March 5, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
381 
cute in five' cases. In four of these the lawyers 
for the defendants had advised their clients tp 
pay up; the fifth was only contested on the 
.ground that the defendants, a large paper con¬ 
cern at Williamsburg, had employed all possible 
means for getting rid of the nuisance. 
In this connection the interesting statement 
was made by C. H. Wilson of Glens Falls, that 
the J. J. Rogers Company had expended $80,000 
in experimenting upon means for preventing the 
contamination of the water of the Ausable River 
and of Lake Champlain into which it flows. • 
Probably the most important result of the as¬ 
sociation’s work during the year is the success¬ 
ful issue of the crusade undertaken early in 
1909 by a special committee consisting of Arthur 
Hawkes and Mr. Preston, M.P.P., for the set¬ 
ting apart of a large tract of country as a forest, 
fish and game preserve on the borders of both 
Minnesota and Ontario. As a partial result of 
the work of this committee, aided by other On¬ 
tario and Minnesota men, whom they associated 
with themselves, about 1,000.000 acres in On¬ 
tario and 1,400,000 acres in Minnesota have been 
so set apart, and all concerned in the work re¬ 
ceived the hearty thanks of the association. 
One of the decisions recently rendered in the 
Superior Court of the Province of Quebec of 
interest to sportsmen, which engaged the atten¬ 
tion of the association, holds that the law of 
the province imposing the payment of a license 
fee by non-resident anglers cannot be enforced 
when such non-resident anglers fish their own 
waters or those leased by them from the Gov¬ 
ernment. It is understood, however, that an ap¬ 
peal from this judgment has been taken by the 
Government. 
Another judgment from which an appeal is 
being taken by the Ste. Anne Fish and Game 
Club to the privy council is that recently ren¬ 
dered by the Court of King’s Bench at Quebec 
in an action taken by the club against a lumber 
company for damages alleged to have been 
caused to its fishing rights by the destruction of 
spawning beds, etc., through the raising of a 
dam. The Superior Court ordered the destruc¬ 
tion or lowering of the dam and the payment of 
damages. The King’s Bench reversed the judg¬ 
ment, and only the minority of the court held 
that any damages were assessable in such cases. 
Hence the present appeal. 
One of the leading features of Dr. Horna- 
day’s address was a plea for the protection of 
the gray squirrel. It was man’s most cheerful 
companion and friend, he said, and responded 
most easily to protection of all wild animals. 
He feared that it was doomed to destruction in 
New York State unless carefully protected, and 
in accordance with his proposition the associa¬ 
tion voted a resolution asking the Legislature 
to prohibit killing it. 
The association warmly espoused the cause of 
the Weekes bill, now before Congress, seeking 
to place the protection of all migratory birds in 
the hands of the National Government. Presi¬ 
dent Dutcher, of the National Association of 
Audubon Societies, came to the convention large¬ 
ly to support the measure. Migratory birds could 
not, he said, be rightly considered to be the prop¬ 
erty of any particular State, and should be the 
wards of the nation. He trusted that the Weekes 
bill would result in placing them under the care 
of the Department of Agriculture, which under¬ 
stood their requirements. Incidentally Mr. Dut¬ 
cher, after referring to the many years which he 
had given to the work of bird protection in the 
States, informed the association that he hoped 
to shortly visit Berlin to attend an international 
meeting of ornithologists for the purpose of 
furthering the work of protection. The neces¬ 
sity for this work was illustrated by the destruc¬ 
tion of the beautiful bird of paradise. He con¬ 
sidered it a sin to exterminate so splendid a 
creature which should never have been per¬ 
mitted to be exported. It was well known that 
it inhabited only a restricted area, and yet thou¬ 
sands of these birds were annually imported into 
this country to serve as millinery ornaments. 
Dr. Heber Bishop, of Boston, expressed the 
fear that at the rate at which many birds were 
being destroyed, fifteen or twenty years would 
see the end of many of our song and insectivor¬ 
ous birds. In the case of the robin, for instance, 
for which many private individuals, both in 
Massachusetts and in the Northern States and 
provinces had provided sanctuaries, they were 
destroyed wholesale when they went South, and 
the doctor had heard of one man there who had 
killed as many as 2,000 robins in a single day. 
