544 
FOREST AND STREAM 
September 
A NOTHER leaf comes off the calendar. 
September is here. Hot summer is draw¬ 
ing to an end. On the hillsides the golden- 
rod is showing and in the fields the corn is rip¬ 
ening. Along the dusty highway the farmer is 
drawing his hay from out of the meadow and in 
not a few localities the whir and click of the 
reaper is still heard. 
Nature stands at the full fruition of maturity. 
In the copse the young partridges, now almost 
grown, may be seen and the migratory song 
birds are showing the preliminary restlessness 
that precedes flight to the south. They have 
raised their broods and their season of domestic¬ 
ity, marked by its labors, by its alarums and the 
woeful little tragedies of bird life, is about to 
close. 
On more distant lakes the wild duck still leads 
her young and at the water’s brink the deer and 
the moose bring their partly grown families to 
drink. Here and there on mountain side in the 
north the maple is flashing its red oriflame, beau¬ 
teous beyond all other woodland decoration; in 
contrast the yellow of the birch and poplar show 
Nature’s harmony. 
September is a month of beauty. Occasionally 
the sun may give forth the full reminder of Au¬ 
gust’s intense heat, but cool winds are spring¬ 
ing up and now and then the early riser, at least 
in the north will see the silver white of frost on 
the grass as the sun peeps over the eastern hill. 
In the wilderness the adventurer shivers in the 
night as he pulls the extra blanket over him and 
his breath steams as he stands at the water’s 
edge scrubbing his tanned and smoked begrim¬ 
ed countenance. The very air is like wine in its 
stimulating power as he draws in deep gulps of 
it, and retreats for warmth to the pleasant morn¬ 
ing camp fire. Ceres is supposed to be the god¬ 
dess of September, representing the harvest. 
She may be so to the world at large, but Sept¬ 
ember also heralds the coming of Diana, the 
goddess of the hunt. 
It is time to get the gun ready, time to exer¬ 
cise the faithful setter or pointer and give him to 
understand that the summer’s dullness with its 
accumulation of fat is at an end. And faithful 
Hector, or whatever the name of your own dog 
may be, will not regret to learn the news. 'Watch 
him as you take the gun and call on him to fol¬ 
low you down the lane and over the fields. 
Protecting Migratory Birds 
T HE Government makes announcement that 
the migratory bird law will be enforced 
over the coming season without fear or 
favor. This is logical, for it would be poor 
policy to say the least, were the Government to 
assume in advance that the laws of Congress 
are unconstitutional. It is idle to speculate on the 
outcome of the Supreme Court decision as re¬ 
gards the Weeks-McLean bill. One thing is cer¬ 
tain. Until the Supreme Court declares the law 
unconstitutional—if indeed it reaches that con¬ 
clusion—the act of Congress is operative. Those 
who traverse its provisions will lay themselves 
open to a lot of immediate bother and possible 
future trouble. 
The important point in the coming argument 
before the United States Supreme Court is 
whether wild animals and birds ferae natura are 
the property of the individual state or of the 
United States. No sane man, be he judge or lay¬ 
man, will dispute the force of the contention that 
only by national legislation can the migratory 
birds of the country be preserved. If the courts 
hold that migratory birds are not national prop¬ 
erty—in a word if the law is declared unconsti¬ 
tutional on that ground—the battle is not neces¬ 
sarily lost, for by a constitutional amendment 
the people of the United States can declare such 
wild life to be the property of the United States, 
and therefore subject to its protection. 
'While we have every hope that the Supreme 
Court of the United States will hold the law to 
be constitutional, we suggest that no harm will 
be done if associations of sportsmen and the 
larger bodies of individuals who believe in pre¬ 
serving the migratory bird life of this country 
shall begin preparation for bringing the necessity 
of such an amendment to the Constitution before 
the representatives of the people, immediately 
after the decision of the Supreme Court shall 
have been announced and assuming that it is to 
be negative. 
Experience has shown that only by national 
protection can the migratory birds of America 
be saved. If the courts take the stand that no 
matter how true this may be, the matter is not 
of their jurisdiction, then the people must be call¬ 
ed on to save their own property. In an emergency 
so vital in its future consequences individual 
preferences or cases of sectional injustice should 
be set aside as of little importance. These smaller 
matters can be adjusted satisfactorily after the 
leading principle shall have been written into law. 
