated that an atlas or a post office official guide is 
necess'ary to unravel the questions which come up. 
In Tennessee, for example, one must know what county 
he is intending to shoot in before he can tell what 
license fee he will be called on to pay. The law 
previously to the amendments of this year demanded a 
non-resident license fee equivalent to the fee exacted 
in the State from which the visiting sportsman came. 
The last Legislature changed this by making the fee 
an uniform one of $io; but excepted from the act 
rthirty-two counties, as tO' which the old law holds good. 
['.What a visiting sportsman must pay for the privilege 
Jof his Tennessee quail shooting, whether $io or $25, 
ttwill depend on where he hails from. And there are 
i men with souls sO' dead as to deny their citizenship 
when they can gain $10 by doing it; coming from one 
slState where the fee is high, they will give as their home 
ji|State another where the fee is low. If they can do it 
^successfully, they will even claim to live in the State 
ijthey have come into for shooting. There are men' — 
gthey are so few that the census enumerators do^ not 
1‘think it worth while to number them — who are honest all 
)ithe way through, all the time, in all places and in all 
^things. Many fall down when it comes to swearing off 
i personal taxes, passing foreign trinkets through the 
custom house, or taking out a non-resident shooting 
1 : license when it may be evaded. Especially is this the 
ij case when the license law is of a retaliatory nature, like 
a that of Tennessee as to certain counties, or that of 
r New York. By the way, we would like to have some 
n one learned in the law give an opinion on this c[uestion 
- — whether a law which charges one man $10 for a shoot- 
I ing privilege and another man $25 for the same 
I privilege is a law which will hold water. 
i MORE NATIONAL PARKS. 
I The rapidity with which the country is settling up, the 
i progress made in the work of irrigating arid lands, and 
i the efforts being successfully made to develop seeds of 
1 cereals and other plants which shall germinate and grow 
ii with a minimum of moisture, all point to a rapid increase 
i in the population of portions of the West which hitherto 
have supported few inhabitants. With this increase of 
population will come more business, more towns and 
more hurry of the money-getting multitude. And with 
this hurry and this eagerness for wealth will walk hand 
in hand a forgetfulness of the needs of the human mind 
and body for recreation and rest. 
Over thirty years ago Congress set apart as a public park 
and pleasure ground for the benefit of the whole people 
the Yellowstone National Park, an area nearly as large as 
the State of Connecticut. The wisdom of this action has 
never been questioned, while hundreds of thousands of 
our people have applauded it. To this park there are 
now flocking annually multitudes of people, of which last 
season’s list numbered 25,000. These were all sorts and 
conditions of men, from the sturdy farmer who drove his 
family hundreds of miles -across dusty prairies or over 
winding mountain roads to taste the joys of a few days 
'or weeks’ rest in the Yellowstone, to the idle nobleman 
of the old world who killed the time that hung so heavy 
on his hands by a run across an ocean and half a con- 
tinent to see the geysers spout, to be awe-struck at the 
Falls and Cafion, or to contemplate the beauties of the 
Yellowstone Lake. It has often been said that the Park 
is visited each year by more people from Europe than 
from the United States — a statement, which, if true, car- 
ries with it something of shame for Americans. This 
year, with nearly twice the number of visitors that the 
Park has ever had before, the proportion of foreigners 
has been greatly lowered, and Americans have made a 
better showing for themselves. 
In the United States there are still many millions of 
acres of wild land unavailable for utilitarian purposes. 
Down vast stretches of rough mountains, sparsely tim- 
bered, or whose timber is so far from a market that it is 
unavailable, rush mountain torrents which have their 
sources in snow-capped rock shoulders, in smooth green 
alpine meadows or on sky-piercing peaks. There are 
narrow canons, rocky valleys, blue lakes, fields of perma- 
nent snow and ice ; beauties which mingle those of Switz- 
erland with those of Italy and Austria, but which are 
unknown to any considerable portion of our people. 
