Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright, 1907, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
[ 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1907. 
, VOL. LXVIII.—No. 24. 
I No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre¬ 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
Objects. Announcement in first number of 
. Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE NATIONAL TROPHY COLLECTION. 
It is confidently believed that the publicity 
given the National Collection of Heads and 
Horns, established by the New York Zoological 
Society, will ultimately result in bringing to¬ 
gether under one roof the largest and most com¬ 
plete group of trophies of this class in the world. 
Many fine heads and antlers will be donated 
by sportsmen anxious to assist a worthy cause 
and desirous of having their own trophies pre¬ 
served. Very large moose or elk antlers are 
not to be displayed to advantage in every dwell¬ 
ing. A large head requires space and a some¬ 
what distant view to show it off to the best ad¬ 
vantage. Not every possessor of such trophies 
commands this space, and the fact may prompt 
him to turn his trophy over to the National 
Collection, where it will be fitly shown and where 
opportunity will be given to compare it with 
other trophies. The success of the undertaking 
is assured. 
It is to be wished that the promotors and 
patrons of the collection exert every effort to 
make it complete as to trophies obtained in 
America. Our own country should be repre- • 
sented by the finest and largest specimens in 
existence, and owners of record heads and horns 
must bear in mind that in giving them to the 
collection the fullest credit will be accorded them. 
In the years to come their descendants may find 
here the results of their skill with the rifle care¬ 
fully preserved; and this will be an honor worth 
while when the last of our big game shall be 
found only in parks. 
Club were to establish such a collection, the 
New York Zoological Society might be willing 
to give it house room until such time as a build¬ 
ing shall be found both for the National Collec¬ 
tion of Heads and Horns and the National Col¬ 
lection of Sporting Firearms. We believe that 
such a collection of arms would prove a worthy 
supplement to the collection of heads and horns, 
and that the two collections together would form 
a national museum of which every American 
sportsman would be proud. We believe that if 
such a collection were established, the number 
of donations to it would at once be very large. 
his drawings in public, striving to awaken public 
interest with a view to getting subscribers for 
the work. How enthusiastically he was received 
by naturalists, artists and literary men is well 
known. Among his friends in Europe were 
Herschel, Sir Walter Scott, “Christopher North,” 
Cuvier, Humboldt and G. Saint Hilaire. The 
great work was issued in eighty-seven numbers, 
which were subsequently gathered together and 
bound in four elephant folio volumes. The cost 
of the work is given above, and if this statement 
is true, only about 115 copies were ever sold. 
The establishment and exhibition for a time 
of the National Collection of Heads and Horns 
is strictly within the line of the purposes and 
plans of the New York Zoological Society. 
There is need of another kindred collection, not 
falling within the province of that society to 
establish, but peculiarly interesting to such as¬ 
sociations as the Boone and Crockett Club and 
the Lewis and Clark Club, and of Especial in¬ 
terest to sportsmen. This is a collection of 
American sporting firearms and paraphernalia. 
Although it is still possible to obtain specimens 
of all or nearly all the firearms used in American 
big-game hunting, these are constantly growing 
scarcer, and it is quite time that a national col¬ 
lection of such arms should exis't. Only a few 
years ago every plainsman possessed one of the 
so-called buffalo guns; now they are becoming 
scarce. A genuine hunting bow, with its quiver 
and arrows, is now hardly to be procured; the 
old time Hudson’s Bay flintlock smoothbore 
is a real curiosity. 
It is conceivable that if the Boone and Crockett 
AUDUBON WORKS SOLD. 
Three notable Audubon works were sold on 
Monday, June 10. at the rooms of the Anderson 
Co., in West 29th street, New York. These were 
Audubon’s Birds of America,” the small seven 
volume edition, which brought $476; the “Ornitho¬ 
logical Biography, five volumes, which brought 
$60; and the “Viviparous Quad-rupeds of North 
America, by Audubon and Bachman, three 
volumes, $72. 
The small seven volume octavo edition of the 
“Birds of America” has the reduced plates of 
the elephant folio edition bound in with the text. 
The small edition has 500 plates instead of 435 as 
in the large, partly because of a slightly different 
arrangement of the species and partly because of 
the addition of a number of species. The price 
paid at this sale is believed to be the highest ever 
paid for the work. 
The edition of the quadrupeds was the small 
octavo, reduced from the larger original work. 
Perhaps the most interesting of these items is 
the “Ornithological Biography,” which is a pre¬ 
sentation copy to Jonathan Prescott Hall, an 
American jurist, and bears the signature “John 
J. Audubon to J. Prescott Hall.” On the fly 
leaf in Mr. Hall’s handwriting is the following 
inscription: 
Mr. Audubon told me in the year 184- (sic) that he did 
not sell more than forty copies of his great work, “The 
Birds of America, in England, Ireland, Scotland and 
France, of which Louis Philippe took ten. 
The following received their copies but never paid for 
them: George IV., Duchess of Clarence, Marquis of 
Londonderry, Princess of Hess-Homburg. 
An Irish lord, whose name he would not give, took 
two copies, and paid for neither. Rothschild paid for his 
copy, but with great reluctance. 
He (Audubon) further said that he sold seventy-five 
copies in America, twenty-six in New York and twenty- 
four in Boston; that the work cost him £27,000, and that 
he lost $25,000 by it. 
He said that Louis Philippe offered to subscribe for 
one hundred copies if he would publish the work in 
Paris; this he found he could not do, as it.would have 
required forty years to finish it as things were then in 
Paris. 
Of this conversation I made a memorandum at the 
time, which I read over to Mr. Audubon and he pro¬ 
nounced it correct. J. Prescott Hall. 
1 he struggles of Audubon to procure money 
for the printing of the great work are sufficiently 
familiar to readers of Forest and Stream. Au¬ 
dubon went to England in 1826 and exhibited 
The heated controversy that has been raging 
in the daily press over the yarns of the nature 
fakirs is prolific in free advertising for those 
who have “nature books” for sale. There are 
indications 'that they have no desire to see the 
smoke of the conflict drift away, but rather seek 
to prolong the discussion with its accompanying 
orders for books. Which recalls the case of one 
who fully realized the benefits to be derived in 
a business way from advertising, but could not 
sufficiently overcome his habit of saving to pay 
cash for the purpose; so he declared that the 
next best thing was to do something whereby 
his name would appear in print. He cared little 
what was said about him, provided he obtained 
the free advertising he craved. 
The discussion of the brook and brown trout 
question, in our columns and- by anglers who 
have read the various opinions, is a reflection 
of the dissatisfaction that prevails everywhere 
among fly-fishers. The increase in size and 
numbers of the brook trou't in eastern streams, 
through restocking, is too slow. The presence 
of a few brown trout is welcomed by all who 
cast the fly, for in waters where they are in¬ 
creasing there is fair sport now 'where there was 
little or none a few years ago, and there are few 
men who would not rather take one of the big 
fellows than a score of native trout that barely 
exceed the legal minimum length. 
The enthusiasm with which sportsmen are 
preparing for their vacations this summer shows 
the effect on them of the long cold season. And 
although guides and backwoods hotel men have 
suffered from lack of patronage at a time when 
they are generally kept busy, they will reap their 
usual harvest just the same, and everybody will 
be happy in time. At least, that is the present 
theory. 
The bass fishing season will be open on Mon¬ 
day next, the 17th, in Pennsylvania and New 
York, and a great exodus of men with myster¬ 
ious long packages done up in canvas will occur 
in the cities and towns at the end of next week. 
May they find the sun warm—and the water not 
uncomfortably cold for involuntary baths. 
