Forest and Stream 
Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 


= = ~ = Rye ts is (See Oe a 


Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. l 
Six Months, $1.50. J 
VOL. LXVI.—No. 8. 
EN os: SUNG Ree FEBRUARY 24 1906. No. 346 Broadway, New York. 




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 
Forrest AND STREAM, Aug. 14, 1873. 
NEXT WEEK. 
From the inception of the New York Yacht 
Club to the present the members have contributed 
models of the yachts built for them. The collec- 
tion of half and full-rigged models has grown 
with the years until it is now the most complete 
and most valuable collection of its kind in the 
world. Our next issue, the number of March 3, 
will contain five full pages of illustrations of the 
most notable of the models, accompanied by the 
report of the special Model Committee relating 
to the collection. 
Other illustrations in this number will include 
a full-page reproduction of a flashlight of deer 
by Hon. George Shiras, 3d, and a series of photo- 
graphs illustrating the Indian method of tanning 
a skin, as practiced by the Cheyennes. The issue 
will be a special number enlarged to forty-eight 
pages. 
NON-RESIDENT LICENSES. 
THERE are now few States in which the non- 
resident shooting license system is not in opera- 
tion, and with each succeeding gathering of the 
legislatures the number is steadily decreasing. 
Bills to provide for taxing the visiting shooter 
are now under consideration at Boston and 
Albany. In Massachusetts the proposition is to 
levy a tax of ten dollars on the stranger; the New 
York bill applies to visitors and residents as well. 
A tax on the citizen shooter follows naturally 
when once by reason of the non-resident tax the 
public mind has been familiarized with the license 
idea. From the first crude notion that the man 
who belongs in another State should be made to 
pay something for the privilege of shooting when 
he goes across the boundaries of his own com- 
monwealth, has come the larger view that if the 
non-resident ought to pay the resident, too, should 
be made to bear his share of the burden of game 
protection. Many States now have systems of 
universal application, save as to land owners 
shooting on their own lands; the resident tax is 
merely nominal, a dollar or less, and the non-resi- 
dent requirement a fee of $10 for small game and 
$25 or $50 for big game. One great advantage of 
the universal system is that it affords a means of 
enforcing more strictly the non-resident law. 
Every man who is in pursuit of game must be 
equipped with a shooting license; only by collu- 
sion of local officials may he show a resident 
license if, in fact, he hails from another State. 
In the New York Legislature Assemblyman 
Gates has introduced a measure, A. Int. 96, which 
provides that all non-resident shooters must take 
out a license for shooting deer, bear and birds. 
The fees fixed are $25 for a license covering deer, 
bear and game birds; or $10 for a license covering 
game birds only. Residents also are required to 
take out a license for killing deer and bear, the 
fee for which is seventy-five cents. No resident 
license is required for shooting birds. The cus- 
tomary regulations are provided as to coupons to 
accompany game in transportation; but non-resi- 
dents who pay their $25 do not thereby acquire the 
privilege of taking their game home; the section 
forbidding the export of game still holds. 
Under conditions prevailing near the larger 
cities, factory towns and in the neighborhood of 
railroad building and other work in which for- 
eigners are employed, the rule should be that 
every man abroad with a gun must give an ac- 
count of himself by the production of a license 
certificate showing who and what he is. Such a 
system would make possible the suppression of 
the Italian bird shooters who are now such a 
nuisance. It is a nuisance that cannot be remedied 
until some such system of registration shall be 
put into operation. Only last week in the Court 
of Special Sessions in New York city four Italian 
killers of song birds came up for trial for offenses 
committed last autumn in the vicinity of the New 
York Zoological Park; and after an expensive 
trial were punished, three of them being fined $50 
and sentenced to ten days in jail, while a fourth 
was fined $25 and given ten days in jail. If at the 
