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Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1908. 
, VOL. LXXI.—No. 16. 
I No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
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, 1S73. 
OCTOBER COLORS. 
Nowhere in the world is there spread out 
annually for a few brief weeks such a spectacle 
of changing color as is seen in autumn over 
the eastern half of North America. Each year 
we admire and wonder at it, and each year 
it seems new to us and more beautiful. If it 
lacks the striking color and variety of the tropi¬ 
cal flowers, its softer tones and homely beauty 
make it—to most of us at least—far more 
attractive. 
Brown cornfields, dotted with shocks of stalks 
and with yellow pumpkins, and wheat or rye 
stubbles, above which the gray ragweed rises 
rank, are full of suggestions of feeding quail, 
of quartering dogs, staunch points and the tense 
excitement of walking up to the birds. It is 
for such moments that we go abroad with the 
gun, but there are joys as real as these in the 
quiet contemplation of a scene in wYiich no birds 
are found. 
Scarlet sumacs flame along the hedgerows, 
and above these stands the orange frondage of 
gnarled and knotted sassafras. Back of the 
sumacs glow dull red leaves of hazelnut bushes, 
and sometimes a dark conical cedar rising from 
the hedgerow is wreathed with the brilliant red 
of vines of the Virginia creeper or the yellow 
of poison ivy or the paler foliage of bittei- 
sweet. 
In the swamps the soft maples have turned 
to orange, to change a little later to flame 
color; and then the topmost twigs will lose 
their leaves and over the whole swamp will 
seem to lie a gray haze, forerunner of the gen¬ 
eral bareness of early winter, when only the 
green of pine and hemlock will interrupt the 
universal gray. 
In the silent woods the eye meets a confusing 
maze of color. Leaves are losing their hold on 
the twigs and slowly fall to earth with a wavy, 
spiral motion. If a breeze stirs the branches 
the leaves shower down. The quiet black pools 
in the brooks are thickly dotted with yellow 
jewels. 
Although it seems so silent in the woods, if 
one stops to listen he will hear now and then 
the thump of a falling nut, the distant drum¬ 
ming of a grouse, the chatter of a squirrel or 
the faint call of some far off bird. 
t In the Rocky Mountains of the West the 
autumn colors are far less vivid. Deciduous 
trees are few there, and the dark green coni¬ 
fers stand always unchanged, save for the 
tamarac which each autumn sheds its needles. 
Only along the streams are seen the winding 
yellow lines which tell of cottonwood, or in wet 
places high up on the mountainside little patches 
of changing aspens shine like sunlight against the 
evergreens and later turn to brown or orange. 
Sometimes a shrub of mountain maple makes 
a speck of vivid color, or in some forest burn¬ 
ing a growth of fireweed shines red among the 
gray trunks. 
The beautiful colors of our autumn woods are 
like those of a gorgeous sunset, of whose chang¬ 
ing charms we never weary. We are coming 
now to the sunset of the year, to be followed 
by the night of winter, and that night in turn 
by the dawn of a new year with its new life. 
RAILWAYS AND THE FOREST FIRES. 
The United States has passed through an¬ 
other one of those ordeals which in the last 
quarter of a century have occurred all too fre¬ 
quently. The most dangerous forest fires have 
been quenched and the summing up of losses, 
now possible, will show an appalling total. 
In view of these losses it seems that every 
known precaution must be exercised to prevent 
the recurrence of these great fires, but it is 
probable they will soon be forgotten. As we 
have pointed out, a great number of the fires 
originated along railway lines and were caused 
by sparks from locomotives. Despite the efforts 
of inventors, it seems that railway companies 
have so far failed to effectively screen the 
smokestacks of their locomotives. It is a diffi¬ 
cult thing to do this. When a locomotive, under 
forced draft, is toiling up grade with a heavy 
train, the blast of the exhaust drives live coals 
of considerable size through the screens. If 
there is any wind, these land some distance away 
from the tracks and often start fires that gain 
headway rapidly before they are discovered. 
It is conceded in the Adirondacks that if late 
September and early October had been windy 
instead of calm, the losses there would have 
been enormous. On the mountain grades fires 
from locomotive sparks were frequent, and even 
the trains which were hauling water to put out 
fires set other fires. 
It is quite possible that the trackwalkers could 
be trained to watch for and put out fires. Cer¬ 
tainly they should evince more interest than they 
have shown in this direction, and if encouraged 
in some way to put out fires, these men would 
prove to be valuable to the State as well as to 
their employers. 
The New York Forest, Fish and Game Com¬ 
mission has called the attention of the Public 
Service Commission to the existing situation. 
On Monday of this week the officials of the rail¬ 
ways operating in the Adirondack Park appeared 
before the last named commission in Albany to 
answer questions bearing on the suggestion that 
these railways substitute for coal some other 
fuel or change their motive power within the 
park. It is believed some good will come of 
these suggestions. At any rate the Commission 
will be expected to sift the matter to the bottom. 
The results attained in training men as forest¬ 
ers were made apparent during the woods fires. 
Wherever intelligent generalship was exercised, 
the fires were either put out or kept in check. 
Contrasted with these cases were others where 
volunteers turned out to assist in the work, and 
without experienced leaders, effected little or 
no saving. The old saying, “What is every¬ 
body’s business is nobody’s,” was never moie 
apparent. The men of the Forest Service and 
the fire wardens of the various States proved 
that as a body they are of great value. 
That Col. Joseph H. Acklen, game warden of 
Tennessee, is earnest for protection has long 
been well known, and it seems that under the 
recently enacted law to protect the game birds 
he is bringing to book offenders against the law 
with praiseworthy energy. A press dispatch an¬ 
nounces the infliction of the extreme penalty on 
an offender of Sumner county, Tenn., who has 
been fined $50 a bird for trying to dispose by 
sale of fifty quail illegally taken. According to 
Game Warden King, who made the arrest, the 
birds were trapped and killed by blows on the 
head. The law forbids the killing of any game 
animals or birds except by shooting them with 
a gun, fired from the shoulder. 
r » 
The report of the Anglers’ National Commit¬ 
tee on Standard of Sportsmanship, printed in 
our last issue, furnishes food for deep thought 
and several suggestions which, if followed by 
our sportsmen, will result in reforms along sane 
and safe lines. In it will be found a reflection 
of the belief held by many that in the fulness of 
time angling in many of our game fish waters 
will be restricted to the use of small artificial 
lures. Perhaps single hooks will then be re¬ 
quired. The education of the boy in the ethics 
of sportsmanship has too long been neglected, 
for it is on him that reliance must be placed in 
the prosecution of those reforms which must be 
brought about gradually but surely. 
R 
Our cover picture this week will remind 
sportsmen of their hunting trips into the forest 
for deer or moose. In Maine, New Brunswick 
and Nova Scotia just now a great many parties 
are “going in” in this fashion. The fascination 
of the autumn woods, when viewed from the 
bow of a canoe, is very great, and every curve 
in the stream brings new vistas and new possi¬ 
bilities of a shot at big game. 
