Forest and Stream 
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NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1909. 
i VOL. LXXIL—No. 19,. 
I 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 SNAIL AND THE LAW. 
France is not the only country where the 
toothsome snail is used for food, but it is per¬ 
haps the only one in which the general govern¬ 
ment has issued opinions and made rulings about 
this delicacy. 
The snail is not commonly regarded as a game 
animal. Hunters do not lie in wait to get a 
shot at him with a rifle, nor are dogs trained 
to point him so that the user of the shotgun 
may have due warning before he flushes. Packs 
of hounds followed by riders mounted on sleek- 
coated hunters never, or almost never, pursue 
the snail over flowery meads or through som¬ 
bre forests. The Game Laws in Brief says 
nothing about the open season for snails, nor 
whether they may be shot only with a gun held 
to the shoulder. 
There are those who believe that this neglect 
has done a grievous injustice to the delicate 
creature which so many love, and last year this 
feeling found expression in France—land of 
good manners and refinement—where, in the 
department of Yonne, the General Council 
passed a resolution that the snail should be 
treated as game and so should receive the ad¬ 
vantage of a close season. To the average man 
this seems but reasonable. Many another mol- 
lusk is so treated; if not by law, at least by 
common consent. Along our north Atlantic 
coast, respect is generally paid to that ancient 
saying which declares that 
In every month without an “r,” 
Oysters deadly poison are. 
Sometimes on the statute books is found men¬ 
tion of a close season for oysters; in New York 
State they may not be taken in the Harlem 
River nor in the Great South Bay during the 
three months commonly regarded as summer. 
If protection for the oyster, why not for the 
snail? Among mollusks shall the bivalve be 
exalted above the univalve? We hope not. 
The honorable treatment accorded the snail 
in the Department of Yonne cheered the hearts 
of all lovers of the delicious escargot, but alas, 
the life of this satisfaction was very brief. 
The resolution of the Department of Council 
was sent to the prefect who forwarded it to 
the Minister of Agriculture. Here it was con¬ 
sidered for nearly a year, and at last the Minis¬ 
try issued a circular which declared that the 
snail is neither game nor fish, but merely an 
agricultural parasite, and as such may be de¬ 
stroyed at all times. 
This decision contains not merely injury, but 
insult as well. He who loves the snail not only 
finds it left without protection, but sees its de¬ 
struction encouraged and a stigma put upon it. 
More than that, he himself is injured in his 
tenderest feelings, for he is told that he eats, 
and with enjoyment, a parasite. 
Let the Ministry beware. Already the govern¬ 
ment of France has much to think about in its 
difficulties with post office employes, with tele¬ 
graph operators, with anti-patriots and with 
other restless spirits, eager for change. Let 
the Ministry see to it that there be not set on 
foot an escargotist party, adding to the confus¬ 
ion and struggling to overturn the existing order 
of things. Smaller causes than the decree of 
the Minister of Agriculture have before now 
brought about revolutions. 
THE PASSING WARBLERS. 
The season of bird migration is now at its 
height and will last for two weeks longer. Now, 
when we go abroad into woods and swamps, or 
along hedgerows, or study the tops of the trees 
where the leaves are growing larger day by 
day, we see everywhere crowds of beautiful 
warblers, the most charming of all the birds 
known to the temperate zone. 
The warblers are numerous with us in their 
most brilliant plumage for only about a month 
in spring. It is true that the student of birds 
sees them again in autumn on their way toward 
their winter home, but they are then clad in 
sober colors and travel modestly, seeming to 
wish to avoid observation. In late April and 
early May they have no such feeling. Brilliant 
in varied uniforms of black and gold and blue 
and yellow and chestnut, they seem to delight 
to show themselves to the observer. Well have 
they been called the most beautiful and most 
attractive genus of North American birds, pre¬ 
eminently characteristic of this country. 
No one who is abroad watching these in¬ 
defatigable little hunters can doubt the services 
which they perform for agriculture by the de¬ 
struction of millions of insects and their eggs. 
They do not confine themselves to any one 
place, but travel along the branches of the trees, 
search the ultimate twigs, twist up and down 
the tree trunks and dive down to the ground 
among the leaves of the skunk cabbage, the 
blooms of the caltha or the unrolling fronds of 
the fern. 
But after all it is their beauty and their ac¬ 
tivity which most of us especially admire, and 
now is the time to see the warblers at their 
best. Swamp or orchard or cedar lot or border 
of forest—any one of these—is a good place to 
watch for them, and we can give no better ad¬ 
vice to our readers in the Middle States than 
.to be abroad for the next few days with note 
book and opera glass. 
The value of real protection of game at the 
present time is set forth in a statement issued 
by the Louisiana Commission for the Protection 
of Game. In this it is asserted that in Calcasieu 
parish alone more than one million head of 
game were killed and reported during the last 
shooting season. In the main these were birds, 
the majority being wildfowl. While some of 
the best shooting grounds in all the South lie 
in Calcasieu parish, other counties took large 
toll from the game, so that the total for the 
State, if given, might be almost beyond belief, 
and we refrain from going into higher figures. 
The Calcasieu report, however, is of value as 
showing the vast numbers of migratory game 
birds that congregate in favorite resorts in win¬ 
ter. If, for every bird that is killed, nine sur¬ 
vive and depart for the Northern breeding 
grounds in February and March, it requires no 
elaborate calculation to show the great value of 
spring shooting prohibition. The toll taken from 
the ninety per cent, on their way northward can¬ 
not be estimated, but the total number reaching 
the breeding grounds is greatly reduced. Neither 
is there much comfort to be found in the appli¬ 
cation of the axiom of the survival of the fittest, 
for it is not always the weaklings that fall to 
chilled shot. 
Cold winds and rain have delayed the progress 
of spring all over the Northern and Eastern 
region, where men and women have been im¬ 
patiently awaiting a favorable opportunity to go 
to the woods for their first outing. So far the 
trout fishing has not proved very satisfactory. 
In the warmer regions the streams have been 
kept up by the rains, although the snow water 
ran out some weeks ago. Further north and 
east the ponds and lakes are still ice-bound and 
as the ice is thick, the time for its going out 
will probably be later than usual. May day 
in the Adirondacks and in parts of Maine was 
not a favorable one for the opening of the 
trout season. With the ice there were patches 
of snow and a cold wind reminded the early 
fishers that fires were more attractive than 
numbed fingers and chilled bodies. In the Cats¬ 
kills the backward conditions gave rise to 
rumors of trout scarcity in favorite streams. 
Our cover picture is one of the series made 
by Herman T. Bohlman when he accompanied 
William L. Finley to the Three-Arch Rocks 
Reservation near the coast of Oregon. Mr. 
Finley has described the difficulties encountered 
in reaching these rocks, and the discomforts in¬ 
cident to living there a few days, while our 
cover picture shows how difficult it was to ob¬ 
tain photographs of the birds and their nests. 
