80 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July 19, 1913 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
Charles Otis, President. 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. W. J. Gallagher, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENOE— Forest and Stream is the 
recognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in¬ 
formation between American sportsmen. The editors 
invite communications on the subjects to which its pages 
are devoted, but, of course, are not responsible for the 
views of correspondents. Anonymous communications 
eannot be regarded. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3 a year; $1.50 for six months; 
10 cts. a copy. Canadian, $4 a year; foreign, $4.50 a year. 
This paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States. Canada and Great Britain. Foreign 
Subscription and Sales Agents—London: Davies & Co., 
1 Finch Lane; Sampson, Low & Co. Paris: Brentano’s. 
ADVERTISEMENTS: Display and classified, 20 cts. 
per agate line ($2.80 per inch). There are 14 agate lines to 
the inch. Covers and special positions extra. Five, 
ten and twenty per cent, discount for 13, 26 and 52 inser¬ 
tions, respectively, within one year. Forms close Monday 
in advance of publication date. 
Entered as second-class matter at the Post-Office, 
New York, N. Y. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
SPORT OR SPORTSMAN? 
A correspondent remarks: “Allow me to 
say here, what I have often thought of saying 
before, that I have read your journal the last 
fourteen years with ever increasing interest. It 
is the best sporting (I hate that word) paper 
in the world.” 
We appreciate quite fully our correspond¬ 
ent’s dislike of the term “sporting.” It has an 
equivocal meaning; it is in bad odor. The ex¬ 
pression as used to-day is very comprehensive. 
The “sporting news” of the daily paper includes 
reports of prize fights and the doings and mis¬ 
doings of gamblers, blacklegs, bunco steerers 
and thieves. There is no reason to marvel that 
a gentleman of respectable standing in a staid 
New England town should shrink from being 
known as a “sporting man.” The odium of 
“sporting” has troubled many others, because 
the recreation of shooting and angling have been 
in popular parlance classed under that same head. 
Our correspondent is, however, needlessly 
annoyed by the improper use of the word in 
the connection in which it is employed in his 
letter. We beg to assure him and everyone else 
that Forest and Stream is not a “sporting 
paper.” Its publishers and editors make no claim 
that it is. Some of the vilest sheets indecently 
exposed on the news-stands do make that claim, 
and for all that we know they are perfectly 
justified in so doing. 
Our dislike of the word “sporting” is not 
a whim nor an idle sentiment. It has a sub¬ 
stantial basis. The adjective has been to us an 
expensive one. It has cost us much in two ways. 
The first item in the count against it is the 
revenue it has cut off and now cuts off. Scores 
and hundreds of people who do not read Forest 
and Stream would become subscribers if they 
had not misunderstood the true character of the 
journal by confounding it with the “sporting 
papers.” 
We have been fighting that popular error 
for years, and we shall probably be obliged to 
keep up the fight for a very long time to come. 
The second item in the account is the consider¬ 
able sum put into advertising that Forest and 
Stream is not a “sporting paper.” We believe 
in advertising, and do not in the least begrudge 
the sums expended to let the world know what 
kind of a paper we are making; we do complain 
of the necessity of constantly reiterating what 
kind of a paper we are not making. 
There is a vast distinction between a “sport¬ 
ing paper” and a “sportsman’s paper.” 
THE LOADED GUN IN THE HOUSE. 
A loaded gun in the house is an instrument 
of harm. It is ever waiting for some one to 
set it off and do the injury. Sometimes it goes 
off by itself. The house of a Long Island clergy¬ 
man was destroyed by fire not long ago, and the 
fire was caused by the falling of a loaded gun 
from its rack on the wall and the consequent 
explosion. In a murder trial in the South the 
accused was acquitted when his counsel demon¬ 
strated this combination of circumstances; the 
person killed had been at the time of his death 
lying on a lounge. A muzzleloading rifle had 
hung on the wall so disposed that it was aimed 
directly at the lounge, and this rifle had been 
kept loaded. A mirror had reflected the sun¬ 
light and concentrated it as a burning glass upon 
the priming cap of the rifle and had caused the 
discharge which had killed the victim. The 
thing was proved possible by an actual experi¬ 
mental test, in which the discharge of the arm 
was brought about in the manner described. 