Open Season on Old Barns 
E STHETICLY and bucolicly the barn has 
had some share of consideration, but 
more from the strictly agricultural points 
of view—both the practical and the “high farm¬ 
ing” standpoints; it has never been properly con¬ 
sidered in its relations to the shooter. We have 
read often enough, perhaps too often, of the 
gray barn and its weather beaten roof, blotched 
and spotted with moss and lichens; of the kine, 
sheep, poultry and sweet-smelling hay it shel¬ 
tered ; of the sports of the children beneath its 
cob-webbed rafters—and of model barns, with 
their newfangled stables and cellars for manure, 
roots and what-not—huge, ugly wens they are 
upon the landscape, unbecoming it as the steam 
sawmill does the woods, or the steamboat the 
lakes that belong to the deer and the trout. But 
who has told us anything of barn shooting? 
We hear it said of a bad shot that “he could 
not hit the outside of a barn;” of a worse one, 
“that he could not hit a barn if he was inside it 
with the door closed,” and the wonder is how 
he does miss it in that case if the barn were not 
too wide or too long for the range of his gun, 
unless his charge went through some side cranny 
or through the “swallow hole,” which, urban 
reader, is not where the barn swallows, but 
where the swallows barn—being an aperture, 
heart or diamond shaped, sawed in the gable of 
the old-time barn by its builder, who had a sou! 
for the fitness of things—beyond the skill of his 
hand for the fitting of things—for the ingress and 
egress of the ever-beloved swallow. 
Beyond this we hear nothing of barn shooting, 
and yet what country boy has not targeted his 
first gun, whether new or old, new to him and 
prized above all his worldly possessions, on the 
barn? And if his pot-metal or breeched-burned 
piece had scattered widely and feebly, doing less 
execution on the boards than on his shoulder, 
has he not sought to bolster his faith in his gun 
by believing worm-holes to be shot-holes? 
Behold how the weather-beaten sides of the 
ancient barn, reeling and tottering, looking for 
all the world like a prehistoric gray elephant, 
and as dangerous as any elephant to approach in 
a high wind—for it might then fall on one—are 
peppered with shot of all sizes, from bullets, 
buckshot, and BBB, down to mustard sizes. 
Some are driven clean through, some embedded 
out of sight, some just stuck in the siding, dully 
staring at you through the oxidization of years. 
What gun of bygone days, when the quail and 
grouse and woodcock were swarming in copse 
and swamp, and deer were as plenty as trees are 
now, belched forth with mighty throes, and 
agony to its shooter, its charge against these now 
long storm-beat boards, then new exhaling the 
odor of the woods yet lingering in them? Does 
the ancient long smooth bore do occasional duty 
yet as a sporting weapon, when Reynard flees 
before the hounds, or against the thieving crow 
or the marauding hawk? Mayhap its stalwart 
engineer of those days tells with the garrulous 
tongue of age his youthful exploits to his gaping 
grandchildren; mayhap he lies asleep under the 
sumachs and goldenrods in the old graveyard. 
To him who cherishes his beloved though out 
of date muzzle-loader, the old barn is most con¬ 
venient, for into it he may empty the charges of 
his gun as he passes homeward after a day’s 
tramp through upland or lowland; and equally 
convenient is the barn to him who desires to test 
the qualities of his new breech-loader, for it will 
show both pattern and penetration. But it must 
be an old barn. It would be a crime hardly 
second of manslaughter to mar with the patter 
of leaden rain the painted beauty of a big new 
barn with a gilded cock atop of it—the barn that 
is crowding out the good old gray barn of our 
childhood, which invited the child, the swallow, 
and the phoebe bird to come in and be at home. 
And for that new decoration of the landscape— 
the garage—who would think of shooting at such 
a thing, occupied or unoccupied? 
Let the barn not too good to be shot at be pre¬ 
served and protected by the sportsman—for it is 
likely not long hence to be the only thing left 
for him to shoot. 
It begins to look as though the fight for the 
conservation of the Adirondacks has been won. 
The Constitutional Convention, still in session 
has passed, on third reading the clause which 
will preserve the Adirondack playground from 
exploitation and commercialism. The conserva¬ 
tion laws will be administered by a non-partisan 
board of nine members, which will have full 
authority to enact regulations as to the taking 
of game and fish. This is the “elastic game law” 
clause which Forest and Stream and a number 
of able contributors have advocated for a long 
time, and which will remove the possibility of 
freak legislative enactments, and enable action 
without waiting for legislatures to meet or move. 
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