Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. { 
Six Months, $1.50. 
Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1906. 
( VOL. LXVII.—No. 1. 
I No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
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 
Objects. Announcement in first number of 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14,1873. 
TO WEEKLY PURCHASERS. 
Owing to a change in the method of distribut¬ 
ing the Forest and Stream, readers who are ac¬ 
customed to purchase the paper of newsdealers, 
at news stands, in book shops, and elsewhere, 
are advised to leave with the dealer from whom 
they buy a standing advance order to supply them 
regularly. If any reader has difficulty in pro¬ 
curing the paper, he is requested to communicate 
with the publishers. 
FEDERAL PROTECTION FOR THE SHAD. 
In another column is printed a review of the 
depletion and destruction of the shad fisheries. 
The figures are from official sources and are 
authoritative. They show an alarming condition. 
It is a story of amazing folly and exhibits a 
most anomalous condition. The Government pro¬ 
vides the fish and stocks the waters with them. 
The State receives the fish, but does not give them 
reasonable protection. The Government hatches 
the fish and puts them out, but is powerless to 
protect them after turning them over to the 
State. As it furnishes the men and the money 
and the brains to produce the fish, logically it 
should have the authority to control the fishing. 
If Maryland and Pennsylvania and New York 
and New Jersey will not give the fish reasonable 
protection, why should not the duty be entrusted 
to the National Government? 
We come then to the solution of the problem 
which is offered by Mr. Shiras, which is Federal 
control of the fisheries of public waters and of 
migratory species. 
All the States of the Union contribute to the 
support of the Bureau of Fisheries. It is in 
equity due every State in the Union that the 
products which result from the enterprise it has 
helped to support should be conserved by agents 
of all the States in common. 
A law of Congress framed as it would be 
framed on advice of the experts of the Fisheries 
Bureau would embody in its provisions the fruits 
of the ripest knowledge and a spirit of legislating 
for the greatest good of all concerned. No one 
can question that the experts of the Bureau of 
Fisheries are the persons who should be con¬ 
sulted on the making of laws; the best equipped 
by knowledge of the subject, freedom from the 
hampering of local interests, independence of 
politics, and by their interest in the great con¬ 
cerns committed to their care. Moreover, Federal 
authority has respect and efficiency where State 
authority—which may mean only local county, 
town or ward authority—is held in contempt. If 
given jurisdiction over the shad fisheries, the 
United States would protect them effectually. 
If there is any justice in taxing the people of 
the country year after year to propagate fish to 
be given over to individual States, it would seem 
to follow as demanded in equity that the people 
who pay the taxes shall have the right to pro¬ 
vide that the fruits of their bounty are not 
wantonly wasted. Put concretely, if the States 
supply the shad, the States should see to it that 
the shad are protected. This at least is common 
sense. It would give us protection. Under the 
existing system we do not have protection. The 
statistics we have quoted prove as much. 
It must be remembered that this subject of 
fish protection is no new thing. It has been tried 
out now for so long a time that the working of 
the present system has been thoroughly demon¬ 
strated. The decline of our food fisheries on the 
Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Great Lakes 
under State administration has proved the failure 
of the system. Even were we to concede this to 
be not a matter of Federal authority, is there at 
stake any principle of constitutional jurisdiction, 
the maintenance of which principle can compen¬ 
sate for the millions of dollars lost to the par¬ 
ticular States concerned by reason of their own 
inefficiency as fish protectors? De we want the 
jealous holding out for State’s rights even to the 
vanishing of the last fin of the last shad, or do 
we want the shad? 
THE EAGLE AND THE SUN. 
The notion referred to in an inquiry in our 
natural history columns, that the eagle fixes its 
unflinching gaze full at the sun, is an interesting 
survival from long ago. It dates from a period 
when respecting natural history subjects the 
world held many beliefs which have long since 
been relegated to the limbo of the false and the 
grotesque. We may readily understand how the 
eagle’s great size and power and its majestic 
flight in the heavens must have impressed man¬ 
kind in a simple and less coldly scientific age than 
ours, and may very well have prompted the 
ascription of fabulous attributes to the bird. The 
eagle’s eye is piercing and commanding; it is 
undaunted even in captivity; and this intensity 
of gaze may readily enough have given rise to 
the belief that it could withstand even the sun’s 
fierce blaze. In one of the old authorities on 
natural history is a curious passage, describing 
the mother eagle’s testing of her young by the 
ordeal of the sun. “Before that her little ones 
bee feathered,” he writes, “she will beat and 
strike them with her wings, and thereby force 
them to looke full against the sunne beames. 
Now if shee see any one of them to winke or 
their eies to water at the raies of the sunne shee 
turnes it with the head foremost out of the nest 
as a bastard and none of hers, but bringeth up 
and cherisheth that whose eie will abide the light 
of the sunne as she looketh directly upon him.” 
A kindred belief about the eagle was that when 
it became old it had the power of rejuvenescence 
by bathing in a pure spring, and then, ascending 
high in the air, drying out in the heat of the sun. 
It was to this that the familiar passage of Milton 
had reference: 
“Methinks I see in my mind a noble and 
puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man 
after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: Me¬ 
thinks I see her as an eagle mewing [renewing] 
her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes 
at the full midday beam; purging and unsealing 
her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of 
heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of 
timorous and flocking birds, with those also that 
love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what 
she means, and in their envious gabble would 
prognosticate a year of sects and schisms.” 
BULL BAT AND BOLL WEEVIL. 
The killing of the nighthawk, commonly known 
as bull bat, is practiced largely in the Southern 
States where the bird is eaten for food; and large 
numbers also have been destroyed by gunners 
who have used the bird only for a target, to test 
their skill or to acquire proficiency in wing shoot¬ 
ing. It is not unfitting then that in the South 
should be discovered a new economic reason for 
the bull bat’s immunity. The agents of the 
Biological Survey who have been studying the 
relation of birds to the cotton boll weevil have 
secured data which lead them to conclude that 
the bull bat is one of the most important enemies 
of the pest. In view of their importance as insect 
destroyers, the report urges, nighthawks should 
at all times be rigidly protected. 
It looked once as if Texas and other weevil- 
infested States might be asked to class the quail 
with other insect eaters and give it protection as 
a special ally of the cotton grower. The investi¬ 
gations of the Survey, however, have not tended 
to show that Bob White is so much of a weevil 
destroyer as has been reputed. The ground¬ 
feeding habits of quail, says the report now before 
us, make it practically certain that few if any 
boll weevils are taken by them in summer, though 
there is a possibility that more extended study 
may show that they feed on the weevil between 
January and June. 
The flashlight of a drinking deer was taken 
by Hon. George Shiras, 3d, one July night, on 
Whitefish Lake, Michigan. The deer was known 
to be there before the camera was snapped, but 
the presence of the porcupine was unsuspected 
until the flash revealed it. This is the sixth 
picture in our series of wild game photos by Mr. 
Shiras; the preceding ones have been printed in 
the issues of Feb. 3, April 3, March 7, May 5 
and June 2, of this year. 
K 
The photographs which make up a story with¬ 
out words of a goat hunt in British Columbia 
are from the camera of Mr. Henry Sampson, Jr., 
of this c'ty. They give a graphic picturing of 
what was a most delightful excursion in a country 
inviting to mountain climbing. 
