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, DECEMBER 16, 1905. 
VOL. LXV.— No. 25 
No. 346 Broadway, New Aork. 
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 
ObleCtS, Announcement in first number of 
' * Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE SMALL BOY’S WEST. 
The frequent accounts in the daily press of small boys 
who desert their homes in various sections of the country 
indifferently, to trudge to the Far West for the slaughter 
of Indians and buffalos, are a true index of the pernicious 
effects of the “blood and thunder” fiction on the juvenile 
mind. This class of literature is so prevalent and abun- 
dant that it is available for perusal everywhere. It does 
much to establish false standards of boyish ethics, ambi- 
tions and actions. It fosters discontent with home life 
and its surroundings. It incites to mimetic attempts, 
with the supernatural boy herO' as a model. Frequently 
it incites to running away from home, and is the genesis 
of the boy wonder of real life. 
The average boy is romantic and visionary. The mar- 
vels of adventure appeal strongly to his imagination. The 
world of fiction is sO' different from the hum-drum affairs 
of home life that the latter in time are viewed as being 
the wasted life for a lad of wit and spirit, who aspires to 
great deeds of valor, to high place in the affairs of Gov- 
- ernment, or to position of great wealth and trust in the 
world of finance. For his success he needs no assurance. 
His fitness for greatness is vouched for by his own 
knowledge of his own genius, an attribute so potent that 
none but that dull creature, a father, could be insensible 
to its existence. 
Under the best of home conditions the average lad at 
some stage of his boyhood is prone to believe that he is 
unappreciated and oppressed, that his parents undervalue 
his high intrinsic worth, and that he is much more cap- 
able of managing the family affairs in their social and 
business aspects than is the old fogy redundancy whom 
he addresses as father to his face, but flippantly as “the 
old man” at other times. Indeed, one of his greatest 
misfortunes is that the accident of life endowed him with 
such a slow lay figure for a father. 
Yet, the office of sonhood is not entirely devoid of 
compensations. There is alwaj's the saving grace that 
the mother appreciates the son at his true worth. To 
her he is ever beautiful, witty, noble and destined for 
great glory and high trusts in the affairs of mankind. 
Though all others may look upon him as an intolerable 
cub, composed chiefly of appetite, legs and stomach, to 
her he is a prince. But over this beneficence there is 
ever the shadow of the truculent father, the chief enemy 
to the recognition of the boy wonder. Were there not 
such a hindrance as a father, to what great heights might 
he not attain forthwith? Has he not the pertinent au- 
thority in his trashy novels for every impossibility? 
The marvelous of literature profoundly impress the 
beliefs of the callow boy, and incites him to seek wealth 
and glory in the fields depicted in his novels, where 
boys are appreciated. In his mind, such fields are not 
within the bounds of home life. He therefore resolves to 
run away. 
The mind of small boys under like conditions seems to 
work much alike everywhere. In a note to his mother 
he sets forth the lack of appreciation by those who 
should take the lead in making much of him, he sheds a 
tear of sympathy for himself, he adds to his non-ledger 
account such portion of the family cash as is available, 
takes the family pistol for armament, sneaks forth in 
the darkness, and trudges toward the West where 
Indians and buffalos abound, and where he, mounted on 
while j^ou wait. As a side line to the slaughter of the 
noble red man, he will discover a cave of gold. He tacks 
on a climax to his career composed of benevolence and 
self-vindication. He, in his mind’s picture, sees himself 
grown to be an Apollo, rich and famous, arriving dt the 
porte cochcre of the old farmhouse, with a wheelbarrow 
loaded with scalps and golden nuggets, attesting to his 
valor and success. Thus will be brought home to the 
father full proof of his parental obtuseness, and rich re- 
wards to the mother, whose acumen enabled her to per- 
ceive the rare worth of so good a son. Such is the day 
dream. 
The inglorious ending, the fact, takes place soon in 
some nearby city, where son, pistol and what is left of 
the non-ledger account, are taken into custody by some 
obese officer. In due time, son is returned to the parental 
roof, to be again subjected tO' the tyranny of frequent 
gourmandizing, sleeping, frolicking and idling. 
Most boys who are habitually bad, or who are disposed 
to run away from home, have had their minds perverted 
by the cheap “blood and thunder” literature which is so 
prevalent. If parents would realize its harm, and inter- 
dict the reading of it, the boy’s mind would be kept free 
from a mass of pernicious rubbish, his sentiments would 
be kept at a wholesome and normal stage, and the Indians 
and buffalos, though few and far away, would be freed 
from the dangers which have their origin and ending in 
the small boy’s mind. 
THE FOREST RESERVES. 
In the pages of his annual report which treat of the 
Yellowstone Park, Secretary Hitchcock renewed his 
recommendation that this reservation shall be so en- 
larged as to include the Yellowstone Timber Land Re- 
serve, a portion of the Teton Forest Reserve, and one 
or two other small bodies of land ; a total aggregating 
about 2,200 square miles. The recommendation is not 
new, for Mr. Hitchcock long ago recognized the im- 
portance of the matter and has urged it upon Congress 
in each of his annual reports for several years past. It 
has been recommended by many superintendents, and 
everyone familiar with the situation in the Park in- 
cluding President Roosevelt — agrees that it ought to be 
done. 
