376 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 3, 1910. 
August Meetings. 
Boston, Mass., Aug. 27. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: August is pre-eminently the month for 
clambakes, and two of the powerful clubs affili¬ 
ated with the Massachusetts Fish and Game Pro¬ 
tective Association have during this month drawn 
heavily upon the supply of these succulent bi¬ 
valves. On the nth, the Northampton Rod and 
Gun Club assembled at Norwattuck Park in 
Hadley. Among those present were the sheriff 
of the county, Representative C. A. Montgomery, 
several ex-representatives, the county commis¬ 
sioner, and several candidates for political prefer¬ 
ment the coming fall. Among the leaders in 
arranging for the festival were former presidents 
W. H. Feiker and C. H. Sawyer, the secretary, 
F. E. Shunt way, and George R. Turner. 
In the shooting contests prizes were won by 
Dr. Outhouse, W. H. Snow and other crack shots 
of the county. 
This club has been doing good work for several 
years, and was among the first to adopt the plan 
of affiliation as offered by the State Association 
three years ago. Mr. Turner is now the member 
of the Legislative Committee, and W. J. Knowl- 
ton, of the Committee on Enforcement of Laws 
in the State Association. All the hunters and 
fishermen of Northampton, and those of the 
whole region round about owe much to the zeal 
and energy of the men who organized the club, 
and who are to-day among its strongest sup¬ 
porters. The officers of the club have never 
been found wanting when called upon to assist in 
any efforts being made to promote sportsmen’s 
interests. 
On Aug. 26, the members of the Old Colony 
Club assembled in the Beverly Yacht Club house 
in Pocasset. They came from all the towns and 
cities on the bay shore, and with summer visitors 
and invited guests, numbered nearly 200— one of 
the largest gatherings in the history of the club, 
which, in its early days, was graced by the 
presence of Grover Cleveland and Joe Jefferson, 
who were instrumental in organizing it and gave 
it their cordial support. At the post-prandial ex¬ 
ercises the President, Hon. Charles S. Plamlin, 
of Boston, introduced Mayor Ashley, of New 
Bedford, as the first speaker. He was followed 
by Mayor Fitzgerald, of Boston, and the third 
speaker was Gen. Charles H. Taylor, of the Bos¬ 
ton Globe. Dr. George W. Field, Chairman of 
the Fish and Game Commission, spoke of the 
damage to migratory fish done by fish traps in 
the lower bay, and declared them a national men¬ 
ace to navigation, and said he hoped the club 
would take action in the matter. 
The officers elected for the ensuing year are: 
President, Hon. Charles S. Hamlin; Vice-Presi¬ 
dents, Dr. M. H. Richardson, Thomas Jefferson, 
John I. Bryant; Treasurer, Fred B. Cutler; Sec¬ 
retary, H. Nelson Emmons; Executive Commit¬ 
tee—Wm. A. Nye, J. I. Bryant, Geo. W. Fish, N. 
H. Emmons, Geo. W. Jones, Col. H. E. Converse, 
Hon. J. W. Delano, Edward Hamlin, Theophilus 
Parsons, Louis Bacon, Benj. H. Anthony, F. E. 
Elw'ell, James L. Wesson, Andrew Gray Weeks, 
Howard Stockton, Laurence Minot, Thos. C. 
Thatcher, Horace S. Crowell, C. H. Taylor, Jr., 
Chas. A. Coolidge and Fred. B. Cutler. 
In point of numbers, wealth and influence this 
club is in the front rank among the sportsmen’s 
clubs. Its chief aim is the maintenance of good 
hook-and-line fishing in the waters of Buzzard’s 
Bay. Its members regard the use of seines as a 
menace to their sport. 
Writing from Fitchburg, Deputy-Commissioner 
I. O. Converse informs me that ruffed grouse and 
woodcock have bred nicely this -season, and that 
quail are gradually working north and are more 
plentiful than last season. He says, “We fed 
them all through this section last winter.” He has 
also noted some increase in ducks and rabbits. 
H. H. Kimball. 
Maine Hunting Licenses. 
Nonresident agents for the sale of nonresident 
hunting licenses have been appointed by the 
Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Game 
as follows: 
National Sportsman, 75 Federal street, Boston. 
Mass. Wm. Read and Sons, 107 Washington 
street, Boston, Mass. Iver Johnson Sporting 
Goods Co., 155 Washington street, Boston, Mass. 
L. Dana Chapman, 374 Washington street, Bos¬ 
ton, Mass. Kirkwood Bros., 23 Elm street, Bos¬ 
ton, Mass. P. R. Robinson, care N. Y. Sporting 
Goods Co., New York city, 15-17 Warren street. 
