904 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Around the Bend 
S PRING is very near—in fact, just around 
the bend. For months the angler has 
waited, in common with all mortals, but 
with a keener longing, perhaps for the swing 
north of the sun and the unlocking of the fetters 
that have bound old earth in icy bands. A little 
early yet to say that Boreas has been routed, for 
he may roar viciously at times, but his voice is 
weaker, and his strength senescent. 
As his mutterings fade there come to the ear 
in cresendo, the flute calls of the aery army of 
returning birds, and June seems near indeed. 
But first there is April—wanton and hoydenish, 
and May, the joy of poets and the very taste of 
Paradise to the trout angler, before Spring has 
settled down from coyness to staidness—where 
we feel that it is safe to get acquainted with her. 
But round the bend she waits—expectant, re¬ 
ceptive, and weaving for herself the diaphanous 
robes of white and pink that so become her, and 
that make all mankind love her. And it is good 
to know that while we cannot see, we can hope 
confidently for the things to come. Straight 
rivers would grow tiresome of a morning’s ang¬ 
ling; lakes with no bays or indentations, mon¬ 
otonous. 
Around the bend lie the pellucid pools; there 
dwell the biggest trout, and there we peep into 
new mysteries of Nature. There shines the sun; 
there the shadows fall, and there we come at the 
end of day to the best of all in life—to home 
or camp—around the bend. 
The Destructive Cat 
E VERYONE who is much out of doors, and 
who is interested in wild animal life, 
recognizes the influence on that life exer¬ 
cised by the common house cat. Most cats that 
live at home do much hunting, while those that 
have abandoned the domestic fireside and have 
taken to the woods, where they spend all their 
time, subsist wholly on birds, mice, squirrels, 
and other forms of life which they kill. 
A detailed study of the domestic cat has been 
undertaken by Edward Howe Forbush and the 
results of his investigations are interesting and 
well worth the attention of all lovers of wild 
life. They have just been published. The 
amount of material bearing on the food of the 
cat is astonishing, but besides this he deals with 
its history, numbers, economic value and the 
means of controlling it. 
Of peculiar interest to the sportsmen are the 
pages dealing with the destruction of game birds 
by cats and the cat’s economic status. The evi¬ 
dence shows that cats destroy bobwhites, ruffed 
grouse, heath hens, pheasants and partridges in 
very considerable numbers. Not less than forty- 
six observers have written Mr. Forbush that 
they have known cats to catch and kill ruffed 
grouse, forty-four report the same of bobwhites, 
twelve report pheasants, eleven woodcock, eight 
rails, three heath hens, three shore birds, two 
mourning doves, and two wild ducks. 
Mr. William Brewster, of Cambridge, tells of 
a day’s hunt by four sportsmen, with their dogs, 
in which they killed but one game bird—a bob- 
white. On their return at night to the farm¬ 
house where they were staying they found that 
the farm cat had beaten their score, having 
brought in during the day two bobwhites and one 
grouse. Another observer declares that a cat 
living not far from his home had brought in so 
many bobwhites and grouse that the family had 
lost track of the number. Cats kept on Martha’s 
Vineyard destroy heath hens and are killed by 
the Superintendent whenever possible. Mr. Lee 
S. Crandall, of the New York Zoological Park, 
writes of instances where cats have killed and 
carried off full-grown golden pheasants and have 
killed the so-called Hungarian partridges. Snipe 
and woodcock are occasionally brought into the 
house by cats and Mr. W. F. Henderson, of 
Rockland, tells of a man whose cat brought in 
eighteen woodcock in a season. 
The man who is trying to rear game birds in 
confinement knows very well tnat the worst 
known enemy to this work is the domestic cat. 
Professor Clifton Hodge, in Worcester, was al¬ 
most forced by cats to give up his experiments. 
A considerable part of the duties of a game 
keeper here in the United States consists of the 
trapping of cats. W. R. Bryant, of the Henry 
Ford farms, Dearborn, Michigan, speaks of kill¬ 
ing—in order to protect the birds—about seventy- 
five cats each year, and names the house cat as 
the greatest drawback in the effort to save song 
and game birds. In certain localities where there 
are practically no game birds, as, for example, 
islands, on which there are or have been breed¬ 
ing resorts of sea birds, as terns or petrels, cats 
imported by fishermen or kept by lighthouse ten¬ 
ders have more than once exterminated such 
colonies of harmless and useful birds. 
