Forest and Stream. 
A W EEKLY J OURNAL OF THE RoD AND GuN. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
} NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2 3, 1908 • { No. 346 Broadway, New V ork, 
Terms, f4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
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 discussioi? 
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. 
FOR CHRISTMAS READING. 
A Fox Hunt on the Picket Line Pious Jeems 
Seen Through the Window Charles Cristadoro 
In the Lodges of the Blackfeet. .Walter B. Anderson 
My Last Buffalo Hunt Cabia Blanco 
On Getting Found Edward French 
The Gentleman in the Woods R. B. Buckham 
The Biography of a Bear Ransacker 
Do Animals Fear Death? Shaganoss 
The American Bison Society ... Ernest Harold Baynes 
Insensibility to Pain Among Animals.. C. E. Holder 
Warning to the Mississippi Valley. Charles Cristadoro 
ANNOUNCEMENT. 
With the issue of January 6, which will be the first num- 
ber of the sixty-sixth volume, several important changes 
will be introduced in the style of Eorest and Stream.. 
In keeping with the pronounced tendency of the day we 
shall adopt a page of reduced size and one which has 
been determined upon not only because -of its much 
greater convenience in the reading, but because it is 
more adapted than the present one to purposes of illus- 
tration. Of illustrations there will he largely increased 
use. That, too, is in line with the progressive journalism 
of the hour. The subjects to which the Forest and 
Stream is devoted offer abundant scope for illustrating, 
and with the new departure it will be our ambition to 
make the pictorial features a fitting complement of the 
reading columns, and thus to give the paper a new and 
added interest. 
In its changed form the Forest and Stream will be a 
regular weekly issue of forty pages, with the issue of the 
first week of each month increased to fifty-two pages. 
This will give two volumes per year of I,ii2 pages each, 
or 2,224 pages for the year. 
Beginning with January I the subscription price will 
be $3.00 per year. 
These changes are all in the way of a better, brighter, 
handsomer paper. The new Forest and Stream will 
be received as an acceptable and appreciated advance 
over the old. 
The quality which has always marked the reading 
matter will be preserved, and the standard will be sus- 
tained. The paper will continue to chronicle the experi- 
ences of the man, who, in the unhampered world of the 
open air and the outdoor life does things worth the 
telling, of nature’s ways notes things worth recording, 
and in the getting back to nature finds his spirit stirred 
with thoughts worth the expression. As for thirty years 
past, these pages will be a medium for such interchange 
among those who do, and see, and feel. 
The field of the Forest and Stream is of boundless 
interest. The theme of the outdoor world and its 
rational enjoyment is Inexhaustible, and one that is al- 
ways new and fresh, and ever attractive and stimulating. 
To present weekly pictures from this great playground 
of nature, which is the heritage of the American sports- 
man, and to relate his activities therein — this will be the 
chosen office of the Forest and Stream in 1906, in the 
furthering of which it invites and anticipates the support 
arid co-operation of its hosts of friends, old and ne\y. 
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS. 
Beginning with Jan. i, igo6, the subscription price of 
Forest and Stream will be $3.00 per year; or $1.50 for 
six months. 
All subscriptions now on our books which have been 
paid at the $4.00 rate, and which run for any period into 
1906, will be extended pro rata to conform to the 
changed price. 
THE INTERSTATE ASSOCIATION. 
At the meeting of the Interstate Association, held in 
the Grand Hotel, New York city, last week, the action 
in respect to the holding of provincial handicaps, sub- 
sidiary to the Grand American Llandicap, is deserving 
of more than a passing notice. At one bound it places 
the Association in a position of full national importance 
as a matter of fact instead of the heretofore national 
importance accorded it as a matter of assumption In re- 
spect to its material interests. 
The Grand American Handicap, great and dignified 
shoot that it is, draws the main part of its support from 
a radius of 300 or 400 miles about the city at which it 
happens to be held. Therefore, while it unquestionably 
has been national in Its moral influences and wholesome 
■stimulus in respect to the sport of trapshooting in its 
material aspects, it has been provincial in its material 
■scope. 
The four subsidiary handicaps, established by the 
action aforementioned, are designed, to supply the needs 
of general competition in territory not fully covered by 
the Grand American Handicap. One was assiarned to 
the section of the United States east of Buffalo and 
Pittsburg; one to the section south of the Ohio River 
and east of the Mississippi; one to the section west of 
the Mississippi and east of Salt Lake and Oreeon ; and 
the fourth was assigned to the section west of Salt Lake 
and Ogden, to be known as the Pacific Coast Handicap. 
By thus allotting the great tournaments to the great 
natural divisions of the country, a general and beneficial 
impetus will be given to- the sport of trapshooting. No 
more efficacious means for its betterment could be de- 
vised. No other body possesses the influence, dignity, 
stability and confidence of the public, qualities so essen- 
tial to the success of such a great work. 
It should be borne in mind that the scope of the Inter- 
state Association includes the educational as well as the 
competitive. Under the supervision of the famous Inter- 
state Association Secretary-Manager, Elmer F. Shaner, 
the Interstate tournaments are an object lesson in all 
the details of perfect tournament management. They are 
models for local clubs to cony. Cashiers, clerks, scorers, 
squad shooters, etc., are perfectly organized to work to- 
w'ard the perfection of a perfect whole. An atmosphere 
of perfect respectability pervades. A visitor need not 
hesitate to take with him “his sisters and his cousins and 
his aunts.” It is inherently a clean and healthful sport, 
one whose place is in the open air, where there are sun- 
shine and green fields. 