These are places that will produce a dollar for no one, 
but which, if rightly used, will yield to Americans stores 
of health and enjoyment that dollars can never buy. 
A few weeks ago w'e called attention to the need for 
the establishment of National Parks on the same plan of 
the Yellow-stone Park in sections of Montana, Arizona 
and Colorado. The wonderful region in northern Mon- 
tana, covering the main divide of the Rocky Mountains 
between the Blackfeet agency and Lake Macdonald, the 
White River Plateau in Colorado, and the Grand Canon 
of the Colorado River, ought to be set aside at once as 
National Parks. Such action can be taken at present 
without any cost to the Government, and these parks 
when established will soon become known, will be delight- 
fulL resorts for the public, and will incidentally become 
great game and fish preserves. 
There is a strong public feeling calling for the estab- 
lishment of National Parks in certain localities in the 
East. In the White Mountain region of New Hampshire 
and in the proposed Appalachian Park in the South, of 
wLlch we have heard so much. On these matters Con- 
gress should act without delay. Here, however, the land 
is in the hands of private owners, and an appropriation 
wmuld be required. We are told that this is an era of 
economy, but it would be a true economy to establish 
these parks at once. On the other hand, the authoriza- 
tion of the suggested parks in the West need cost nothing 
at present, since it may be taken for granted that for a 
time the forest ' service would care for them. 
CONNECTICUT DEER. 
The deer situation is becoming serious in Connecticut. 
The original supply of wdld deer having been extermi- 
nated, certain sentimentalists and sportsmen are bent on 
restoring the animals to their old-time haunts ; and to that 
end they have caused a law to be enacted forbidding the 
killing of any deer prior to the year 1911. With the 
fecundity characteristic of the species, the deer are multi- 
plying at a rate which the agriculturists — and now the 
manufacturers — view Avith alarm. The deer is a preda- 
tory animal, and the farmers have been forehanded 
enough to look out that they shall be repaid for the corn 
and cabbage and turnips which the deer may destroy. A 
kiAV to meet the case provides that when a land owner 
shall have sustained damage to his crops by depredating 
deer -he shall, within twenty-four hours, report his loss 
to the chairman of the board of selectmen, who shall ap- 
point two disinterested persons to estimate the damage, if 
it shall be not in excess of $20; or if it be more than $20, 
the appraisers shall call in one of the fish and game com- 
missioners. The amount of the damage and the expense 
■ of estimating it shall be paid by the town within sixty 
days, and the town in turn collects from the State. Agri- 
culture is the basis of our wealth, and the farmer must 
be secured in the product of his industry. But Connec- 
ticut ranks high as a manufacturing State, and this source 
of wealth also is menaced by the rampant deer. On 
Friday of last week a deer invaded the city of Derby, in 
its mad rushes through the streets excited the humans and 
the dogs to such a degree that they followed en masse, 
for all the world like the children of Hamlin after the 
Pied Piper; and finally crashed through a glass Avindow 
of the Osborne & Creesman factory, dashed around the 
machines, throwing the girls into a panic and bringing 
Avork to a standstill; and finally making its exit through 
an airshaft. If the Connecticut deer are to play such 
pranks as this, one need -not be a prophet, nor the son of a 
prophet, to prognosticate the disastrous results of the laAV 
Avhich protects them until 1911. 
COW CREEK. 
In his vivacious and veracious biography of his pet 
bear. Ransacker, writing from the Shasta Mountains, im- 
proves the occasion to quarrel Avith our prosaic and 
matter-of-fact progenitors who applied geographical 
names uninspired by fancy and devoid of music and 
poetry. The particular object of his criticism is the Cali- 
fornia stream called Cow Creek. It does sound common- 
place, but there may, after all, have been poetry in the 
circumstances of its naming if we only knew what they 
Avere. , Here, perhaps, in the early days — for California is 
a land of romance— some famished prospector may have 
killed the cow elk, which saved his life. Or in later 
years, it may have been that a city sportsman, lost and 
bewildered; and about to give up in despair, here heard 
the A\-elcome note of a cowbell and followed the sound 
and the cow to the ranch and supper. Another plausible 
theory— for this California country has long had its cattle 
on a thousand hills— is that the stream w'as OAvned by some 
rich cattleman to whom the word coav was particularly 
pleasing because standing for his w'ealth. If these sug- 
gested explanations are fanciful, so let them be accounted ; 
but none the less, if Ransacker will delve into the lore of 
his local place names, he may find a story here which will 
make Cow Creek, North Cow Creek, Old Cow Creek and 
South Cow Creek as music to his ears.' 