Legislation, the licensing of cats, seems the 
method of controlling this great and growing 
evil most likely to be effective; but legislators 
will not act in the matter until they are made to 
realize that the public has awakened to the need 
of such control. 
This paper on the cat—and the same may be 
said of all Mr. Forbush’s contributions to bird 
protective literature—ought to be in the hands of 
all sportsmen and farmers. We could wish for 
them a nation-wide circulation. 
Maryland My Maryland! 
HE report of the State Game Warden of 
Maryland, covering the years 1914-15, is 
before us. It is a nice little volume of 
some twenty pages, in a blue cloth cover with 
gold lettering, and in it the warden makes some 
excellent recommendations, the necessity of 
which become apparent when we turn to the fi¬ 
nancial statement of appropriation and income, 
printed in the back of the book. It seems that 
Maryland contributes to the Game Warden’s de¬ 
partment the magnificent sum of $2,600 a year. 
Economical management of some sort in pre¬ 
vious years enabled the department to start 1914 
with a balance of $1,804.53, while two years’ 
fines collected, helped along to the tune of 
$153.13. Apparently it was found impossible or 
inexpedient to get rid of the $7,162.66 available 
in two years for the whole expense of looking 
after and protecting game in the period named 
was $2,672.71. Of the money paid out, $720.75 
went to deputy game wardens, $685.25 for travel 
and field work, and $126.64 for telephone service. 
The State Warden does not seem to draw any¬ 
thing in the way of salary. These three items 
of direct protection work amounted, therefore, 
in two years to $1,593-73, or $796.86 a year. 
Thus Maryland, with an area of 12,397 square 
miles, is putting out the magnificent sum of 
about two dollars a day for game protective 
purposes. 
The Warden—and we hasten to assure that 
estimable gentleman that we have no intention 
of growing sarcastic at his expense—does not 
inform us why his department was forced to 
save $4,489.95 of the meagre appropriation avail¬ 
able. Several explanations are possible. The 
citizens of Maryland may be of such law abiding 
tendency that the mere publication of statutes 
is enough to bring about compliance; then again, 
there may be no game worth protecting—but the 
most likely answer is that the game situation in 
Maryland is exactly as we might expect it to be 
—on a plane with the two dollars per diem which 
the people are paying for protection. 
Finally, it would be of interest to know the 
exact legislative cost involved in the develop¬ 
ment and perfection of the game code of Mary¬ 
land from inception to date. 
No War Bargin Counter 
HE man who is waiting until after the war 
to buy a gun, because he hopes then to 
secure a bargain in some of the discarded 
and superfluous military rifles of Europe, is in 
for a watchful wait indeed. Not that the war 
may be of longer duration than anticipated, but 
rather that rifle bargains of account will have 
this in common with the core of the boy’s apple 
—there won’t be any. Some people tell us that 
a million, more or less, of these weapons will 
be sent over to us, in the fists of a veteran field 
army. Such tales are on a par with the delight¬ 
ful theory of defense worked out by that school 
of strategists which would summon from their 
labors in the fields and shops an outpouring of 
American manhood shirtsleeved and determined, 
and perfectly willing and anxious to take pot¬ 
shots at every invader who shoved his head 
above the fence, even though the service did 
make the volunteer late for supper. 
No doubt the close of the war will find Eu¬ 
rope overstocked with military arms of every 
description, but that these will be placed on the 
market is doubtful. Hundreds of thousands of 
rifles, for example, will be utterly valueless for 
any other purpose than melting up or scrapping, 
and nations, like men, do not throw away good 
guns just because the other fellow has stopped 
shooting temporarily. That is about the time 
when affection for the weapon develops to the 
utmost. 
The American make of sporting rifle, big or 
little, is the best bargain on the market to-day, 
and will be always, for nine hundred and ninety- 
nine uses out of a thousand. 
