Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. ■ 
Six Months, $1.50. 
VOL. LXXI.—No. 13. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1908. j No . 127 Ft ,„ kli „ s ,. NewTo * 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1908, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary. 
Louis Dean Speir. Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream. Aug. 14, 1873. 
CAL1FORNIA-OREGON RESERVE. 
Some seventy thousand acres of land lying 011 
both sides of the Oregon-California line have, 
through an order signed by President Roosevelt, 
been set aside as a breeding and resting ground 
for the wildfowl which range north and south 
near the Pacific coast. 
It will be recalled that we have several times 
pointed out the difficulty encountered by wardens 
of these two States in attempting to perform 
their duties. Market shooters have flitted from 
one State to the other with comparative safety 
when pursued by the officers, and the setting 
aside of this tract will in a measure break up 
their traffic in wildfowl. At the same time one 
of the most important resting grounds in the 
West will be preserved as a sanctuary for feath¬ 
ered game. 
The results that have accrued from the reser¬ 
vation of land and water by Presidents Cleveland, 
McKinley and Roosevelt are so satisfactory that 
it must be the hope of every student of game 
preservation that more and more refuges can 
be set aside as time passes. This is one of the 
most practical and satisfactory solutions of the 
theory expressed by many that the Government 
should enact laws for game preservation. 
strike inland and quench the fires have been dis¬ 
appointed so far, although the time is passing 
when the “September rains” are to be expected. 
Men have worked as they never worked be¬ 
fore in attempting to check the fires, and great 
credit is due soldiers, forest rangers, game pro¬ 
tectors and other citizens for the efforts they 
have put forth to save life and property. But 
so dry is the whole country that new fires are 
being started daily, and rain alone will put a 
stop to the wholesale waste of timber and other 
property. 
It is noticeable that nearly all of the fires in 
Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, 
Michigan, Wisconsin and the Southern Canadian 
Provinces originated along the railway lines, and 
that new fires are being kindled daily by sparks 
from locomotives. Of course some of the fires 
have been started by careless farmers and by 
sportsmen, but the railways are the chief of¬ 
fenders. 
Game has suffered a great blow and the loss 
in this direction will be heavy, while in many 
of the streams the game fish are dying as the 
water dries up and the refuse concentrates, due 
to pollution and the lack of a flushing current; 
indeed, so foul are many streams that sickness 
will inevitably follow in the communities along 
their banks. 
THE FOREST FIRES. 
Words fail in any attempt that may be made 
to describe adequately the fearful loss of life 
and property during the past few weeks in the 
disasters following the great forest fires. From 
Maine to California smoke hangs over the land, 
while, like great serpents, the flames creep from 
valley to hilltop and from dry ridge to town and 
city, leaving desolation and poverty in place of 
once prosperous business enterprises and happy 
homes. 
The daily press has chronicled the details from 
day to day, and as if in confirmation of these 
dispatches a pall of smoke rolled down on the 
Altantic seaboard from the East, from the Middle 
Atlantic States and perhaps from even further 
inland, blanketing the coast and extending far 
out to sea. For a time the sun appeared, if at 
all, like a copper ball, and objects at a distance 
were obscured. 
Meanwhile the days have been calm, and while 
storms have been reported at sea to the north¬ 
east and the southeast, all hopes that they would 
but the widest waters was pretty certain to be 
killed. Now we are making a beginning of 
better things. All through the land there is 
a leaven of people who are interested in the 
preservation of forests, fish and game, and the 
feeling is growing that these natural resources 
should be conserved. A generation or two hence 
those who live in the land may see great forests 
and streams, and their natural inhabitants abund¬ 
ant and unafraid. 
A SUGGESTION OF OLD TIMES. 
The accounts of wild ducks nesting this sum¬ 
mer in Connecticut and New York lend especial 
point to the argument of the ornithologists and 
sportsmen who declare that where spring shoot¬ 
ing is forbidden a certain proportion of wild 
ducks will regularly breed with us, even in the 
thickly settled States. 
The breeding of such birds cannot fail greatly 
to improve the autumn shooting. The birds 
wish to breed at all the points where they did 
in old times, and they are beginning to do so 
again in the States mentioned. Even in New 
Jersey, where spring shooting is still permitted, 
a black duck’s nest with twelve eggs was found, 
though to be sure this did not do the State of 
New Jersey much good, since the old bird was 
killed and the clutch of eggs taken for scientific 
purposes. There is no reason to doubt that if 
the wildfowl, wffien they come North in spring, 
find themselves unmolested in any district which 
offers abundant food and a reasonable immunity 
from natural enemies, they will stop and rear 
their young to-day just as they used to in the 
old days. 
From most of the Eastern and Middle States 
the forests have been cut off more than once, 
the swamps are dry and the streams, once so 
full flowing, are shrunken and in seasons of 
drouth go dry, so that the fish that may be in 
them all perish. Up to within a few years the 
venturesome bird that showed himself on any 
While in one of our Middle West cities our 
attention was attracted to the enormous number 
of billboards that inclose every vacant lot and 
stretch for miles far beyond the suburbs along 
both sides of every steam and electric railway. 
The majority of these affairs are ten to twelve 
feet in height and are made of dressed lumber. 
Metal is not used as yet to any great extent. 
Without attempting to estimate the number of 
feet in these miles upon miles of hideous fences, 
we are certain that if the lumber required to 
build them were used in building houses in that 
town, the rents would be reduced ten or fifteen 
per cent. Incidentally the coming generation 
would be better off morally than now, for the 
city exercises little or no restriction on the class 
of advertising spread on the boards, and much 
of it is decidedly repulsive. Other towns are 
rendered ugly in the same fashion, and no part 
of the country is free from these blots upon 
the landscape. Fields upon which one could 
otherwise gaze with pleasure and relief while 
traveling are dotted with similar boards. Mean¬ 
while the forests are dwindling, the cost of lum¬ 
ber is rapidly becoming prohibitive, and little 
or no interest is taken in this and other lines in 
which radical reforms are needed. Municipal 
regulation of billboards, with a view to prevent¬ 
ing fires as well as to reduce the drain upon our 
forests, is among the reforms to be hoped for. 
K 
The wasteful methods allowed in fishing con¬ 
tests for count are well known, and such affairs 
are not favored to any extent in the Lhiited 
States to-day, though they were common enough 
in past years. An example of the harm that 
may be done when the score is set down in num¬ 
bers or in weight is found in a complaint made 
by the secretary of an angling society, who wit¬ 
nessed a fishing contest in the north of England 
recently. One man, he says in the Fishing 
Gazette, caught twenty-five fish which weighed 
only eight and three-quarter ounces, and many 
of those taken w r ere not more than one and one- 
half inches long. A few were returned to the 
water after being w-eighed, but others were 
tossed aside. There should be a length limit 
for all edible fish. Happily the anglers of to¬ 
day use live bait less than formerly, and our 
length limit laws are fairly well observed. But 
there is still room for improvement. 