An interesting paper on the walrus, the seal 
and the whale was read by C. H. Wilson in sup¬ 
port of his resolution concerning the protection 
of the mammals of the sea, which was adopted, 
providing that the association has learned with 
much satisfaction that with a view to the preser¬ 
vation of the mammals of the sea it has been 
urged upon the President of the United States to 
call for a meeting of naturalists and diplomatists 
of Great Britain, Russia, Japan and the United 
States to frame an international game law which 
should protect the mammals of the sea; with a 
further resolution that other maritime nations 
should be invited to join in whatever conclus¬ 
ions should be reached by these. That this 
movement commends itself to the favorable con¬ 
sideration and claims the sympathy of this asso¬ 
ciation, which endorses and wishes it all success. 
Copies of the above were ordered to be sent to 
the President of the United States and to Dr. 
David Starr Jordan. 
G. H. Richards, of Boston, spoke of the ex¬ 
cessive legislation on fish and game subjects in 
Massachusetts, remarking that some of it is 
crude, ill-considered and unscientific. “Creatures 
like fish and game,” he said, “have fixed habits, 
regular breeding periods and mature each at its 
own regular time. When seventeen laws are 
passed in one year affecting creatures which 
have been with us from the settlement of the 
country, it is evident either that insufficient care¬ 
ful thought and consideration is now given to 
the subject, or that in the past legislation has 
been wrong. So much legislation and so many 
vexatious laws bring all fish and game legisla¬ 
tion into contempt and thereby tend to their own 
violation.” 
Mr. Meehan forecasted the stocking of the 
Schuylkill River with sturgeon, and told of the 
proposed fish hatcheries at Presque Isle, which 
he planned to make the largest in the world. 
He referred to the restocking of many of the 
trout streams of Pennsylvania. Years ago they 
yielded but a very few fish and now it was pos¬ 
sible for an angler to take his full limit of forty 
fish in a day out of them. Incidentally he ad¬ 
vised that in planting young trout it was not de¬ 
sirable to wait until the little fish were too old, 
but to plant them as fry, and as soon after the 
absorption of the sac as possible; in fact, the 
Lfnited States Fish Commission sometimes 
planted the fry with the sac still visible. 
J. B. Townsend, Jr., read a paper describing 
a very simply constructed fishway for trout to 
enable them to overcome dams in their spring 
ascent of streams to their spawning beds. This 
dam Mr. Townsend had found to work splen¬ 
didly on his preserve in Canada, and it was 
strongly recommended by the association. 
Some of the discussions at the convention were 
exceedingly interesting, especially that by Messrs. 
Meehan and C. H. Wilson on the whitefish ques¬ 
tion. 
Next year’s meeting of the association will be 
held in Montreal, and the new president is Sir 
Lomer Gouin, Prime Minister of the Province 
of Quebec. E. T. D. Chambers. 
Fishing in California. 
San Francisco, Cal., Feb. 21 .—Editor Forest 
and Stream: There is but little being done here 
at the present time in the fishing line, owing to 
the fact that the steelhead fishing season is at 
an end and the striped bass are not furnishing 
their usual amount of sport. Anglers have been 
visiting the lagoons and sloughs frequented by 
the striped bass regularly for sometime in the 
hopes that a change in the sport would be ex¬ 
perienced, but this has not developed and the 
rods are now being placed upon the shelf until 
the trout fishing season opens in April. 
1 he steelhead fishing this winter was excellent 
and during January and the first half of Febru¬ 
ary there were many fine days for this sport 
and a record number of anglers were in the 
field. The Point Reyes district was a favorite 
one and the largest catches were made there, al¬ 
though many visited the Russian River with 
splendid results. Toward the end of the season 
Shellville proved to be one of the best fishing 
spots, and those who visited this place made 
splendid catches. The fish commissioners have 
been very busy this season planting fry, and the 
sport in the coast streams is expected to show 
an improvement in the future. The heavy snows 
that have been falling all winter in the sierras 
will probably mean that trout fishing there will 
be commenced rather late in the spring and that 
it will extend until well into the fall as was the 
case last year. A. P. B. 
International Fly-Casting Tournament. 
An international meeting for fly-casting to be 
held March 10, 11, 12 and 13 has been arranged 
by Le Casting Club de France. 
All trials at this meeting will be for amateurs 
of any nationality. Entries will be received at 
the Secretariat du Cercle du Bois de Boulogne, 
and will close half an hour before the beginning 
of each trial. Price of entry is five francs for 
each trial, reduced to two francs fifty centimes 
for members of the Casting Club de France. 
The prizes will be medals, objects of art and 
fishing implements. 
The committee of organization reserves the 
right of refusing any entry, of modifying the 
program and of deciding for itself all questions 
in dispute. 
The rules governing the casting deal with cast¬ 
ing the fly and casting bait weight. In fly-cast¬ 
ing there will be trials for distance; for rods of 
limited weight, with an obstacle in front, with 
