254 
FOREST AND STREAM 
June, 1921 
FORESTandSTREAM 
FORTY-NINTH YEAR 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
ADVISORY BOARD 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, NEW YORK, N. Y. 
CARL E. AKELEY; American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
EDM UND HELLER, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D, C. 
WILFRED H. OSGOOD, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 111. 
JOHN M, PHILLIPS. Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SHELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3d, Washington, D. C. 
JOHN T, NICHOLS, American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
JOHN P. HOLMAN, Managing Editor 
TOM WOOD, Business Manager 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor rec- 
reation, and a refined taste for natural objects. 
August 14, 1873. 
STICK TO THE JOB 
■W/HEN, about a year ago, public attention was 
vv called to the attacks being made on the na- 
tional parks, it was urged that the people at large 
should be told of these attacks and given the op- 
portunity to express their views about them. Then, 
if the public did not care enough about its parks to 
object to their appropriation for commercial pur- 
poses, that was the public’s own business; but, it 
was insisted, the American people — the owners of 
the parks — should not be deprived of their posses- 
sions without some warning. They were entitled 
to the opportunity to protest against having their 
property taken from them. 
Soon after this, certain public-spirited associa- 
tions and individuals took up the matter and began 
to explain to people all over the country the dan- 
gers that threatened the parks. These associations 
worked well together. There was fine team work; 
the newspapers helped to spread the alarm and, as 
people began to learn what was going on, men and 
women all over the United States voiced their sense 
of ownership in the national parks and. their inten- 
tion of retaining that ownership. 
This clear expression of the popular will had its 
effect on Congress, secured the passage of the Jones 
Bill, and prevented consideration of the two other 
measures which most directly threatened the Yel- 
lowstone Park. It has saved the parks from cer- 
tain dangers to which they might have been exposed 
at the hands of a commission of three cabinet offi- 
cers, whose vast powers in this matter might in 
turn be handed over to the decision of a single exec- 
utive secretary. 
For the moment the national parks seem to be 
safe; but only for the moment. It is not to be 
imagined that the eager commercialists who wish 
to secure something for nothing — the property of 
the public for their own private uses — will cease 
their efforts. The public must still be on the alert 
to protect its own. 
THE USE OF EYES 
T 1 HE frequent statements as to the difficulty of 
A seeing wild animals made by travelers who are 
not hunters do not necessarily mean much. The 
true savages such as the Bushmen of south-western 
Africa, who depend on their eyesight for a living, 
see so clearly that no color or combination of colors 
could conceal from their view any of the animals 
on which they prey. While a white hunter can 
never become as keen sighted as a Bushman, yet 
after a few years spent in hunting, his eyes will 
nevertheless greatly improve in power. 
It is certain that by practice in looking for game 
the white man will learn to know what to look for 
and will learn to distinguish wild animals from 
other natural objects. Even without any improve- 
ment of eyesight, but by a more widely extended 
knowledge of the objects which come under his eye, 
the hunter recognizes that he is looking at an ani- 
mal, and not at a rock, a weathered log or a shadow 
on the hillside. That the eyes of the savage are 
more useful in the open than those of the civilized 
man may be at once acknowledged, and this is be- 
cause his eyesight is better. Since childhood he 
has been using his eyes in the open and always at 
varying distances, and he is looking at things that 
he has seen perhaps a thousand times, and with 
whose appearance at all distances he is familiar. 
Some years ago a white man, hunting wild sheep 
in Lower California with a Cocopah, observed that 
the eyesight of the Indian seemed about equal to 
his own, supplemented by a pair of good field 
glasses. That the training of human vision can be 
improved by practice is quite certain, but it seems 
unfair to measure human vision by the degenerate 
powers of the civilized man, who uses his eyes only 
at short distances, and, besides, strains them by 
all sorts of excessive work at those short distances. 
AN ALLEGANY STATE PARK 
'T'HE passing years witness a gratifying and in- 
1 creasing interest in the park movement — the 
protection of waste places which may be trans- 
formed into grounds devoted to recreation and 
study by the general public. The whole-hearted- 
ness with which men, women and children have 
taken hold of the effort to defend for the whole 
public the national parks that are scattered 
through the West, bears witness to this interest. 
Another evidence of it is the effort now being made 
in the western part of New York State to set aside 
a large tract of waste land for the benefit of the 
public of Buffalo, Rochester and other important 
manufacturing towns in that part of the state. 
These communities, which comprise a population 
of more than a million and a half, have now no 
conveniently accessible park. 
It is not to be expected that every family should 
have a public park at its own door; but in these 
days, seventy-five or a hundred miles count for but 
little, and many inhabitants of Buffalo might, on a 
Saturday, load the family and a camp outfit into an 
antomobile and, in a few hours, find themselves in 
actually wild territory. The place chosen for the 
Allegany State Park — so-called — is near Sala- 
manca, New York, in a rough, hilly tract enclosed 
by the bend of the Allegheny River and the Penn- 
sylvania State Line. It is thought possible that 
some of the people of Pennsylvania may interest 
themselves in this project and may seek from the 
State of Pennsylvania legislation which will set 
