Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 18, 1908. 
VOL. LXX.—No. 3. 
No. 346 Broadway, 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. 
346 Broadway, 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. 
GAME FISH DISTRIBUTION. 
The distribution of game fish in the best 
known WSters of the world has progressed so 
quietly during recent years that the public, if it 
realizes that the work is important, regards its 
success with apathetic interest. 
So gradually have the products of scientists 
and inventors been adopted that improvements 
of the greatest importance have ceased to be¬ 
come nine-day wonders, and the public in a day 
or two ceases to read in its daily papers how a 
thing has been done, so long as it is an assured 
success. 
The electrically propelled yacht and the motor 
car are but two of the results of modern achieve¬ 
ment. It was only a little while ago that these 
really wonderful inventions were derided by 
the public as impossible, and the sight of one 
now causes no person’s pulse to beat the faster. 
When Signor Marconi's promise to transmit 
wireless messages between Great Britain and the 
United States was kept, and the papers published 
pages of matter describing the long years of toil 
whose culmination was a message flashed across 
the Atlantic Ocean, there were few readers who 
went further into the accounts than the first 
paragraph or two. Marconi had made good, they 
knew, and that was all they cared about the in¬ 
cident. 
Years ago the whole world knew that an at¬ 
tempt had been made to drive a tunnel under 
the Hudson River, and that the project had 
been abandoned. To-day one can walk dry shod 
from New York to New Jersey, yet not one per¬ 
son in every million that pass the mouths of 
these tunnels knows their location. 
In view of these facts, it is not remarkable 
that scant attention is given to the work of 
the world’s fish culturists, whose achievement 
during the last half century would be regarded 
as one of the greatest feats of modern times 
were it not for the fact that the public has grown 
accustomed to accomplishments and merely asks 
that every new one be put to practical use at 
once, to assist it to move more rapidly at its 
work or play—and prevent waste of time. 
To-day the fish culturists of America and 
Australia and of England and New Zealand ex¬ 
change shipments of eggs with the utmost confi¬ 
dence that they will reach their destination safely 
and with slight loss. In a few days one million 
salmon eggs will be put on the cars at San Fran¬ 
cisco, and when they arrive in New York they 
will be transferred to a coastwise steamship and 
will eventually be taken in hand by fish cul¬ 
turists in Argentina, hatched and released in the 
tidal waters of that South American Republic. 
At the same time a similar number of rainbow 
trout eggs will be shipped from California hatch¬ 
eries to Germany. 
British fish culturists are endeavoring to trans¬ 
plant striped bass from our Southern waters to 
their tidal rivers, and in this they are receiv¬ 
ing assistance from our Federal Fisheries Bureau. 
They feel confident of the success of the under¬ 
taking, basing their hopes on the fact that the 
striped bass of the Atlantic coast thrive in the 
waters of the Pacific and would multiply rapidly 
were it not for the vigor with which netters pur¬ 
sue them. 
European fish culturists have distributed game 
fish eggs in the various colonies in all parts of 
the world, and the results have satisfied them, 
although they have ofjen been attained under 
adverse conditions. 
Much of this distribution is still of an ex¬ 
perimental nature, and must remain so for a 
considerable period of time, but it cannot be re¬ 
garded in the same light as the careless and 
thoughtless experimenting which resulted in the 
firm hold the English sparrow and the German 
carp have on American suburbs and waters re¬ 
spectively. The carp and the sparrow have 
taught us a lesson that will not be quickly for¬ 
gotten, and it is not without its grain of com¬ 
fort, for it has illustrated the need of the 
greatest care in introducing foreign and possi¬ 
bly undesirable species into our forests and 
waters. 
HUNTING CASUALTIES. 
It seems that in Minnesota, as well as in 
Maine, the recent big game shooting season 
passed without many casualties of the inexcus¬ 
able sort. 
This is too important to be passed by without 
investigating a little. What are the impressions 
received by our friends who were on the ground? 
Are hunters becoming more careful, is the num¬ 
ber of heedless shooters diminishing, or have 
the warnings published from timS- to time had 
a beneficial effect? 
It cannot be that this is merely a coincidence, 
for in the two States referred to several persons 
were hurt in purely accidental ways. 
More light on the subject may lead to a further 
decrease in the number of these unfortunate 
occurrences, and we hope this may be obtained. 
The most obstinate fact is that there is never 
present the slightest excuse for shooting at an 
object until its identity is ascertained, and if 
there is any new line of reasoning by which 
novices can be impressed with the great im¬ 
portance of knowing what they are shooting at, 
Forest and Stream would like to know what 
'it is. 
WANTON DEER KILLING. 
Intelligence of one of the worst cases of 
wholesale deer killing on record comes through 
Dr. C. R. Low, chief of the Canadian Geological 
Survey, who recently took the Government 
steamer Neptune for a twelve months’ voyage 
to North Hudson Bay. He describes in his 
official log an instance of the heartlessness of 
the “better educated.’’ He writes: 
“A few years ago a Scotch whaling firm sent 
their steamer Active to Southampton Island, and 
brought with them some natives from Big Island. 
These men, provided with modern rifles, soon 
killed off or drove away the deer in the neigh¬ 
borhood. 
“The old inhabitants, the Sagdlingmint Eskimo, 
being armed only with bows, arrows and spears, 
were unable to compete with the better-armed 
strangers. As a result the entire tribe, who num¬ 
bered sixty-eight souls in 1900. died of starva¬ 
tion and disease in the winter of 1902, just for 
a few dollars. The following year the whaling 
station was abandoned, and the great island is 
now uninhabited except for a few of the Big 
Island Eskimo at the old whaling station.” 
At last the sportsman’s motor car has in¬ 
vaded the retreats of the big game of equatorial 
Africa, where the hum of motors and the honk¬ 
ing of warning horns Have heretofore been un¬ 
known. Starting at Dar-es-Salaam, in German 
East Africa, Lieutenant Graetz, of the German 
Army, is on his way to one of the ports in Ger¬ 
man West Africa, probably Kamerun or Duke- 
town. Following the route of the proposed rail¬ 
way from Dar-es-Salaam, on the East coast to 
Ujiji, on Lake Tanganyika Lieutenant Graetz 
has been heard from at Tabora, about 600 miles 
inland in the Unyamwezi country. He had not 
seen any big game up to the time he reached 
Tabora, and the smaller game passed by the car 
was frightened into flight by it. 
* 
The Forest, Fish and Game Commission of 
New York has recommended that in the pro¬ 
posed revision of the game and fish laws, the 
dates of the open seasons be given instead of 
those for the closed seasons, as the laws read 
at present. If the present deer law were changed 
to conform to this rule, its opening sentence 
would read: “The open season for wild deer 
shall be from Sept. 16 to Oct. 31, both inclusive.” 
No person, however careless, would misconstrue 
its exact meaning. And in numerous other ways 
the written laws may be simplified and shortened. 
