Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 8, 
Six Months, $1.50. f 
I9IO. 
VOL. LXX1V.—No. 2. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, 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. 
THE HARR 1 MAN TRACT. 
Another great tract of wild land is to be 
added to the preserve system of the State of 
New York, and because of its accessibility it 
will be of the greatest importance to the sports¬ 
men and sportswomen living in and near New 
York city. 
When the late Edward H. Harriman began 
buying thousands of acres of wood and hill 
land round about Arden, in Orange county, it 
was thought that it was his intention to isolate 
the magnificent mansion and grounds he began 
to establish on the high hill above Arden a few 
years ago. But Mr. Harriman was quick to 
recognize the use to which this rough country 
was best adapted, and it was his plan to secure, 
through purchase by himself and his friends, a 
tract extending from the Ramapo valley east¬ 
ward to the Hudson River, and to present this 
to the State as a great recreation ground, ac¬ 
cessible both by rail and water. His intentions 
were known to the State authorities and to 
wealthy men who favored the plan, but unfortu¬ 
nately Mr. Harriman’s last illness put an end 
to his active leadership in the work he had out¬ 
lined, his death following shortly afterward. 
It is now announced that Mrs. Mary W. Har¬ 
riman, the financier’s widow, will carry out his 
wishes and give to the State ten thousand acres 
of land lying east of Arden, provided the tract 
be set aside for the free use of the public for¬ 
ever. Further than this, it is said that other 
parcels of land lying east of the Harriman tract, 
and owned by wealthy men, will in all prob¬ 
ability be added, so that the preserve will event¬ 
ually front on the Hudson River in the pictur¬ 
esque vicinity of old Fort Montgomery and 
Popolopen Creek, hard by Iona Island, the 
natural outlet of the region, and probably the 
end of a long trail employed by the Indians for 
many years. 
This is high country, rough, well wooded, 
dotted with ponds and plenteously supplied with 
springs and brooks which wend their ways to 
the Hudson River on the east and to the Ramapo 
to the west. A railway follows the Hudson, an¬ 
other the Ramapo, but there is none between 
these points nor very near north or south. It 
is a natural game preserve and its many spring- 
fed ponds and brooks were once the home of 
trout and bass in abundance, and can be stocked 
again and made attractive through protection. 
Grouse are now in these covers in fair numbers, 
and occasionally a deer is seen. This hill coun¬ 
try is fully as attractive as the famous Tuxedo 
country west of the Ramapo, and is the favorite 
tramping and camping ground of a great many 
people. 
The acquisition of the Harriman tract by the 
State, and the land abutting on the Hudson, 
which is certain to be made a park in time, will 
be followed by the setting aside of other tracts. 
The public lands, which now begin at old Fort 
Lee, opposite Upper New York city, and extend 
thirteen miles to Sneeden’s Landing on the Tap- 
pan Zee as the Interstate Palisades Park, will 
eventually take in the greater part of the west 
shore of the Hudson north to the West Point 
Military Reservation, or to Cornwall. The 
healthful high country will then be accessible 
to rich and poor alike, and no man need deny 
himself the recreation to be found there, for 
one can walk, ride, drive or sail to attractive 
places free to all. Perhaps as the years pass 
it may again be possible to shoot and fish with¬ 
in two hours’ ride by boat or rail of the greatest 
city in America. 
OLD TIME ANIMAL COLLECTIONS. 
It is within comparatively few years only that 
the interest and educational value of zoological 
gardens has been appreciated. True it is that 
fifty or sixty years ago there were in the old 
world a dozen institutions of this kind, but with¬ 
in the last fifteen or twenty their number has. 
increased astonishingly both in Europe and 
America. 
Yet there were wild beast shows a long time 
ago, and to China is given the credit of having 
established the first zoological garden, about a 
thousand years before the Christian era. China 
has had zoological parks ever since, and in one 
of them the extraordinary Pere David’s deer 
persisted until the Boxer rebellion, when the last 
of the species is said to have been destroyed by 
the Chinese rebels. The Chinese showed their 
appreciation of the educational value of such an 
institution by calling it the Intelligence Park. 
Vast numbers of wild beasts of many sorts 
were brought together from all lands in Greek 
and Roman times, but this was not because any¬ 
one enjoyed seeing the animals themselves, but 
for the pleasure of seeing them fight with each 
other or against men. These battles were among 
the attractions of the arena. Nevertheless it is 
said that Alexander the Great, influenced by an¬ 
other motive, caused extensive collections of rare 
and unknown animals to be made and sent to 
his old tutor, the great philosopher Aristotle. 
Capt. S. S. Flower in his List of the Zoological 
Gardens of the World tells us that the first Eng¬ 
lish menagerie was established in the time of 
King Henry I. 
In the new world, Mexico, according to the 
chroniclers, was the site of more than one zoo¬ 
logical garden of importance. Prescott tells us 
of this garden with its aquaria, its aviaries and 
animals, and says that many creatures which 
could not be obtained alive were represented 
there in gold and silver. 
When Cortez entered Mexico, he found there 
two zoological gardens filled with plants and 
with immense cages, in some of which there 
were fierce birds of prey, while in others made 
of wicker work, there were monster snakes and 
carnivorous mammals. In the aquarium some 
of the tanks were full of salt water, and on these 
tanks above the fish which they held many sorts 
of waterfowl lived their lives. 
The birds of prey and carnivorous animals 
were fed on the flesh of turkeys, of which five 
hundred each day were required to supply their 
wants. 
That shooting driven game in the English 
fashion is not always thoroughly enjoyed is 
evident from the following comments by a 
well-known writer in the Shooting Times: 
The shooting' man who' is also a keen naturalist soon 
wearies of driven game, and finds himself longing to 
take gun and dog and sally forth alone. He frets at the 
restricted area of the butt, the necessity of acrobatic 
postures to hide himself, and he grows to detest the big 
bags. At the end of what is considered a good day his 
only reflection on looking at the long lines of game laid 
out for his inspection is how much more and better 
sport that game would have afforded him if killed under 
different conditions. He would have loved to seek it in 
its haunts, watch his dogs cleverly drawing upon it, and 
pitted his wits against its strong instinct for preserving 
its own life. This alone constitutes sport according to 
his ideals. 
It is frequently claimed that shooting driven 
birds is not so easy as it appears to be, yet 
there is the record of a recent achievement 
that could scarcely be repeated over dogs. A 
famous shot is credited with killing four birds 
so rapidly that all were dead before the first 
one fell to the ground. Two guns were em¬ 
ployed, and each pheasant received a single 
charge. Doubles and three singles are not 
rare in this shooting. 
e* 
The New York Aquarium had a greater num¬ 
ber of visitors during the year 1909 than ever 
before, the attendance being 3,803,501, an aver¬ 
age of 10,417 a day. These figures show that 
the Aquarium had a greater patronage by the 
public than all the other museums of the city, 
including the Zoological Park, combined; and 
1,800,000 more, for the same period, than the 
New York Plippodrome, which has probably the 
largest attendance of any theater in the city. 
These figures are unequalled by those of any 
other museum in the world of which statistics 
are available. 
