A.PRIL 27, 1907 ] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
6.57 
e men in charge hurriedly carried the poles 
gether, and they and the net were thrown to 
e ground. Lights were then brought, the 
-ds removed from their entanglement and 
led. 
In one of the popular historical novels pub- 
hed in 1903, the author makes his principal 
aracter say of the immense flocks of wild 
geons he had seen “that darkened the skies 
d brought twilight at noonday,” and de- 
ribes the heroine as “the center of a great 
lite cloud” of them, and she says, “Poor white 
locents, harming no one.” Now, while there 
ght have been white wild pigeons, I never 
i w one, and if they did exist, they were cer- 
nly albinos of their species. 
The Captain. 
A Plea for the Rabbit. 
Philadelphia, March 2 3.—Editor Forest and 
■'earn: It is a well known fact that in spite 
all the nioney and efforts expended to per- 
I uate quail in the eastern' portion of the Mid- 
: Atlantic and New England States they are 
tdually becoming more scarce. Many sports- 
:n will remember the time when it *was pos- 
: ?le to go out in this section of the United 
1 ites on a morning and find half a dozen 
/eys, where it is now hard to find that many 
a week. To the writer it seems surprising, 
f ‘refore, that some effort is not made to keep 
1 r fields and woods stocked with rabbits by 
! ividing places of refuge for them. It seems 
fortunate that the American rabbit does not 
! prow in the ground, as is the case with the 
glish rabbit; and except in districts where 
ne such harbor as rudely piled up stone walls, 
I iins, woodchuck burrows, etc., exist our rab- 
js are becoming decimated to such an extent 
it their final extermination seems to be but 
question of time. 
am aware that a great many persons profess 
1 hold rabbit shooting in contempt, considering 
: j sport fit only for boys and darkies, but if 
Ij cticed in a sportsmanlike manner, by the use 
<| beagles, it is to my mind a recreation not 
•j be despised; and indeed an amount of skill is 
i, uired to kill a rabbit running in cover, greater 
l! haps than to kill a swiftly flying bird in the 
1 :n. Of course, to kill a rabbit sitting in its 
1 m > or to dig it out of a stone wall is not 
i rtsmanlike. The fact should not be lost sight of, 
l ( ,_that a vast amount of recreation may be 
I ained by training beagles to hunt during the 
| er part of summer and fall, before the open 
i son begins. Undoubtedly a large number of 
sons, who' have not the means or opportunity 
: go south or west to hunt, find beneficial rec- 
Mion in the pursuit of this kind of game, and 
ioes seem surprising, therefore, that some 
; | ' rt is not made to give rabbits a chance to 
I ‘ease and multiply by providing some under- 
■ und harbor to which they can run when hard 
Ased or in extreme weather. I know of bun¬ 
ds of farms in eastern Pennsylvania and New 
I sey where rabbits are rarely seen now, but 
‘.re they could, with little labor and expense, 
: propagated by merely supplying them with 
: es of refuge such as mentioned. 
'f course it may be said that they destroy 
ng fruit trees and live on the farmers’ vege- 
es, etc., but I feel that the statements as to 
• iage done in this way have been greatly 
! ggerated. I have hunted rabbits and studied 
r habits since boyhood and cannot remem- 
1 a single instance where damage was done 
1 his way worth speaking of. On the contrary 
nts are, or at least were, when it was per- 
1 ed by law to trap and sell them, a source 
1 arofit to many a farmer’s boy. In view of 
these facts it seems strange that some of the 
1 iey spent every year by individuals and 
'tsmen’s clubs in importing quail to be liber- 
• mos t °f them never to be seen again, should 
1 be devoted to the protection and propagation 
1 aunny. 
think, also, that the game laws should be 
nded so that the number of rabbits killed 
ane person in a day should not exceed five, 
aow it to be a fact that farmers’ boys will 
mt on the first day of the open season, hav¬ 
ing previously spotted nearly all the rabbits on 
their lands, and kill perhaps several dozen in 
a day, most of them sitting in their forms. It 
is not unusual for parties of gunners from towns 
to go out during the first two or three days of 
the season and kill perhaps a hundred or more, 
not because they really care for them or can 
make use of them in any lawful manner, but 
merely to take back as evidence of their skill. 
We think any man who has not the instincts of 
a^ hog should be satisfied to kill five in a day. 
To carry any more also savors of hard work 
rather than sport. 
In this connection can Forest and Stream 
state whether the experiment of introducing 
English rabbits into the United States has ever 
been tried and if SO' with what results? Being 
a burrowing animal, it seems to me they should 
multiply very fast here if protected at all, in 
districts where the native rabbit probably could 
not exist. C. H. J. 
[In the States that prohibit hunting rabbits on 
the snow they seem to be fairly abundant, and 
in those parts of the west where the small rab¬ 
bits take refuge, when pursued, in burrows, they 
MR. STRATTON AND HIS PET DOE. 
are not readily exterminated. Our eastern rab¬ 
bits require sufficient natural cover to enable 
them to pursue successfully their hiding and 
circling tactics, and in places where briers, thick 
undergrowth and brush piles are common, they 
thrive. As a rule few persons are in favor of 
introducing European rabbits or hares, and we 
do not at the moment recall the results of any 
experiments'with English rabbits. 
