Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1909. 
VOL. LXXII.—No. 9u 
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 Franklm 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 CALAVERAS BIG TREES. 
At last, after years of effort, the bill to pro¬ 
tect the Calaveras big trees and to make them 
a part of the national forests has passed the 
House of Representatives and has already been 
signed by the President. This bill, drawn by 
Mr. Perkins, of California, was first presented 
in the Senate about four years ago, and the 
matter had been agitated for some years be¬ 
fore that. The nation owes the salvation of 
this grove largely to the patience and broad¬ 
mindedness of the Minnesota ''lumber king,” 
who has long owned them and has held them 
uncut, waiting for Congress to act in the mat¬ 
ter. It is a question whether he would have 
waited much longer. The bill provides that 
this owner shall receive from the ‘‘unappro¬ 
priated public domain” timber of value equal 
to this grove. 
The giant sequoias of California are the 
oldest living things upon the globe. They come 
of a race which, according to the calculations 
of the geologists, was well developed ten mil¬ 
lions of years ago. The family w^as a large 
one, once distributed throughout the northern 
hemisphere as far as Southern Europe, but only 
two species now remain, the redwood, so abund¬ 
ant in the coast mountains, and a few isolated 
groups of the giant sequoia. In some of these 
groves the tree reproduces itself, wdiile in others 
it has ceased to reproduce. 
The most astonishing thing about these trees 
—far more imposing than their enormous size 
—is the great age of those living in California 
to-day. John Muir declares that one of these 
trees, the rings of which he has counted, was 
a thousand years old when Homer w'rote the 
Iliad, and two thousand 3'ears of age when 
Christ walked upon the earth. Thus these liv¬ 
ing trees are far older than our civilization. 
It is the boast of a certain class of Ameri¬ 
cans that they are practical, which too often 
means that they think of nothing save their own 
personal advantage. They would turn the most 
curious and beautiful works of nature to their 
own money-getting advantage, make a water¬ 
power out of the Yellowstone Falls, build laun- 
dreys over the geysers, and convert the giant 
sequoias into lumber. The IMinnesota lumber 
king is not of these and happily there is an 
ever increasing class of our people whose views 
are broader than this, and who believe in pro¬ 
tecting the natural things of the land. They 
will keenly rejoice that the Calaveras big trees 
are saved. 
CONNECTICUT WILDFOWL. 
Reports from Connecticut refer to a proposed 
movement so to amend the game laws as to 
permit the shooting of wildfowl up to the first 
of March in each year. It is said that on the north 
shore of Long Island Sound ducks were never 
so abundant as at present. Black ducks, broad- 
bills, scoters and old squaws are presenting 
themselves in tantalizing alnmdance, which seems 
too much for the self control of certain Con¬ 
necticut gunners, who feel that they should have 
an opportunity to reduce the numbers of the 
birds. 
After all the melancholy prophecies that we 
have been hearing for the last twenty-five years 
about the reduction in the numbers of our wild¬ 
fowl, and the approach of the time. when there 
shall be no ducks at all, it is cheering at last 
to learn of one spot where there are really too 
many birds. Not so cheering—but interesting 
as an example of human nature—is it to learn 
that, because of this abundance, gunners are' 
anxious to do away with the very cause of the 
abundance. 
Of course the abolition of spring shooting in 
Connecticut has had very little to do with the 
abundance of birds there, but the cutting off of 
spring shooting in various provinces of Canada, 
and in a number of the Northern States, has 
had much to do with this increase. Fewer birds 
have been killed during the open season, and so 
more have been allowed to hatch and rear their 
young. Moreover, in a number of the States, 
as in some of the provinces of eastern Canada, 
and last summer in Connecticut, birds have been 
permitted to remain undisturbed in localities 
where, before spring shooting was stopped, they 
were chased about with guns as soon as they 
made their appearance in the late winter or early 
spring. Last summer correspondents reported 
in these columns that on some of the Con¬ 
necticut rivers black ducks bred where they are 
not known to have bred for years before and 
told of the breeding last year of woodducks in 
localities where none have been seen for a 
decade. 
Connecticut sportsmen will make a great mis¬ 
take if they permit the thoughtless clamor of 
a few selfish persons to affect the present ex¬ 
cellent law. The very fact that more ducks than 
usual are seen this j'ear ought to be a motive 
to induce the better observance of the existing 
law. When the time shall come that spring 
shooting is frowned upon in all the Northern 
States it will be time to try to see that the 
shooting seasons in the South are made shorter. 
Washington’s birthday in New York city and 
its vicinity was a balmy spring day on which 
the songs of robins and the merry cackle of 
blackbirds were heard here and there. There 
w'as no frost in the ground. Indeed, at no time 
during the winter was the ground frozen to a 
depth of more than a few inches. Although the 
Hudson River was frozen over as far south as 
the Tappan Zee, and drift ice was seen occas¬ 
ionally as far down as Grant’s tomb, in the 
harbor there w'ere only two days when any float¬ 
ing ice was seen, and this was merely soft ice 
that had formed over night. 
A BILL which has been introduced into both 
branches of the California Legislature is said 
to be a substitute plan for the Hetch-Hetchy 
project, to which so much opposition has been 
raised throughout the country. By the provis¬ 
ions of this bill the property of one of the San 
Francisco water companies can be taken over by 
the city, thus insuring an ample supply of water 
without endangering Yosemite National Park. 
It is said, however, that this water company is 
not anxious to dispose of its holdings and fran¬ 
chise, and a solution of the present tangle is not 
at all clear. 
K 
It seems that Louisville, Ky., is certain to 
have a museum of arts and sciences. The plan 
and scope of this proposed institution are re¬ 
viewed in another column, but a meeting was 
held ear!}' this week at which the initial steps 
were taken. Kentucky’s relics of pioneer days, 
trophies of Indian wars and of the hunting field, 
and the literary products of her many illus¬ 
trious sons will, if gathered under one roof, 
form a collection men will travel far to see. 
In a suit against the smelter interests for 
pollution of a stream, the court has decided in 
favor of the smelters. Hugh Magone, a ranch¬ 
man of Deer Lodge, Mont., brought suit in the 
Federal District Court against the Amalgamated 
Copper interests, alleging that tailings dumped 
into a stream which flows through his ranch 
damaged his property. He asked for damages 
and an injunction. The court awarded $1,726 
damages, but denied the injunction. 
•5 
In addition to its present plantation, the Penn¬ 
sylvania railway is arranging to plant 200,000 
red oak trees in Pennsylvania. These, with the 
300 acres of locust trees already established, are 
intended for cross-tie material in the future. 
The .A.pache Chief, Geronimo, who died at 
Fort Sill, Oklahoma, on Feb. 17, was about 
eighty years of age. Some forty years of his 
life were passed in more or less active war¬ 
fare, and the last twenty as a Federal prisoner. 
