Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY i, 1909. 
VOL. LXXII.—No. 18^ 
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. 
ANGLING PRECAUTIONS. 
The rarity of accidents to anglers in Ameri¬ 
can waters may cause the majority of them to 
give little thought to the possibility of such 
things when purchasing their fishing outfits or 
equipping themselves for a day on favorite trout 
or salmon stream. • 
In wading large brooks and streams it is the 
common practice for the angler, particularly in 
April and May, to equip himself somewhat as 
follows: A flannel shirt, warm trousers or 
knickerbockers and woollen stockings, over 
woollen underclothing; a waterproof jacket or 
coat, wading trousers or thigh-length wading 
stockings; over these another pair of wool 
stockings and hobnailed brogues. In a dry 
state all of these articles are heavy, but when 
saturated they are much more so. Add to 
these a creel, a landing net and other small 
things, light in weight but certain to hamper one 
in a fall, and the angler’s movements are not 
much more agile or graceful than those of a 
man in a diving suit. Add again the rod, which 
may be dropped readily enough, but which is 
the last thing to be cast aside in an emergency, 
and the possible danger of one’s position at times 
becomes apparent. 
A certain amount of weight is necessary in 
the equipment for early fishing. The air and 
the water are cold, and one moves so slowly 
that his circulation is not raised. The boots 
or brogues must be both stiff and heavy, for 
many steps are taken where it would be easy 
to sprain or break an ankle in light footwear, 
and the half-pound of nails is necessary to pre¬ 
vent slipping on mossy and slimy stones. 
Even in brooks the current in places is strong 
enough to give one who falls a moment of 
anxiety, while in streams there are rifts in 
which one would find it extremely difficult to 
regain his footing after a fall. Pools and 
swampy places need scarcely ' be considered, 
since the angler seldom ventures into them 
without testing the' footing, step by step, and 
if it is insecure there is no current to prevent 
him from backing out and trying a more favor¬ 
able place to enter. By some men wading staffs 
are employed, but other Anglers dislike the en¬ 
cumbrance. 
The recent drowning of Francis' M. Walbran 
in an English stream, and of Lieutenant Cook- 
son in Ireland, both encumbered with heavy 
gear, has brought home to the angling world 
the necessity for great care in wading, and the 
danger in encumbering oneself with articles that 
may hamper him if he loses his footing in swift 
water. To reduce the weight of wading equip¬ 
ment is difficult, but it is possible and advis¬ 
able to avoid all straps with old-fashioned 
buckles and other things that may prove trou¬ 
blesome in a mishap and to simplify things, so 
that tjie danger may be reduced to the minimum. 
Whatever the footwear may he, the soles and 
heels should be well protected with broad- 
jreaded nails, and these should be soft wrought 
iron and not steel. Iron will wear, but unlike 
steel, it will always grip stone and gravel, and 
will not wear smooth. 
AFRICAN HUNTING. 
The news of Col. Roosevelt’s arrival at his 
hunting ground in East Africa is of great in¬ 
terest to a multitude of his friends and ad¬ 
mirers. He has now reached a region where 
game is enormously abundant, and all the many 
species met with dre new to the American 
sportsman hunting for the first time in East 
Africa. The very abundance in numbers and 
species of the game may have tendency to les¬ 
sen in some degree the zest and interest which 
one feels in an ordinary big-game hunt. For in 
a hunting or a fishing trip, as indeed in many 
others of the affairs of life, the pleasure is 
usually in the anticipation—in speculating on the 
possibilities of success which the trip contains. 
The realization is the climax of all these dreams, 
and following the realization comes the reaction. 
The Roosevelt-Smithsonian expedition has 
been heralded as an expedition for sport, a mere 
hunting trip, an excursion for killing game. 
This idea, so sedulously cultivated by the news¬ 
papers, is quite erroneous. It is a natural his¬ 
tory collection expedition and one whose re¬ 
sults may be of great importance. 
True it is that among all the big game there 
are some species that are very wary and require 
careful and hard hunting, and others that are 
dangerous and oblige the hunter to keep his 
wits about him. The pursuit of such species 
will call forth all that hunting skill which Mr. 
Roosevelt so fully possesses. 
Few things are so interesting as to journey 
for a time among large wild animals with whose 
habits the traveler is not familiar, and Mr. 
Roosevelt, who is a keen observer and a good 
field naturalist, is to be congratulated on the 
satisfaction that he will have in observing these 
new species and studying their habits. Of the 
articles which he writes on his African trip it 
is probable that a large part will be devoted to ' 
observations such as these, and so will possess 
a keen interest and value for all naturalists. 
It will necessarily be some time before defi¬ 
nite accounts can be had of the operations of 
the Roosevelt-Smithsonian party. What they 
will meet with in their hunting of large and 
dangerous game is foreshadowed, however, in 
the series of chapters which Forest and Stream 
is now printing under the title, “The Journal 
of an Afrikander.” 
Here in America most of us think of Africa 
as a jungle, thorny, impenetrable, full of fero¬ 
cious beasts and assegai-armed natives always 
ready to punch the traveler full of large-sized 
holes, but the newspaper reports which come 
with a whoop and a hurrah from Mombasa, 
where Col. Roosevelt is hunting, tell of people 
traveling here and there in peace and comfort, 
riding on the cowcatcher of the locomotive en¬ 
gines or on tops of the cars, of hunting on this 
man’s ranch, or on that man’s ranch, and alto¬ 
gether it sounds about as tame and uninterest¬ 
ing as if one were out in Nebraska or Wyoming. 
Col. Roosevelt’s trip to Africa will unquestion¬ 
ably teach his fellow citizens something about 
African geography and perhaps something also 
about the fauna of Africa. The present genera¬ 
tion of reporters, however, is quite hopeless. 
After a thousand or fifteen hundred corrections 
the newspaper correspondents still insist that 
Mr. Roosevelt is to kill tigers. Within the year 
many people will learn much about Africa. 
New York State is to have a game bird 
propagating farm. Mr. Hamilton’s Assembly 
bill has been passed by both branches of the 
Legislature and signed by Governor Hughes, 
and as Commissioner Whipple is granted twelve 
thousand dollars with which to carry on the 
work as well as to establish the farm, it is likely 
that little time will he lost. The act is now in 
effect. The money is to be taken from the fund 
collected for shooting licenses, and everything 
is left to the discretion of Commissioner Whip¬ 
ple. It is the intention to distribute mature 
game birds with which to restock the covers 
of the Empire State. There is nothing in the act 
which directs what sort of game birds are to 
be secured, but it is probable that ruffed grouse 
and quail will be the favorites. Not many Hun¬ 
garian partridges have as yet been introduced 
into this State, but the attention which has been 
drawn to them has resulted in orders from in¬ 
dividuals here and there, and it is believed these 
birds will thrive well. 
K 
In a short time there will appear in these 
columns a charming story of duck shooting on 
the Great Lake marshes, by Miss Paulina 
Brandreth. It is one of the best she has ever 
written and is in part the result of careful study 
of the boatmen of that region. 