Sportsmen and nature lovers feel that this action is 
necessarv in order to protect from destruction the large 
wild animals' which in summer range in the Yellowstone 
Park, but in- autumn migrate from the high mountains 
within the Park to lower ground without its borders in 
search of a winter range where food is not buried be- 
neath the snow. . While they are in the lower country 
great numbers of these animals perish; many being 
killed for their heads, hides, teeth or meat; or, if they 
are not slaughtered for such - purposes, the country to 
which they migrate in certain directions is now so full 
of settlement and so barred by fences, that the game 
cannot travel about, and in many cases either starves to 
death or is forced by hunger to break down the settlers’ 
fences and plunder his haystacks. 
The practical economist offers other reasons why the 
Park area should be increased. Within the two forest 
reserves that ought to be added to it are great bodies of 
timber, valuable in themselves, but still more valuable 
in the services which they perform as protections to the 
water supply of the heads of streams now used, or likely 
soon to be used, for irrigating the dry plains country 
below. The addition of these reserves to the Yellow- 
stone Park would place them under the charge of the 
Superintendent of the Park, whose regular cavalry is far 
more efficient as a patrol and far swifter to move about 
than are civil forest officers or State game wardens. 
It is essential that as soon as possible all reasonable 
steps should be taken to protect the Park from danger 
and to increase its usefulness and beauty. Of the dan- 
gers that threaten it one of the greatest is that from 
forest fires ; but the system of fire patrol in the Park 
is so perfectly organized that while small fires occasion- 
ally occur through the carelessness of campers, it is 
years since any fire has gained sufficient headway to 
wmrk any great damage to the Park. 
Year by year, as the Yellowstone Park becomes bet- 
ter known, its value to the country at large, and espe- 
cially to visitors from afar and to persons residing near 
a wild horse, without saddle or bridle, will in due time 
gallop through the Indian camp, a pistol in each hand, 
firing right and left, dealing out death with each shot increase in th^ numher of persons who visit it? ^0 th^t 
during the last season this number was more than six 
times greater than when Fort. Yellowstone was estab- 
lished in 1892. The Park is at last coming to be valued 
at its true worth, and for the sake of the general public 
and of the resident population about the Park, legislation 
recommended providing for the increased area should 
be enacted. 
THE ALASKAN REINDEER. 
Primitive man is a hunter and fisherman. He subsists 
on the game and the fish. His occupation is to hunt 
game and tO' catch fish. When these two sources of sup- 
ply are taken away from him he is confronted with the 
problem of finding other means of subsistence. For most 
races of men the change from the hunting and fishing 
life to that of pastoral and agricultural is very gradual, 
the slow change of generations tO' which the race adapts 
itself without difficulty. To some people, on the con- 
trary, as to certain tribes of American Indians, the 
transition comes with cruel suddenness and leaves no 
interval for preparation and adaptation to the new condi- 
tions. 
This is precisely the situation of the natives of Alaska. 
They subsisted by hunting and fishing. The white man 
came, and, as always where the white man comes, the 
game was destroyed and the fish were taken in vast 
quantities by netting ; and the result has been that the 
old tribal life of the Alaskan is no longer possible. To 
provide a new means of subsistence, the Government has 
introduced the reindeer into the peninsula, and has 
undertaken the task of teaching the natives how to use it. 
The reindeer answers three purposes, transportation, 
food and clothing. It is the horse of the arctic, its flesh 
supplies meat, and the hide gives the best of clothing. A 
reindeer can travel from fifty to one hundred miles in a 
day, drawing a man on a sledge; eight or ten tandem 
will draw a ton of freight twenty or thirty miles a day. 
In herding the reindeer for food and clothing and in 
employing it for freighting, the Alaskan native has found 
a means of livelihood. For him the problem of subsist- 
ence under the new conditions thrust upon him has, in a 
large measure, at last been solved. 
What may be done for the big game of this continent 
when its protection is undertaken on a large scale by the 
Government is admirably illustrated in the report of the 
Acting Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park 
on the game conditions in that reservation. 
It is a record of increasing game in this preserve, which 
has been provided in the midst of a country where the 
story is all of diminution. We shall not rightly appre- 
ciate the report and what it means, unless we shall re- 
flect upon what the conditions would have been respecting 
these elk and deer and antelope and mountain sheep, 
had there not been for them through the last ten years 
this harbor of refuge. What has been done in the Yellow- 
stone for the preservation of American big game species 
may be done in the Government reservations. Make 
game preserves in the forest reserves suited to the pur- 
pose. Utilize the opportunities ready to hand to perpetu- 
ate for the generations which are to follow somf of 
the primitive plentitude of wild life which our ij,i,-..irs 
found here and which we have enjoyed. 
tK. 
It was not so long ago that we printed a reminiscent 
paper written by one of the older generation of sports- 
men, who made their favorite headquarters at Barnegat, in 
which the writer deplored the passing of the ancient 
order and the glorious opportunities of the past. And 
now comes another correspondent, who writes with the 
most genuine satisfaction of the sport tO' be bad on tbe 
Barnegat of to-day, and reciting that he has found the 
fowl there in goodly supply for himself and for all who- 
will follow his example. 
The organization of the American Bison Society, which 
has been formed for the purpose of devising ways and 
means to perpetuate the buffalo, is a most gratifying and 
encouraging event. The Society is an outgrowth of the 
agitation of the subject by Mr, Ernest Harold Baynes, 
who is to be congratulated on having drawn to the cause 
such a substantial support as is indicated in the list of 
those who have associated themselves with him. The 
purpose is one which should appeal, and we believe does 
appeal to this whole country; and fhe American Bisoil 
Sqcit;ty wil) have cordial Hipporh 7'. ' ^ 