The allotment of great handicaps tO’ the four great 
natural divisions of the United States will appeal to sec- 
tional pride and activity. While, as a people, we are all 
citizens of the United States, the spirit of sectional pride 
is ever alive and active. It is a commendable pride, too, 
for it incites to beneficent emulation and rivalry. In- 
deed, its spirit is as great in small places as elsewhere. 
Where is the city so humble as to hide its glories? Where 
is the cross-roads which has not some greatness to flaunt 
where all men can behold and admire? States trumpet 
their greatness to the world, some modestly and mildly, 
as Kansas, others according to their excellence and 
humor. 
The local spirit will go far toward insuring a strong 
support. Shooters of rare skill and courage will be 
graduated. Local pride will require that the best the 
world can produce shall be met in friendly competition, 
with the result that the best of the Fa-st, South and West 
will rally to the greatest contest of all, the Grand Ameri- 
can Handicap. 
It is a satisfaction to record the formation of the 
Anglers’ Club of New York. There is abundant ma- 
terial for such an organization here, and its desirability 
has long been recognized. bespeak for the move- 
pierit a cordial support, 
SPORT AND HISTORY. 
Of the stories we print in this Christmas number there 
are three which are deserving of special note because of 
their value as documents of history and because of the 
human interest in them. 
Colonel Gordon has drawn from his recollections of 
the stirring events in which he had part a little story of 
war and sport and brotherhood, which is an altogether 
felicitous contribution to the literature of Christmas. His 
description of the prompt cessation of hostilities by op- 
posing forces of the Blue and the Gray, that they might 
join together in the friendly emulation of a fox hunt, 
well illustrates that feature of the American Civil War 
which amazed the world at the time and will long compel 
attention — that the great armies which those momentous 
years saw arrayed against each other were made up of 
men of the same race of friends and kindred, bone of bone 
and flesh of flesh. And while on either side, each indi- 
vidual soldier was loyal to his own cause, it was no un- 
usual thing, when opportunity offered, for the man of 
the North and his brother of the South to come together 
and fraternize as was done here on the occasion that 
Pious Jeems so well describes. It was this circumstance 
of brotherhood, which, while it made the actual strife all 
the more hitter and desperate, yet when the conflict was 
over and the weapons of war had been put away. led to 
the early and lasting reconciliation of the combatants 
as brothers again. This, too, is a feature of the Civil 
War which we may be sure will engage the attention and 
compel the admiration of the world for so long as the 
story of the conflict shall be told. 
The many stories which we have published from- the 
pen of Cabia Blanco, of hunting adventure In the South- 
west among the Indians and the buffalo, are supple- 
mented to-day by his account of the killing of his last 
buffalo. As for the particular tribe of Indians with 
whom he was hunting, and for the other tribes, who, as 
he tells us, sought the game there, this hunt meant the 
extinction from the face of the earth of a species which 
for countless generations had afforded them a food sup- 
ply. For them the killing of this last buffalo was the 
final act of a change of conditions which meant for them 
an entire alteration in their mode of life and in the rela- 
tlonshio between the white man and the red. It is not 
fanciful then to say that Cabia Blanco’s buffalo story is 
a bit of the history of the Southwest, and of the events 
which transformed that region from a wilderness filled 
with game and sparsely peopled by savage tribes into a 
civilized community. 
A like interest attaches to the chapter printed this 
week of the account of life among the Blackfeet as 
participated in by a white man who had the eye to see 
it and the hand to write it. We have expressed an 
opinion that this is one of the most intimate, and for 
that reason one of the most valuable, stories of Indian 
life ever put into print. It depicts the actual home life 
of the Rocky Mountain people in the old days. It gives 
us the Indian as he was, the Indian of fact, not the 
creation of romance nor yet the creature pictured by 
dread and hate ; but the real Indian man and woman 
and child as they lived their lives. 
It is a suggestive coincidence that in conjunction with 
this account of buffalo extirpation in the Southwest we 
should publish the communication from Mr. Baynes re- 
cording the movement to establish refuges for the buf- 
falo remnants now left to us, and promoting the activity 
of a society organized for the express purpose of buffalo 
preservation. 
Mr. Charles Cristadoro, of St. Paul, has giv'eii long, 
careful and intelligent study to the forestry conditions 
prevailing at the headwaters of the Mississippi, and 
whatever he writes on the subject is deserving of care- 
ful heed and special consideration. As Mr. Cristadoro 
well says, the matter of reforestation and drainage as 
applied to this district concerns not Minnesota alone 
but the nation. To permit what is urged by the selfish 
and traitorous schemers who would for their own indi- 
vidual aggrandizement procure the abandonment of the 
present system -would be an act of national folly. 
m 
The exposition given by the New England Forest, 
Fish and Game Association in Boston, beginning Dec. 
25, promises to be one of the most interesting of the 
exhibitions in this, line, .for which Bostoq ha§ wop pre- 
eminent credit, 
