July 18, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
95 
and luckily brought her down. The situation 
was exciting, to say the least. I could not tell 
if I had killed the animal. Part of the body 
was actually across my feet. It was almost 
dark, the torches were just smouldering, and 
there were four of us in the small chamber 
with the creature lying in our midst. The 
Chinese hunters gradually got their torches 
alight again, and I was able to take stock of 
the situation. My friend had been terribly 
mauled about the chest and was bleeding badly, 
but the tigress was stone dead. 
After a while I got my friend out and then 
the tigress. From the time the tigress made 
her spring till the torches were alight again 
■ was only a few seconds, but it seemed ages. 
Edwin Pinches. 
*: 
Hunting Without a Gun. 
Santa Monica, Cal., July 4 .— Editor forest 
, and Stream: At Los Angeles a hunting club 
has been formed along lines that are unique, 
whatever else may be said about the association. 
It will be a bloodless affair wherein its members 
are to go hunting with cameras in lieu of the 
I rifles and scatter guns of the other hunters of 
| wild game. One of the objects of the organiza- 
i tion is to establish a lodge where the contents 
of the game bags of the membership will be 
exhibited and preserved for all time. 
Membership in the club is limited to those 
who are able to file with the officers of the or¬ 
ganization a specimen of their own handiwork 
in which some wild animal or bird is shown in 
its native state. No tamed wild animals will 
be permitted to compete. All other white per- 
I sons who know how to use a camera are eligible 
as associate members, while persons who have 
an interest in the objects of the club, but are 
not versed in camera craft, may become hon¬ 
orary members. 
These hunters have the advantage over the 
ordinary hunter in that there is no closed sea¬ 
son for them and that no species of the beasts 
of the field, fowls of the air or denizens of the 
j deep are in the forbidden list. The members 
declare it to be more pleasure to “shoot” the 
wild animals without either killing or maiming 
1 them than to fire with bullet and bring in hides 
1 and pelts as trophies of the chase. 
The wild animals and birds are to be snapped 
in their native haunts. They will be chased to 
I their lairs or caught unawares, and in time the 
club hofSes to be successful in acquiring a volu- 
minous collection. The members are to turn 
j their negatives into the club archives, where 
| they will be enlarged, and if found to be worthy 
1 will be framed. All subjects that prove accept¬ 
able will be copyrighted in the name of the dub, 
although the taker of the picture will be per- 
| mitted to print such copies of it as he may re- 
I quire. Prizes in the shape of buttons are to be 
(awarded by the judges in the several classes, and 
whenever a member shall have won a stated 
| number of buttons he will be presented with a 
: hunting jacket adorned with the buttons. This 
iacket is to be one that will be useful when the 
camera hunter is afield. Periodical exhibitions 
.are to be a feature of club life, and upon these 
occasions there will be awards of prizes. 
L C. B. Irvine. 
Southern California Note. 
Los Angeles, Cal., July 7 .— Editor Forest and 
Stream: Los Angeles is not only a land of sun¬ 
shine and flowers, but a land of game in plenty. 
Climate—just imagine yourself, you of the cold 
North, leaving the city on a suburban car. An 
hour’s ride takes you to the foothills; where 
you may enjoy a good day’s outing, pure air 
with the fragrance of orange blossoms, warm 
sunshine and the sound of the quail calling. 
You are thrilled with the desire to get a wing 
shot, and as you advance you are surprised when 
from behind a cactus a quail whirrs off and re¬ 
minds you of the New England partridge. 
There are plenty of them, and if you under¬ 
stand the birds you may come home with your 
hunting coat bulging out with birds or rabbits. 
One day while out with a friend for rabbits, 
he called to me from behind a knoll, “Look out! 
He will run over you.” I looked around just 
in time to get my gun to my shoulder to meet 
a jack coming at thirty feet to a jump with a 
charge of No. 6 shot. He gave three somersaults, 
and when I picked him up he appeared to be 
the size of a big burro. Properly cooked these 
are good eating and the sage rabbits are fine. 
Last year on the opening day it rained. The 
brush was full of hunters and all got from six 
to twenty-five, the limit. The next day there 
were just as many. We also have large game, 
coyotes, bobcats, bears, mountain lions and deer. 
