Forest and Stream 
* •>' 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6 , 1909 . 
VOL. LXXII.—No. 6. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary. 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street. New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE HETCH-HETCHY PROJECT. 
The famous Yosemite National Park is threat¬ 
ened with a great danger. It is proposed, in 
order to secure an ample supply of water for 
the city of San Francisco, to dam the Hetch- 
Hetchy River and to throw back the water into 
the valley, submerging its entire floor and back¬ 
ing the water for nearly seven miles into the 
lower end of the Grand Canon of the Tuolumne. 
Obviously, this would destroy the valley for the 
very uses for which it was set apart as a national 
park—a pleasure ground for the benefit of the 
whole people. The scheme is meeting vigorous 
opposition. Men who for years have devoted 
much of their time to the effort to preserve 
some of the natural wonders of the United 
States untouched are making a strong fight 
against it. One of these men is John W. Noble, 
who many years ago, when Secretary of the In¬ 
terior, bore so splendid a part in protecting the 
Yellowstone National Park against the aggres¬ 
sions of speculators. Others are the veteran 
John Muir, always an enthusiast about the high 
sierras; Robert LInderwood Johnson, ever fore¬ 
most in good works, and many others. 
The city of San P'rancisco has long been striv¬ 
ing to get a grant to turn this valley into a 
reservoir for the storage of water, but Secre¬ 
tary of the Interior Hitchcock always declined 
to accede to the demand which, however, has 
just been granted by Secretary Garfield. It is 
an unfortunate thing when the greatest city of 
a great State endeavors to seize upon and divert 
from its purpose something that belongs to the 
whole people of the United States. Happily in 
California there is much diversity of opinion 
about this matter and Californians are joining 
with people all over the country to protest 
against this use of one of our few great National 
parks. 
The United States has few enough national 
parks at best, and those which it has have been 
secured only at the expense of great effort. They 
should not be interfered with unless some great 
public necessity should arise and in this case 
there is no such necessity. At present San 
Francisco uses 35,000,000 gallons of water per 
day and engineering experts declare that the 
present source of water supply could be de¬ 
veloped to over 100,000,000 per day. 
The destruction of this valley—beautiful as 
it is and dear as it is to all Californians and all 
lovers of the high mountains—is yet of minor 
importance compared with the danger to the 
whole American people threatened by Secretary 
Garfield’s action. If this scheme can be carried 
through, it is evident that no one of our national 
parks is safe. At any time manipulators or 
speculators are likely to bring forward a plau¬ 
sible reason for throwing open for utilitarian 
purposes any one of the few places that have 
been set aside for the public and that the public 
holds so dear. If the Hetch-Hetchy Valley is 
to be destroyed we may look after a while to 
see power houses built in the Grand Canon of 
the Yellowstone and the water of the falls used 
to run factories in the National Park. 
Though the public at large is stirred on this 
subject, the committee on public lands by a close 
vote has recently assented to this destruction. 
It is time that each reader should write to his 
congressman and protest against the turning over 
of this park, which belongs to the whole people, 
to the city of San Francisco. 
AMMUNITION, GUNS, SKILL. 
The list of averages, made at Interstate Asso¬ 
ciation tournaments in 1908, published in our 
trap department this week, is a forceful pre¬ 
sentation of the marvelous advance made by 
the manufacturers in the perfecting of guns and 
ammunition and the phenomenal skill in the-use 
of the shotgun attained by the many trapshooters 
domiciled everywhere throughout the Union.- 
It may safely be stated that, until a few years 
ago, performances so nearly approximating per¬ 
fection were of the things impossible of accom¬ 
plishment. It is not that, at some tournaments, 
high scores were not made in those bygone 
years, but that there was not the sustained effort 
and uniform accomplishment throughout a whole 
year. 
Under certain favorable conditions at one 
tournament it was not very unusual that some 
few contestants thereat should shoot perfectly; 
but it certainly is phenomenal that so vast a 
number should shoot through the year, in the 
cold and storms of winter, the heat of sum¬ 
mer, the sunshine, clouds and changes incident 
to shooting at tournaments in different locali¬ 
ties, east, west, north and south, with all the 
incidental changes of climate, food, water and 
social environment, and nevertheless in the grand 
total come so near perfection. Be the skill ever 
so perfect, the marvelous results set forth in 
the year’s averages are unattainable without the 
most perfect ammunition and guns. 
It should be noted that the minimum number 
of targets which might be shot at and recog¬ 
nized in the yearly averages by the association 
was fixed at 2,000 for amateurs and 5,000 for 
professionals. There were many thousands of 
contestants who shot at less than that number, 
and hundreds of them made very high averages, 
so that the list as published, great as it is, deals 
with only those of the many thousands who 
shot the most targets throughout the year, and 
whose performances therefore are the greatest 
absolutely. We commend an earnest study of 
the list to the public. 
THE TUMBLE-WEED STORM. 
To those who never sojourned in Western 
Kansas and Eastern Colorado in winter, the 
press reports of the invasion of the tumble-weed 
read like a fairy tale. Yet we have no reason 
to doubt the general accuracy of the dispatches. 
The plains were dry as only they can be after 
a long drouth. There was little or no snow to 
anchor or catch the weeds. A strong wind— 
elsewhere it would be called a gale—carried these 
curious Russian thistles from their moorings in 
the light soil, and by twos and threes they began 
to roll across the plains. Broken from its roots, 
the tumble weed is a wiry oval network of 
stems, ranging from a foot to two feet in length. 
So light is it that in a strong wind it rolls over 
and over, now bounding into the air as the wind 
increases, now rolling this way or that, whirl¬ 
ing, tossing like a live thing. Anon it brings up 
against another tumble weed, whose roots give 
way in a gust, and away both go, now side by 
side, now at diverging angles. 
Fancy looking across the plains when millions 
of these weird things are in motion. To watch 
them is to fancy the ground is also in motion; 
to walk to windward is a positive discomfort, 
since gale-driven weeds may bound against one’s 
hands or face with stinging force. Every wire 
fence has its hedge of massed weeds, every snow 
fence is choked with them, and more are wend¬ 
ing their erratic way to swell the number. Into 
the towns they go, to choke the streets and litter 
yards and parks. Railway cuts are filled with 
them, but more are constantly arriving. 
In the gale of last week the invasion of these 
thistles was remarkable in some of the Kansas 
towns. A heavy snowstorm would not have 
caused so much inconvenience and damage. 
Fences against which the weeds were massed 
deeply gave way, and travel was at a standstill 
while the wind prevailed. 
There are few things in nature more remark¬ 
able than this march of the tumble-weeds. 
In a short time we shall commence the pub¬ 
lication of a serial story entitled. “A Woman 
on the Trap Trail,” written by Margaret A. 
Ridley. With her husband, Mrs. Ridley lived 
from autumn until spring in a cabin in the Bitter 
Root Mountains in Idaho. Going there for his 
health, Mr. Ridley trapped fur-bearing animals 
while his wife assisted him at times. Her im¬ 
pressions of their life amid the snow during the 
long winter, during which they saw no other 
human beings, are described so vividly that the 
narrative will be read with deep interest. 
