Forest. and Stream 

Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. t 
Six Months, ge 
The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre- 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
objects. Announcement in first number of 
ForEsST AND STREAM, Aug. 14, 1878. 
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS. 
Beginning with Jan. 1, 1906, the subscription 
price of Forest AND STREAM ts $3.00 per year; 
$1.50 for six months; $1 for four months. 
All subscriptions now on our books which 
have been paid at the $4.00 rate, and which run 
for any period into 1906, will be extended pro 
rata to conform to the changed price. 
SPECIAL MONTHLY NUMBER. 
Tus week the Forest AND STREAM is enlarged 
from the regular weekly issue of forty pages to a 
It is 
one of twelve such enlarged monthly numbers to 
special monthly number of fifty-two pages. 
be given during the year. It contains a generous 
budget of reading matter and of illustrations, and 
the contents are of a character to make a strong 
appeal to interest. 
FLASHLIGHTS OF WILD GAME. 
WE take great pleasure in announcing a series 
of the flashlight 
photographs of wild game by Hon. George Shiras, 
of reproductions wonderful 
3d. The first one is given to-day; others will 
follow in our succeeding special monthly num- 
bers. 
These pictures are altogether unique in the 
Mr. Shiras himself in- 
vented the instrument necessary for the work; 
realm of photography. 
and to his quest of photographs of the wild crea- 
tures in their haunts he has devoted weeks and 
The results he has 
secured have been most gratifying. These flash- 
months of arduous work. 
lights of wild game wherever seen have excited 
the greatest interest and compelled unstinted ad- 
miration, both for the skill which secured them and 
for their value as revelations of nature and for 
the artistic qualities which characterize them. 
As we have said, the photographs are unique. 
Others have followed Mr. 
field, notably the German collector, 
Shiras in the same 
Schillings, 
who has embodied in a portly volume numerous 
flashlights of African game; but in Schillings’ 
work one misses the artistic quality which marks 
the work of Mr. Shiras. 
said, perhaps, that the difference lies in the sub- 
As to this it may be 
jects; the American deer is a more graceful crea- 
ture than an African lion, a Minnesota moose 
composes with more grace than a rhinoceros of 
LEN, VORK oA LURDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1906. , 
German East Africa; and doubtless there is 
much truth in the suggestion. 
The Shiras pictures have in them something 
of the weirdness and the mystery of the forest 
abso- 
at night. They are real bits of nature, 
lutely real, as revealed by sudden flash of light 
in the darkness. This absolute reality, the nat- 
ural, unconscious, unstudied, unpremeditated atti- 
tude of the game, fixed by the magic of the 
camera, increases our admiration of the beauty 
of the composition and the grace of the outline. 
The group of doe and fawns could not have been 
improved had the artist actually posed the group 
for his purpose. 
FLORIDA. 
Our pages to-day are largely devoted to 
Flerida, that outdoors Florida in whose well 
stocked game fields and on whose prolific waters 
so many visiting sportsmen from the North and 
Mr. 
story of his experiences not only illustrates the 
West find their winter pleasure. Brown’s 
abundant opportunities for sport with rod and 
gun but hints of the many novel things which 
Mrs, 
Minnie Moore-Willson writes engagingly of the 
attract the interest of the observing person; 
Seminoles in their homes; in his portrait of the 
snake bird Mr. 
interesting of Florida birds; and there is an illus- 
Lutz pictures one of the most 
trated description of most of the Florida sea 
fishes which make up the rich game fish list of 
those waters. For more than a quarter-century 
Florida has been the winter playground of an in- 
creasing host of visitors; her native resources of 
field and water are so generous that there is 
afforded gratification for very diverse tastes. 
With a better appreciation—which is growing 
surely and steadily, if slowly—of the wisdom and 
necessity of more adequate game and fish protec- 
tion, the Florida of the future should continue 
. to provide for a growing army of those who are 
fond of the outdoor life. 
NEWFOUNDLAND CARIBOU. 
THE present abundance of the Newfoundland 
caribou and the reports of their destruction in 
autumn and winter are matters that come up fre- 
quently and are always of interest. We hear of 
the multitudes of the deer, of the way in which 
they are killed by sportsmen during the season, 
and then usually at least once in the winter come 
dispatches from Newfoundland telling of vast 
herds of deer, driven by the weather to the south- 
ern shore of the island where the natives kill 
them by thousands. Sotne people say that these 
VOL, LXVI.—No. 5. 
1 No. 346 Broadway, New York: 
caribou are so numerous that they can never be 
exterminated, others declare that they are swiftly 
growing fewer and before long will be extinct. 
Even in Newfoundland there is a wide differ- 
ence of opinion as to the number of caribou 
there; and estimates run all the way from half a 
million down to fifty thousand. The animals are 
much on the move, and it is very difficult to get 
data on which a just estimate can be based. 
Nevertheless, conservative residents of New- 
foundland declare that there are probably 100,000 
caribou on the island. 
That the number of caribou has been reduced 
in recent years can hardly be doubted. While 
their numbers are large and there are still cari- 
bou enough for every one, it is altogether prob- 
able that there are not nearly so many as 
formerly. 
Good authorities are disposed to believe that 
the statements of deer slaughters along the south- 
ern shores of the island during the winter are 
somewhat exaggerated, and that this is not hav- 
ing a very serious effect in reducing the num- 
bers of the deer. The opinion has been expressed 
that 500 deer would be an outside estimate of 
those killed in this way in an average year and 
that usually there would not be so many. 
These views are encouraging, but it must be 
remembered that they are only opinions, for exact 
data cannot be had. On the other hand, they are 
the opinions of persons who are on the ground. 
It is easily within the memory of many men 
that it used to be said of the buffalo and of the 
wild pigeons that their millions could never be 
exterminated; and this was said almost up to the 
very vears when these species disappeared, not 
to return again. We do not conceive that the 
numbers of caribou seen at any one time or place 
during the migration really mean very much 
One or two hundred feeding animals scattered 
over a considerable territory give the impression 
of vast multitudes and may furnish very slight 
evidence as to the actual numbers of the beasts. 
Ir was once the common practice of tourists 
to shoot birds and alligators from the decks of 
steamers on Florida rivers and lakes. This 
abominable, because cruel and useless, warfare 
was waged until the supply of victims for the 
brutality was nearly exhausted. The develop- 
ment of the Florida railway system, by which 
the tide of travel has been diverted from the 
water courses, has had a direct and marked 
effect on the wild life of the country. Instead 
of the leisurely progress by water craft tourists 
are now whirled through the country by rail, 
and the blood-thirsty contingent has no oppor- 
tunity to deal out death at every turn. The 
waters and the shores are once again becoming 
populated with birds of plume, even the alli- 
gator is coming again into peaceful possession 
of his mudbank, and the moss-draped stretches 
of shore line are enlivened by the welcome 
charms of living creatures. 