Our $1 license is all right if they had plenty of 
game wardens, for there are many foreigners 
who, I am told, hunt and shoot anything at any 
season. In all last year’s hunting I was never 
asked to show my license and I was out very 
often. We get the fever here now just as our 
fathers did in old times back east. The Cali¬ 
fornia quail are beauties and fast runners. 
A Hunter. 
Edward A. Samuels as a Musician. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Your obituary of our talented and long-time 
correspondent, Edward A. Samuels, was a worthy 
tribute for which his host of numerous friends 
will thank you. I have been in telepathic touch 
with him for the past three lingering years, and 
while I write I have on the table beside me an 
open letter of his devoted widow, who was his 
constant nurse, amanuensis and comforter dur¬ 
ing his painful sojourn by the lethe-side; and 
she expatiates on his wonderful will power in 
dictating coherent material for publication while 
in extreme pain, as every mental effort meant 
additional pain. Sometimes he would fall asleep 
in the midst of a sentence, and presently wake 
up and go on again in consecutive sequence as 
if there had been no break. For months before 
he died he could not lie down for fear of heart 
failure, but sat in his chair day and night up 
to the Sunday before he passed away. He was 
then lifted by strong arms into the bed where 
he lay till the end. 
All this the good wife writes with stoicism 
and resignation ; and she adds what may be news 
to most of his Forest and Stream friends, that 
he was an accomplished musician. “While yet 
a young man,” she says, “he trained two groups 
of young men to play band instruments, one of 
which group became so proficient that the Bos¬ 
ton papers printed their programmes. That 
hard presented h’m with a service of plate in 
recognition of his services and talent. He also 
wrote a great many songs and set them to music,, 
as well as other musical compositions. I have 
quite a number that he never published and some 
that have been. When he first wrote music he 
used the nom de plume Aileen Percy, but when - , 
his songs began to be sung in the Boston theatres 
his father persuaded him to write over his own 
name. He used to entertain his friends with 
song and guitar accompaniment until the effort 
was too much for him. He then missed his 
music so much that a year ago he bought a 
graphophone for which he had many beautiful 
records. Only classical music pleased him. One 
false note spoiled a record, no matter how good 
the rest was. _ He had a few comic songs, etc., 
for the children with whom he always made 
friends. When he could sit out on the porch 
last summer, the children would gather around 
him, and .they always brought him flowers.” 
And she adds: “I wonder if all this will in¬ 
terest you?” 
Of course it does! It shows the innate char¬ 
acter of the man better than scientific homilies. 
To most of your readers Mr. Samuels perhaps 
seemed only an ichthyologist and angler. This 
letter of the good wife tells what he did out 
of “fly time.” Charles Hallock. 
The Mountains and the Floods. ^ ~j 
If the forests are to be adequately protected, 
there is no escape from the assumption of part 
of the burden by the Federal government. That 
individual landowners and State governments 
should do their utmost to promote scientific 
forestry should be urged with the strongest em¬ 
phasis, and they should indeed be made to feel 
the reproaches of an indignant public opinion 
if they shirk their obligations. 
So much of the woodlands of the Appalachian 
Mountain range from the Canadian line to 
Georgia has been skinned by the lumberman 
that every spring the people of the Atlantic 
Coast States see the effect of the denudation in 
the floods that tear down the river courses. 
Within the past week the people of the Connec¬ 
ticut valley have had an object lesson in the 
high water and ice jams of their river that again 
emphasizes the vital importance of the-forestry 
question in the White Mountains. Every im¬ 
portant stream in New England rises in that 
mountainous region and the flow of them all is 
vitally affected by the conditions in the north¬ 
ern watershed. If the sides of the hills and 
mountains of New Hampshire become as bare 
as other portions of the New England terrain, 
there can be nothing to hold back the melting 
snow. Already the destruction of the trees has 
been immense and the clean cutting, practiced 
in that region on the steeper slopes, leaves pro¬ 
digious fire-traps which sooner or later provide 
extremely costly conflagrations. In 1903 alone 
nearly 85,000 acres of land in the White Moun¬ 
tain region were burned to a black cinder. 
What this means in connection with the water 
supply in our New England rivers is excellently 
described in the recent report of the Secretary 
of Agriculture to the United States Senate. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any nezvsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
t 
