Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i 
Six Months, $1.50. 1 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25 , 1909 . 
VOL. LXXIII,—No. 26. 
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. 
GREETINGS. 
To all its readers Forest and Stream ex¬ 
tends hearty Christmas greetings. A Merry 
Christmas to all, with visits from a kindly Santa 
Claus, good winter weather, Christmas cheer and 
good will to fellow men—that love for others 
typified by Him whose birthday festival this is. 
THE RIGHTS OF FOREIGNERS. 
Three decisions that have recently been ren¬ 
dered in county courts in Pennsylvania affect 
the new law which prohibits unnaturalized for¬ 
eigners from carrying guns in that State. Two 
of the judges declared the law unconstitutional, 
they holding that it is contrary to the Federal 
constitution and to treaty rights with foreign 
countries; the third that it is constitutional and 
in no way infringes the rights of any person. 
Commissioner Phillips favors an appeal from 
the adverse decisions of the two judges referred 
to, and has said that game is more abundant in 
Pennsylvania now than at any other time in the 
past twenty years, because of the enforcement of 
the new law. It has also served to protect 
wardens, seventeen of whom have been shot by 
foreigners, fourteen of them in one year alone. 
Mr. Phillips’ opinion is in accord with that 
held by Commissioner Whipple of New York, 
and their views are endorsed by all sportsmen 
who have given this subject sufficient attention 
to enable them to form a definite opinion. 
It would be unfortunate for the great Com¬ 
monwealth of Pennsylvania if its jurists decide 
in favor of the lawless unnaturalized foreigners. 
That State, because of its great mining and steel 
industries, contains a vast number of these men. 
A few of them will in time become good citizens, 
but the majority have their hearts set on re¬ 
turning with a competence to their old homes in 
Europe. It is this class that it is so difficult to 
teach the lesson all future Americans must ac¬ 
quire—that liberty is not license; that freedom 
and contempt for law are not synonymous. 
The alien shooting license law is an effective 
check on this element wherever it is strictly en¬ 
forced. When every man who takes a gun 
abroad must exhibit a license to do so, the duties 
of the wardens are simplified, and the moral 
effect of this regulation is greater than it has 
so far been possible to estimate. Hence the 
value of the license for all, residents, non-resi¬ 
dents and aliens. 
A FAIR EXCHANGE. 
Sportsmen tourists who for the first time view 
Seattle, Wash., and its environs from a point of 
vantage, generally agree that the pioneers dis¬ 
played rare judgment and foresight when they 
drove their tent-pegs deep into the soil of that 
favored spot. To-day it is a place where the 
sportsman loves to linger, where he is contented 
if a resident. Few cities are so near excellent 
shooting and fishing grounds. Seattle has city 
limits. Within these one cannot shoot. Within 
them, too, quail are abundant; hence a news¬ 
paper yarn that has been copied widely. It is 
to the effect that these birds have become a 
nuisance; that_suburbanites’ gardens are devas¬ 
tated by the quail, and it is hoped they can be 
exterminated. 
Reversing the old saw that what is meat for 
one man is poison for another, a resident of New 
Jersey, in calling our attention to this story, asks 
that Seattle trap its surplus quail and ship them 
to a State which will be glad to receive and pro¬ 
tect them. Seriously, the suggestion is a good 
one, and is respectfully referred to our Western 
friends. New Jersey’s quail, it is estimated, aver¬ 
age two to every fqrm, but it is not on record 
that bobwhite destroys grain and garden truck. 
WHOLESALE MUSKOX KILLING. 
The muskox is one of the extraordinary large 
animals of the world that is believed to be ap¬ 
proaching extinction. It stands alone among 
mammals, having relations with the cattle and 
sheep alike, and in its way is as peculiar as the 
prong-horned antelope or the giraffe. The few 
muskox which now inhabit a restricted area in 
North America are the survivors of a species 
that once had a circumpolar distribution as far 
south as Germany in the old world and the val¬ 
ley of the Ohio River in the new. 
The chief economic value of the muskox is as 
food to travelers in high latitudes, but, because 
of its rarity and the fact that few big-game hun¬ 
ters have killed it, it has of late years become 
desirable to sportsmen. 
In these days of Arctic exploration, the musk¬ 
ox is being rapidly destroyed, and different peri¬ 
odicals are now printing tales of muskox destruc¬ 
tion which sound rather shocking because the 
stories read like unnecessary butchery. A young 
man who accompanied Commander Peary on his 
recent expedition to the North, writing of a'point 
in Northern Greenland where the expedition re¬ 
mained for two weeks, said recently: “Here we 
lived high, killing forty-seven muskoxen in four 
hunts, and dogs and men had sirloin and tender¬ 
loin all the time.” Of another trip he says: 
“Killed four muskoxen one hundred miles away 
and brought back a calf on the sledge alive to 
the boat only to have it die the next day.” 
It is easy enough to condemn this wholesale 
destruction of a rare animal, but on the other 
hand we know little about circumstances of the 
case. It is possible that fresh meat was needed, 
and if it was actually required for the comfort 
or health of the party the killing of these musk¬ 
oxen was clearly justified. The relish with which 
the writer quoted tells of killing the animals is 
after all only a part of his youth and inex¬ 
perience. 
Early travelers in the Arctic found the musk¬ 
ox as far south as Ft. Churchill on Hudson’s Bay 
and west to the Mackenzie River. Its range is 
ever contracting and it should be protected so 
far as possible. 
MICHIGAN WOODS ACCIDENTS. 
The total number of shooting accidents in 
Michigan during the recent open season was 
very large. Seven or eight thousand men were 
in the woods, and it is apparent that careless¬ 
ness was very common. Among those killed by 
mistake for deer was Charles Kneck, of Green¬ 
ville, Ohio. It is said that he wore a fawn- 
colored corduroy suit and a brown fuzzy cap. 
His friends warned him of his danger, but he 
refused to don other clothing. One day one of 
his friends mistook him for a deer and nearly 
shot him; another day a stranger was equally 
careless. Finally, while Mr. Kneck was climb¬ 
ing over a log he was shot and killed by the 
sheriff of the county, who was hunting deer. 
But this was an exceptional case; other men who 
were shot wore red caps or bright hued sweat¬ 
ers, showing that hysteria and not woodcraft 
was rampant in the forests. 
The Michigan press has denounced careless 
hunters in unmeasured terms and vigorous Eng¬ 
lish, some of them demanding that the hunting 
of deer be stopped because of the killings that 
occur during every open season. 
From the Adirondacks comes a tale of a 
panther which is said to jump into roads at un- : 
expected moments, frightening horses and aston- • 
ishing their drivers. This one—though still at ■ 
large and so presumably unmeasured—is credited ; 
with eight feet of length and an apparent de¬ 
sire to refute the assertion that panthers are I 
extinct in the Adirondacks—or is it another 
manifestation of the belief that a cold winter • ■ 
is coming? 
A Sullivan county man who believes he killed • 
a silver-gray fox the other day, and who has re¬ 
fused forty dollars for its pelt, may not realize 
his dream of sudden wealth. Gray foxes are 
killed now and then in the North, and are fre¬ 
quently mistaken for “silver-grays.” Possibly the ; 
Sullivan county fox was one of these. i 
K i 
Next week we will print an account of the , 
capture of an immense sting ray or sea bat in , 
the Gulf of California. C. G. Conn and his 
party took part in the exciting fight which pre- : 
ceded the landing on the beach of the great , , 
ray, the weight of which was 2,650 pounds. I 
