Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $1.50. 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1906. 
( VOL. LXVII.—No. 2. 
1 No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
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. 
BRITISH COLUMBIA GAME. 
The Province of British Columbia, which ex¬ 
tends from the crest of the Rocky Mountains to 
the Pacific ocean, and from the United Stales 
boundary line to< Alaska and the Arctic regions, 
is the best big game country that is left in North 
America. It is a region of tall rough mountains, 
drained by great rivers and dotted by a multitude 
of beautiful lakes. Within its boundaries are 
still to be found all the great game of the North 
that ever has inhabited it—moose, elk, caribou, 
several forms of wild sheep and of deer, and bears 
in unknown numbers, and as yet .of unknown 
species. Here may still be found nature un¬ 
marred. Except along the railroads and the 
rivers, British Columbia is not a land of great 
conveniences of travel, and it is for this very 
reason that game may still be found there. Some 
of the joys of travel here were illustrated re¬ 
cently in the Forest and Stream, in the Land of 
Up and Down. 
Here, so soon as one leaves the beaten track, 
he is obliged to travel by the slow methods of 
the good old times, and pack train and saddle 
horse and canoe are the only means of getting 
about over much of the country, though there 
are many wide stretches of territory where there 
are good wagon roads. On the other hand, rail¬ 
road building is going forward in this country; 
new lines have been surveyed and will soon be 
constructed, and as the roads go forward, the 
game will be driven back. 
The residents of British Columbia have at last 
come to appreciate the value to them of their 
wonderful game supply, and the report for the 
year 1905, recently issued by Mr. A. Bryan 
Williams, the Provincial game warden, points 
out in a very distinct and broad-minded way, the 
importance of preserving this game as long as 
possible. The Provincial Legislature has hitherto 
been slow to appropriate money for looking after 
the game over this vast territory, but energetic and 
far-sighted private individuals, who have associated 
themselves together as Game Protective Asso¬ 
ciations, have furnished Mr. Williams with several 
unsalaried assistants, whom they paid themselves. 
The publication of his recent report has resulted 
in the appointment of several additional salaried 
assistants paid by the Government. From all over 
the Province come reports which say that game 
is now more plentiful and less wild than for 
several years, and by means of his enlarged force 
the game warden has been enabled to put almost 
an entire stop to the spring and summer killing 
of game by the Indians. The prospects for game 
protection and game endurance in British Colum¬ 
bia seem bright. 
LONG ISLAND JACK RABBITS. 
At intervals of about four years, the Long- 
Island farmer comes to the front and asks for 
sympathy. His customary plaint is that he is 
oppressed and deprived of his rights and his 
cabbages by sundry wild beasts, which are main¬ 
tained, much to his distress and loss, for the sole 
benefit of those idle fellows known as sports¬ 
men. Just now, the- wail is about the rabbits— 
jack rabbits and little rabbits; and the spokes¬ 
man for the Long Islanders is the Practical Far¬ 
mer, which is published in Philadelphia, but has 
a heart of brotherly love which extends to agri¬ 
culturists in distress wherever found. As the 
Farmer paints the situation in an editorial para¬ 
graph quoted on another page, an importation of 
jack rabbits, which were introduced by sports¬ 
men, have become a pest and are devouring crops, 
while the land owners are forbidden by law to 
molest the vermin, but must stand idly by in 
despair, and see their cabbages disappear; for 
under the game laws, according to- the Practical 
Farmer, they cannot shoot them. Such a state of 
affairs, it must be conceded by every fair-minded 
man, violates justice, is not short of an outrage, 
and is not to be endured. The judicious will not 
grieve over it, however, until they shall have in¬ 
quired whether the story is true as printed, or 
wdiether the woes of the Long Islanders may not 
exist only in the lively and sympathetic imagina¬ 
tion of the editor of the Practical Farmer. The 
cold fact is, that the Long Islander may on the 
instant take arms against his sea of trouble, 
and no law human nor divine will say him nay, 
nor living man nor dead ghost stand in his way. 
He is free to do to the rabbits whatever he will; 
he may even accumulate explosives and blow up 
the jacks as Farmer Horner the other day blew 
up the kangaroo. 
As told in the press dispatches last Monday, 
Joseph Horner of Millsborough, Pa., had on his 
farm an unique rock, which was covered with 
chiseled snake and animals, including a kan¬ 
garoo, and was invested with much mystery as to 
its origin and purpose. It was known far and 
wide as the Indian Altar Stone. The people 
came to visit it. and incidentally to trample the 
Horner crops, leave down the bars and let the 
cattle into the corn, pull down the stone walls, 
and in general conduct themselves in the thought¬ 
less way of ill-bred city folks in the country. The 
Millsborough man stood it as long as he could, 
then the other day he invested in a stick of dyna¬ 
mite, and blew the altar and the snake and the 
kangaroo into atoms. It was the simple and final 
thing to do. Farmer Horner may now grow his 
crops in peace. 
The Long Island landowners are as welcome tc 
adopt summary methods to abate the rabbit nuis¬ 
ance, if there be any. The game law expressl> 
declares as much. It provides as to hares and- 
rabbits that nothing in this “section shall pre¬ 
vent the owner of inclosed or occupied farm land 
from taking hares or rabbits on his own premises 
at any time to prevent the injuring of property. 
The law in Pennsylvania, where the Practical 
Farmer is published, is quite as explicit. It says 
that “nothing in this act or existing laws shall 
be so construed as to prevent owners, tenants, or 
their employees, to kill or destroy fruit-eating and 
grain-devouring birds, or squirrels in the act of 
destroying fruits or cereals. It shall be lawful 
for the owner or lessee of any real estate in this 
State to kill, or have killed by any employee or 
member of his family, on his certain premises, 
any hare or rabbit at any time, as a protection to 
cultivated crops, or trees; but for no other pur¬ 
poses.” 
THE WICHITA REFUGE. 
The appropriation in the Agricultural Bill of 
the sum of $15,000 to fence a buffalo- pasture in 
the Wichita Forest Reserve, points—as elsewhere 
told—to the establishment this year in Oklahoma, 
of an independent herd of buffalo belonging to 
the Government. 
It has long been known that the New York 
Zoological Society stood ready to present to the 
Government a herd of buffalo just as soon as 
the Government was ready to accept them, and 
had a place to put them. The Agricultural De¬ 
partment accepted the buffalo on these conditions, 
and last autumn Mr. J. Alden Loring was sent 
out to the Wichita Reserve by the Zoological So¬ 
ciety, to look it over and select a location for the 
pasture, so that there might be no delay when the 
appropriation for fencing it should be passed. 
Mr. Loring made careful examination of the res¬ 
ervation, and chose about twelve sections lying in 
the west central portion of the reserve, about 
twenty-four miles west of Fort Still, and twelve 
miles northwest of the town of Cache. 1 he range 
is well watered and well grassed and has some 
small oak timber on it. 
Not only is it suitable for buffalo, but it is an 
excellent range for elk, antelope, deer, wild tui- 
keys and many lesser birds. It is conceivable 
that in this Wichita buffalo pasture, we may be¬ 
fore long have a good sized park, which may be¬ 
come in a sense an educational center for the 
people of the Southwest, as the Yellowstone Park 
is one for the people of the Northwest. While 
the park is as yet only in the future, the steps 
that have been taken toward establishing it, and 
stocking it, should encourage those interested 
in our great and small game to work harder than 
ever in behalf of the establishment of other game 
refuges. 