Mr. Pinchot on Forest Fires. 
In an interview at Washington Aug. 26, Gifford 
Pinchot, former United States Forester, issued 
a statement which takes the same ground recently 
expressed by Forest and Stream as to where the 
responsibility rests in part for the great loss of 
life and property in the recent forest fires of the 
West. He said: 
“I am proud of the splendid work the men of 
the forest service have been doing against the 
Western forest fires. Many of them have given 
their lives to protect the homes of settlers and 
the forests on which the prosperity of the West¬ 
ern people depends. To my mind their conduct 
is beyond all praise. 
“Forest fires are preventable. It is a good 
thing for us to remember at this time that nearly 
or quite all of the loss, suffering and death these 
fires have caused is wholly unnecessary. A fire 
in the forest is the same kind of thing as a fire 
in the city. There is only one way to fight either. 
The fire department of every city is organized 
with the prime idea of getting to the fire when it 
is young. So with forest fires. The time to con¬ 
quer them is before they grow strong. If a forest 
is equipped with roads, trails, telephone lines and 
a reasonable number of men for patrol, there is 
no more likelihood that great fires will be able to 
get started than there is that great conflagrations 
like the Chicago fire will get started in a city with 
a modern fire department. Under rare circum¬ 
stances they may, but the chances are against it. 
“The forest service has done wonders with its 
handful of devoted men. It has put out every 
year many thousands of small fires, any one of 
which under favorable conditions might have de¬ 
veloped into a conflagration which 10,000 men 
could not stop. This year, because of the great 
drouth, the worst in much of the West for more 
than twenty years, there were too many fires and 
too few rangers. 
“The lesson from these forest fires is perfectly 
clear. When a city suffers from a great fire it 
does not retrench in its fire department, but 
strengthens it. That is what the nation must do 
on the National Forests. If even a small fraction 
of the loss from the present fires had been ex¬ 
pended in additional patrol and preventive equip¬ 
ment, some or perhaps nearly all of the loss could 
have been avoided. I believe our people will take 
this lesson to heart and insist that the settlers and 
their wives and children, the lumbermen and the 
miners and the $2,000,000,000 worth of National 
property in the National Forests shall be ade¬ 
quately protected.” 
THE TOP RAIL. 
A little ingenuity goes a long way at times. 
Here is an instance: An angler was crossing a 
field on his return from a trout stream, when he 
stumbled on a piece of barbed wire which ripped 
a generous hole in his wading stockings. That 
night he cast about for something with which he 
could repair the rent. No first-aid-to-the-injured 
waders being at hand, he borrowed needle, 
thread, linen, and a stick of chewing gum and 
set to work. First he sewed the edges of the 
ripped mackintosh carefully. He then cut two 
linen patches, one for each side of the rent. The 
gum was heated until all the sugar was burned 
out and it became a sticky mass, when the patches 
were coated with it and ironed down over the 
rent, one at a time. 
Next day he fished a cold stream in comfort, 
for the wader did not leak. After his return 
home he attempted to remove the emergency 
patches in order to repair the rent properly with 
rubber cloth and cement, but failed. His worx 
had been too well done, so he let it go at that. 
* * * 
It is very nice to have little emergency kits of 
one sort or another with you, in camp or at home, 
but they are not always the best that may be 
had. Take cuts for instance. Every person cuts 
his fingers now and then, and a deep cut is diffi¬ 
cult to close without copious bleeding. When a 
carpenter cuts a finger he sucks the cut while 
searching for a spider web, winds this around it 
while it is wet, sprinkles fine sawdust on it, and 
binds it up with a bit of cloth. The web keeps the 
wound closed and the sawdust absorbs the blood 
and keeps out air. 
Remembering this, I healed four very bad cuts 
quickly. On a strip of bamboo I had cut all the 
fingers of one hand to the bone, and they were 
bleeding at a terrible rate. Wiping the blood 
away quickly, I plunged all the fingers into a 
bottle of shellac, held them there a few moments, 
then thrust them into a pile of wood dust under 
my lathe. Fresh dust was applied until the bleed¬ 
ing ceased; when the hand was tied up. Ordi¬ 
narily such cuts would put one’s hand out of 
commission for a fortnight, but the shellac pre¬ 
vented inflammation, and next day there was 
scarcely any pain in that hand, and in a few days 
the deep cuts healed over. Shellac is an excellent 
cure for cuts and bruises, the alcohol in it is 
antiseptic, and a wound treated with it is much 
less painful than if handled in more scientific 
ways. Grizzly King. 