time of their apprehension by the detectives these 
lawless gunners could have been promptly pun- 
ished for failure to produce a shooting license the 
punishment would have been much more ex- 
emplary, and the task of the officers would have 
been greatly simplified. 
THE HUMAN EYE. 
It is a popular belief, more or less loosely 
formulated, that there is something so terrible 
and majestic in the human eye that man has 
only to fix his gaze on the most terrific denizens 
of the forest to inspire them with awe. 
Numerous instances and some well authenticated 
are on record of unarmed men, who have met 
the lion or the tiger in his native jungles, fixed 
their eyes on his and compelled him to turn 
tail. There is then some foundation for the 
popular belief, but if a man having unquestioned 
faith in the awe-inspiring power of the human 
eye proposes to put it to the test in his own 
person, considerable discretion is to be recom- 
mended, not only in the selection of his beast, 
but also in the selection of his locality. For 
example, he should not make his first experi- 
ment with a rampagious bull in a ten-acre in- 
closure, at any considerable distance from the 
fence; nor would we strongly recommend a trip 
to the Rocky Mountains, with the object of ex- 
perimenting with a full-grown grizzly, for both 
bulls and bears are fighting animals, and have 
the habit of meeting their foes face to face. 
The measure is successful only with the cat 
family—lions, tigers, etc., and by no means to 
be relied upon with them. Hope of success de- 
pends upon the fact that the members. of the 
cat family are not to any extent fighting ani- 
mals; they do not hunt in packs and quarrel 
over their prey; they very rarely quarrel with 
each other over the females at mating season, 
and in striking their prey they never attack in 
front. It is a beautiful provision of nature that 
the lion, the tiger, the panther, the leopards, and 
the whole family of Felide, are prompted by 
irresistible instinct to seize their prey from be- 
hind, springing on it with their whole weight, 
closing their powerful jaws on the neck of their 
victim, and dislocating it with one wrench, while 
their fierce claws penetrate the flesh and 
paralyze the muscular powers. The tiger pur- 
sues the same method whether his prey is a full 
grown buffalo or a timid fawn. The slender 
doe, with her fawn at her heels, goes into cover 
for her mid-day siesta, and confronts the lurking 
tiger; she barks, stamps her foot, and endeavors 
to bounce him; the tiger fixing his eyes on 
hers, crawls a little nearer; paralyzed with 
terror the poor beast is incapable of flight, but 
unable to sustain the basilisk glance any longer, 
she turns, as if to essay retreat. At that instant 
the tiger springs, grasps her neck in his vise- 
like jaws, and the victim dies without a pang. 
If the tiger comes unexpectedly on a powerful 
animal like a wild buffalo and it offers battle, 
the tiger declines it, but if hungry he will take 
advantage of what cover there is and maneuver 
to get at the tail end of the buffalo and then 
make his fatal spring. 
With civilized men the tiger is more wary, 
for he stands in more awe of their appliances 
than of the brute strength of the buffalo. Many 
a hunter going through the jungles has passed 
within an easy spring of the tiger lying in wait 
for him, and before he has gone another 200 
yards the same tiger has again been in position, 
and yet has wanted the courage to spring; even 
a man-eating tiger, if familiar with firearms, 
might hesitate to spring on a man that had the 
courage to confront him. In the jungle he 
would not attempt it; if brought face to face 
with a man he would crouch, and if the man did 
not turn to flee the tiger would disappear as 
suddenly as if the earth had swallowed him, 
but in a very few minutes he would have se- 
cured the desired vantage ground and made 
his fatal spring. 
This is not because the tiger is a coward, 
nor because the human eye is capable of domi- 
nating him. When it becomes a question of fight- 
ing there is no sign of quailing in lion or tiger, 
but when it is a mere question of taking their 
prey, the destructive instinct is a purely pleas- 
urable one, the enjoyment of which would be 
marred if they attacked in front, and provoked 
their prey to battle; and it is a merciful pro- 
vision of nature that they show no_ such 
tendency. 