If loaded firearms in the house are danger¬ 
ous when let alone, they are a hundred times 
more dangerous because of the meddling pro¬ 
pensities of human nature. The combination of 
gun and charge is always ready for the chance 
handler who did not know it was loaded. In 
a village in Western New York the other day 
a five-year-old child and her uncle were in a 
room together, when the uncle took up a gun 
which he did not know was loaded, and in hand¬ 
ling discharged it, shooting the child’s legs off 
and killing her. The incident belongs to a type 
which is so common that its relation here would 
be without purpose, did it not give an oppor¬ 
tunity to direct attention to the responsibility 
of those unthinking persons who provide the 
means for the didn’t-know-it-was-loaded shooters 
to do their fell work. The ‘ immediate active 
agent in blotting out the life of a beloved child 
stands not alone in the responsibility for the dis¬ 
tressing casualty. Another must share with him 
the awful burden. That other one is the person 
who kept the loaded gun, who maintained the 
engine of destruction ever ready to work its 
disaster. If the owner of the gun had adopted 
the simple precaution of taking out the charge 
before standing the arm in the corner, his home 
would not have been darkened with this great 
sorrow. The teaching of the incident is this: 
If you have a loaded gun standing in the corner 
or hanging on the rack, take out the charge. 
Remove from your own home at least the pos¬ 
sibility of a disaster for which you would have 
to share with the didn’t-know-it-was-loaded 
shooter the responsibility. 
In the old days when loading a gun was a 
complicated operation of measured powder and 
shot charges, wadding and ramrod, there may 
have been some excuse for keeping a charge in 
a gun, but under present conditions, when to 
load is the work of a second, and to remove 
the charge is equally simple and expeditious, 
there can be absolutely no excuse for the loaded 
gun in the home. 
ANOTHER FORWARD STEP. 
The passage by the Senate of Senator Geo. 
P. McLean’s resolution, authoriizng the Presi¬ 
dent to negotiate with the governments of other 
countries for a convention to consider the pro¬ 
tection and preservation of birds, is another long 
step forward in behalf of the farmer, the sports¬ 
man, and the conservationist. 
When efforts were being made to secure 
the enactment of the Weeks-McLean law, which 
should place all migratory birds in charge of the 
Federal Government, Senator Root, of New 
York, introduced a resolution of this tenor, but 
it was not acted on at that sessoin of Congress. 
Senator McLean introduced a similar reso¬ 
lution at the special session, and that has now 
passed. It will presently be in order for the 
President to take the steps necessary to bring 
this matter to the attention of other govern¬ 
ments. 
The birds of North America chiefly interest 
us here, and it is in North America that results 
may first be hoped for. From the Gulf of 
Mexico to the Arctic a strong interest in this 
matter is already felt, and in the British Prov¬ 
inces there exists a feeling quite as strong as 
in the United States. It is hardly to be doubted, 
therefore, that these two great countries will 
readily get together, and the Latin-American re¬ 
publics of the South, and France, Holland and 
Denmark will no doubt feel sufficient interest in 
the matter to send delegates to such a convention. 
It is gratifying to witness the constantly 
growing interest in bird protection, and to feel 
that the long years of wearing effort expended 
in urging its importance have not been wasted. 
It is now nearly thirty years since Forest and 
Stream first called attention to the economic 
dangers likely to follow the destruction of our 
native birds, and nearly as long since it set on 
foot the establishment of the Audubon Societies, 
which after various ups and downs have at 
length become a great force in the land. So 
many years were needed to awaken the busy, 
selfish American public to the importance of pre¬ 
serving the forests and the birds. All this work 
has been done during the lifetime, and by the 
aid of Forest and Stream, and within the life¬ 
time of Charles Hallock, the founder of Forest 
and Stream. 
SINGLETON■ VAN SCHAICK. 
All the world loves a sportsman and so in 
like measure all sportsmen mourn the loss of a 
brother. A fair man and an excellent example 
of what a true sportsman should be was Single- 
ton Van Schaick, notice of whose death comes 
to us as we go to press. 
Mr. Van Schaick as a devotee of rod, gun, 
dog and horse has done much for sport, and will 
be missed by a host of friends. He died in 
Pelham, N. Y., July 13, 1913, at the age of 
thirty-eight. 