Texas has a Cowhouse Creek, Virginia a Cowpasture 
River, and Maine and Montana have each a Cow Island, 
the one in Montana, in the Missouri River, having taken 
its name from the buffalo found there; the French called 
it He de Vache. Surely Ransacker would not obliterate 
from the map of the buffalo-abandoned Montana of to-day 
even so homely a place name Avhen thus reminiscent of 
the old conditions in which it had its origin. Nor would 
he do away Avith another and better known cow name, 
that Cowpens, in South Carolina, originally nothing more 
distinguished than a corral for cattle, but afterward made 
famous and a household word by the victory of Greene 
in revolutionary days. 
If, however, Ransacker shall persist in his antipathy to 
CoAV Creek, he may appeal to the Legislature for relief in 
a change of name. The people of Pittsfield and Barn- 
stead, N. H., took this course recently to rid their super- 
sensitive ears of the harsh sound of “Shaw’s Pond.” It 
Avas too prosaic and common for them, sO' they went to 
Concord and got the Legislature to rename it Lily Lake. 
That, to be sure, is much prettier, and it goes without 
saying that a community which was formerly “shy” on 
.spring poets has since the more favorable conditions were 
supplied by the change developed an unsuspected talent 
for rhyming, much to' the delight of the editors of the 
hoine papers, Avho are suspected of having prompted the 
change of “ShaAv” to “Lily” for their own selfish ends. 
Mr. R.vymond S. Spears to-day rencAvs his accusation 
that vast tracts of Adirondack public lands have been 
given OA^er to private control. The subject is a compli- 
cated one, as Ave have said, but every transaction named 
by Mr. Spears should have the light thrown upon it, and 
if State officials have been remiss or worse in guarding 
the public’s interests, a way should be sought to recover 
for the State Avhat belongs to it. The charges made by 
Mr. Spears are the result of careful and intelligent study 
of the situation. They demand explanation. 
We are all grumblers and much given to bemoaning 
our various limitations, and the hard luck, which we are 
apt to say, meets us on every hand. Most of us, being 
slaves of circumstances and obliged to earn our living, 
have little of that freedom and independence which we 
long for, and which we believe would make our shoot- 
ing and fishing trips — now so often failures, so- far as 
tangible results go — full of the joy which comes with 
success. ■ Such are our imaginings, but it may be 
doubted if they have much foundation in fact; we might 
have no better luck if Ave were millionaires or lords or> 
dukes or princes. Here, for example, is the tale of a 
member of the English royal family who has just visited 
the new world for his fall hunt. ' Prince Louis of 
Battenberg Avent to Halifax, N. S., and started out to 
kill a moose. He Avent into the woods under most 
' favorable auspices, hunted with more or less faithful- 
ness, after a while was attacked by the gout and was 
then brought out to Halifax with much difficulty. He 
got no moose, and the sole trophy of his hunt was a 
miserable porcupine. ^ 
An interesting article upon the subject of how fishes 
find their Avay in the Avater appears in another part of 
this week’s issue from our occasional correspondent, Mr. 
J. Parker Whitney, whose obsen'ations concerning fish- 
ing and shooting have extended over a long period. His 
articles on taking salmon in the sea, published in our 
columns several years ago, attracted a world-wide in- 
terest, as a feature before unknown as illustrated by Mr. 
Whitney. , . 