While our rabbits are not classed as highly 
as quad and grouse, still thousands of sports¬ 
men enjoy hunting rabbits with beagles. The 
fact that the flesh of the rabbit is not always 
regarded with high favor may account for part 
of the prejudice against hunting it. It is prob¬ 
ably regarded as second only to squirrel meat, 
however. If hunted as the squirrel should be 
hunted—with small rifles—our common brown 
rabbit is^ not to be despised. On the other 
hand, shooting it with shot, except only when 
it is running at full speed, is often regarded as 
too easy to be termed first-class sport. —Editor.] 
A Pet Doe. 
Rolling Fork, Miss., April 23 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: I am sending you a picture of my 
pet nine-months-old deer. She is a late Sep¬ 
tember fawn, and the most perfect pet I have 
ever owned. When photographed, she was 
standing on her hind feet for a piece of apple. 
She will walk for fifteen or twenty yards on her 
hind feet. She is shy with strangers, as are all 
deer. The picture shows very conclusively the 
influence man can exert over wild animals if 
he will only be kind to them. 
E. R. Stratton. 
Death of Charles J. Peshall. 
On April 18, in Saint Francis Hospital, Jersey 
City, N. J., Charles J. Peshall died, from a com¬ 
plication of diseases, at the age of sixty-seven 
years. He was a native of England. 
In the ’80s and early ’90s of the past century, 
he was active and influential in bench show and 
field trial matters, and also was a prolific con¬ 
tributor to the sporting press. He at one time 
held high place in the councils of the American 
Kennel Club, to which body he was for a time 
a delegate. Tie disapproved of some of the 
policies adopted by the club and was quite out¬ 
spoken in their denunciation, all of which cul¬ 
minated in a criminal suit for libel, instituted 
against him by Mr. A. P. Vredenburgh in 1890. 
It was bitterly contested. From that time he 
gradually drifted out of canine matters till in a 
few years in that relation he was of the things 
that once were. 
He came again conspicuously into public 
notice, a few years ago, by his sensational de¬ 
fence of Edward Hallam, the negro minstrel 
who killed his wife, and who was condemned 
to death by regular process of law in New Jer¬ 
sey. Peshall, by legal quibbles and novel legal 
points, invoked in behalf of the defence, kept 
the execution in abeyance and prolonged the life 
of the negro about two years after the time set 
for the law’s vindication. 
Peshall later employed similar obstructive legal 
measures in another murder case—that of Wm. 
Clifford, murderer of Wm. Watson, Division 
Superintendent of the West Shore R. R., at 
Weehawken, N. J.—after which, because of his 
captious and obstructive professional methods he 
was almost entirely discredited by the New Jer¬ 
sey judiciary. 
He was. a man of magnificent physique and 
prepossessing manners. He had admirable 
powers of mind, and at times, as an orator, was 
distinctly brilliant; but, withal, his character was 
marred by a vein of erratic, perverse assertive¬ 
ness, .which resulted in his almost always being 
identified with the contentious, the dissentious 
and the obstructive. His was a life of ups and 
downs, a checkered career marked by a few suc¬ 
cesses and many failures. Having many of the 
intellectual powers essential to true greatness he 
nevertheless—sad to relate—died in poverty and 
obscurity. 
A Plea <0 the Legislature. 
New York City, April 20 . —Editor Forest and 
Stream: There certainly can be no dispute that 
wildfowl are steadily diminishing. The United 
States Department of Agriculture in its bulletin, 
No.. 26 of the Biological Survey, states: “So 
rapidly are some species diminishing in numbers 
in certain States that the market supply is already 
threatened, and Minnesota has found it neces¬ 
sary to pass laws prohibiting not only the export 
of ducks, but even their sale within the State 
limits. Such radical legislation in a State where 
only a few years since waterfowl abounded on 
every lake and waterway, reveals how imminent 
is the danger and how pressing the value and 
importance of prohibitive laws, and it becomes 
evident that if any considerable number of water- 
fowl are to be preserved soring shooting must 
be abolished and the sale of wildfowl limited to 
the State where killed.” 
One would think that it would only be neces¬ 
sary to call the attention of the Legislature to 
the great danger of extermination of wildfowl 
to have the Legislature take prompt action and 
that is the object of this plea. Prompt action will 
not only in all probability prevent extermination, 
but permit the sale during an open season. In 
order to accomplish this two bills have been in¬ 
troduced and are now sleeping in committee. 
These bills have been approved by the Forest, 
Fish and Game League, the Audubon Society, 
the Camp Fire Club, and the New York Asso¬ 
ciation for the Protection of Game. 
One of these bills prohibits the sale of wild¬ 
fowl after the 10th of January. The season for 
killing ends the 1st of January, and the ten days 
are for the purpose of permitting dealers to dis¬ 
pose of any birds they may have on hand when 
the season for killing ends. The number of this 
bill in the Senate is 35, in the Assembly 284. 
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