Forest and Stream 
T#rms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 1910. 
t VOL. LXXIV.-No. 18. 
1 No. 127 Franklin St,, New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1910, 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 anb Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
NATIONAL CONSERVATION. 
The battle for the conservation through wise 
uses of the nation’s great natural resources is 
a conflict between political and economic right 
and wrong that applies with more than ordinary 
force to the sportsmen of the United States. 
The wanton and selfish destruction of game ani¬ 
mals and game birds in the United States is a 
sad chapter in our history. The bison, save in 
captivity, is only a memory. The immense flocks 
of passenger pigeons, which once darkened the 
air, have vanished forever. The wild turkey, 
once plentiful, can now be found only in a few 
favored locations in the East. Rivers and creeks, 
which not so long ago teemed with fish for food 
and sport, are now barren. As the bison and 
the pigeon have gone, so will go the nation’s other 
natural resources—forests, land, water and min¬ 
erals—if the people of the country do not awake 
to the impending peril. 
The sportsmen of the country have been the 
first practical conservationists, and they have 
taught a significant and impressive lesson. 
Brought face to face with a situation which 
doomed game animals and game fish to destruc¬ 
tion within a few years, the sportsmen organized 
in clubs and associations for the protection and 
conservation of game life. The campaign, be¬ 
gun not so many years ago, has been eminently 
successful, and to-day, through their efforts, the 
Federal Government and practically all of the 
States have enacted protective game laws. It is 
practical—the preservation of natural resources 
for the uses of all the people. 
Every thinking American sportsman is a con¬ 
servationist in the complete sense as well as in 
the smaller field, as it applies to game life. He 
knows that, as to many matters which touch the 
very life of the Republic and its institutions, and 
upon which depend the material prosperity and 
moral welfare of the Republic, the National Con¬ 
servation Association is doing on a large scale 
exactly what the sportsmen’s organizations have 
been and are doing for the conservation of game 
animals and game fish. Something of its plans 
and purposes is explained on another page. The 
National Conservation Association having taken 
up the fight, it asks for and should have the 
active assistance of the thinking sportsmen of 
the United States in the logical extension of the 
work already well begun. 
THE POST SERIES TOURNAMENT. 
In our trap columns this week is an article 
treating of the Post Series tournament of the 
Interstate Association. Arrangements for hold¬ 
ing such a tournament were definitely determined 
at an association meeting last year, but now 
there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether 
it will be held or abandoned. 
As such tournament would be most harmoni¬ 
ously in accord with the purposes, activities and 
benefits of the Interstate Association in its ef¬ 
forts to promote the sport of trapshooting, it is 
a safe assumption that its desirability is unques¬ 
tioned. The uncertainty felt about its taking place 
may have other sources. Matters of a financial 
nature may have a direct bearing on it. 
The Interstate Association, because of the ex¬ 
pense of running the Grand American Handicap 
and subsidiary tournaments, has an exhausted 
treasury at the end of each year, notwithstand¬ 
ing that each member pays several hundred dol¬ 
lars as dues. Indeed, in many past years there 
has been a deficit, which has been made up by 
an extra assessment on the association members. 
Such extra assessments are a hardship to 
some of the members whose business affairs are 
small in comparison with those of some of the 
other members. At the annual meeting of last 
year this feature was, in a'way, overcome by 
providing classes for the different members, the 
different classes paying different amounts of dues 
according to the business advantages to the re¬ 
spective class members and benefits derived by 
them from association activities. 
As there was manifested the greatest willing¬ 
ness on the part of some of the great companies 
to assume any reasonable additional expense 
apart from and above Interstate Association in¬ 
terests, the matter would seem to be easy of 
solution; that is to say, let the great companies 
bear the expense which they so graciously are 
willing to assume. 
The cultivation of the winter trapshooting 
season would undoubtedly prove of general 
benefit to the sport, and so to all concerned; and 
the winter season would receive the benefits of 
Interstate Association influence. 
A TRAPPER’S STORY. 
The publication of Manly Hardy’s interesting 
serial, entitled “A Fall Fur Hunt in Maine,” has 
been delayed by a variety of circumstances, but 
will begin next week. 
It will possess especial attraction for all out¬ 
door people, not only from the inherent interest 
of the story, but because that story throws many 
a side light on the Maine wilderness as it was 
fifty years ago, and as it no longer exists to-day. 
Besides that, the account gives a very clear idea 
of Mr. Hardy’s personality as a young man— 
hardly more than a boy, in fact. To all this 
must be added the information about the ways 
of the trappers of those days. The series will 
be introduced by a little biography of Mr. Hardy 
which, though brief, will yet give our readers 
more of his personal history than any of them 
know at present. 
Manly Hardy is one of the oldest of the Forest 
and Stream old guard. His long life spent in 
and on the borders of the Maine woods, his keen 
powers of observation, together with his extra¬ 
ordinary memory, have enabled him to accumu¬ 
late an astonishing number of interesting facts 
on a variety of subjects which are of special in¬ 
terest to all outdoor people. This great and con¬ 
stantly increasing brotherhood will look forward 
to this series with pleasurable anticipations, 
which will not be disappointed. 
Leonard B. Spencer, who died at his home in 
New York city recently, was connected with 
the Aquarium in Battery Park for the last fif¬ 
teen years, and to his efforts is partly due the 
popularity of this resort, which is visited daily 
by throngs of people. Mr. Spencer’s age was 
seventy-two years. He was born in Woodstock, 
Vt., and for a number of years was engaged in 
the manufacture of mowing machines in Wor¬ 
cester, Mass., and a pioneer in the introduction 
of these machines into Europe. He served three 
years in the Civil War and afterward was con¬ 
nected with sewing machine and portable house 
manufacture. It was in part his fondness for 
fishing and the study of fishes that resulted in 
his connection with the Aquarium. His illness 
was of only three weeks’ duration. He is sur¬ 
vived by Mrs. Spencer. 
•S 
Now and then comments appearing in the 
press of the South show evidences of a revul¬ 
sion of feeling among the good people south 
of Mason and Dixon’s line in relation to the 
status of the robjn. It is not the small boy with 
his twenty-two caliber rifle who is bringing 
about this changed sentiment; nor is it the negro 
who pots a few robins now and then with his 
Zulu musket. It is the netting of robins by 
thousands at night that is at last arousing in¬ 
dignation, though the practice is by no means 
a new one. In the markets where robins are 
sold it is noticeable that shot marks are the ex¬ 
ception and not the rule. 
* 
So far nearly four thousand individuals have 
applied to the New York Commission for finger- 
ling game fish for the purpose of restocking 
streams and lakes. The number of applications 
and the number of fish assigned are both about 
fifty per cent, higher than last year. The total 
of the latter is estimated at three-quarters of 
a million. 
* 
The proposition to prevent the use of live de¬ 
coys in wildfowl shooting in Massachusetts will 
slumber in committee until another session at 
least. Those favoring it were in the minority. 
