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


Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. t 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NE Wey ORKSSAULURMWAY.- |UNE-22, 


ROBERT B. ROOSEVELT. 
Rosert B. RoosEvELtT died at his country home, 
Lotus Lake, Long Island, on June 14. He was 
in his seventy-seventh year. A many-sided man, 
having conspicuous part in social and political 
affairs and engaging in literary pursuits, Mr. 
Roosevelt was all his life a devoted sportsman. 
It was his good fortune to have had for indulg- 
ing his tastes in this direction such opportunities 
as have now become memories to be rehearsed 
in the reminiscent moods of old men, or enviously 
to be read of in the entertaining books Mr. 
Roosevelt contributed to the literature of the field. 
The volumes comprise: “The Game Fish of 
North America” in 1860, “The Game Birds of 
the North” in 1866, and later “Fish Hatching 
and Fish Catching” and ‘Florida and Game 
Water Birds.” | 
Although in those earlier years the game and 
the fish were in such abundant and seemingly 
inexhaustible ‘supply; Mr. Roosevelt was 
among the first to realize the necessity of curb- 
ing indiscriminate killing and of providing pro- 
tection; and he was identified with the earliest 
movements to secure protective laws and their 
enforcement. He was one of the organizers 
and for many years president of the New York 
(City) Association for the Protection of Game. 
In 1867 he helped to establish the New York 
Fish Commission, and served long on the board. 
He was one of the founders of the American 
Fishery Society; and later of the Ichthyo- 
phagous Club of pleasant memory. To the 
causes of game protection and the conservation 
and propagation of game and food fishes Mr. 
Roosevelt contributed in many ways and in a 
most substantial degree. One of the strongly 
impelling motives which controlled his life was 
the wish to secure to others who should follow 
him some measure of the resources of field and 
stream and shore and woodland, in which he 
had found so much of pleasure and recreation. 
Bae QUEBEC LICENSES. 
WE print on another page a spirited communi- 
cation from Mr. Wm. R. White, of Pembroke, 
in reference to the license taxes for shooting 
and fishing imposed by the Province of Quebec 
on all non-residents whether or not they may be 
members of clubs leasing shooting and fishing 
privileges in certain territories. In a nutshell 
Mr. White’s contention is that when the 
Province leased to him his club territory the 
contract then entered into between the two 
parties was that in return for a stipulated sum 
per annum the club members should enjoy the 
shooting and fishing rights on the leased dis- 
trict; and subsequently to demand of the mem- 
bers an additional payment, in the guise of a 
non-resident tax, was, on the part of the Prov- 
ince, a violation of the contract. 
It is difficult to view the action of the Quebec 
authorities in any other light. Mr. White’s 
club was not the only’ one which had entered 
into such a contract with the Province, nor the 
only one whose members feel keenly the in- 
justice of the additional payment required of 
them if they would continue in the enjoyment 
of their club privileges. While the amount in- 
volved is not large, and may appear even trivial 
to some, it is nevertheless sufficient to be felt 
by many American visitors to Canada. We have 
been assured by the president of a large elub 
which conducts its affairs on a basis of rigid 
economy, that this new exaction would prevent 
many members from making their usual summer 
trip to camp this year. 
A PASSING TYPE. 
Tue Minorcan fisherman’s dugout, to which 
Dr. DeWitt Webb makes reference in his in- 
teresting story of a trip to Matanzas, is inter- 
esting as a survival of one of the primitive types 
of American water craft. It has a place in 
southern waters corresponding with that of the 
birch bark canoe of the north.. The dugout was 
clearly derived from the Indian. The French 
artist DeBry, who was in Florida in the six- 
teenth century, has left pictures of the hollowed 
out log as it then existed; in the DeBry draw- 
ing reproduced the dugout is shown with square 
ends. The Seminole Indians of to-day hollow 
out their cypress log boats; a picture of them | 
will be found in our issue of Feb. 3, of this 
year. These have the pointed bow and the 
rounded stern like the Minorcan canoes. 
Dr. Webb tells us that the Minorcan craft 
are long lived. He might have added that the 
_type is passing, along with the Minorcan fisher- 
man himself, who is giving away before the new 
conditions. Formerly one of the characteristic 
figures of St. Augustine waters, laboriously 
throwing the cast-net for mullet, or sitting long 
hours patiently fishing for drum, the man in the 
dugout has been supplanted by the crews of 
fishermen who employ modern methods and out- 
fits more adequate to meeting the enlarged de- 
mands of a growing market. And as the 
Minorcan canoeman is losing his occupation, the 
canoes are no longer made. The only boats 
now on St. Augustine waters are old boats. As 
they wear out no new ones are provided to take 
their places. The type should not be allowed 
utterly to disappear. Dr. Webb, who is the 
leading spirit of the local historical and scien- 
tific society, would do well to secure a good 
specimen of the dugout and place it in the 
society's museum for preservation. 
' FORESTS, FISH AND GAME. 
THE paper on “Forests, Fish and Game’’ by 
Commissioner Whipple is noteworthy not only as 
an able and cogent exposition of the subject, but 
as an evidence of the Commissioner’s apprecia- 
tion of the value of the interests committed to 
his care, and of the large-minded way in which 
we may expect the affairs of the department to 
be administered. 
VOL. LXVI.—No. 25 
go . f ale 
I 6 | No. 346 Broadway, New York. 


ENFORCING THE LAW. 
FoLLowING Commissioner Whipple’s warning 
to dealers in feather millinery, by which atten- 
tion was called to the law on the statute books, 
a raid was made a few days ago on certain con- 
cerns in Rochester, a quantity of prohibited 
goods was seized and the proprietors were 
arrested. Suits have also been brought against 
certain taxidermists for violation of the game 
laws, and at least one taxidermist is reported to 
have been found guilty of having game in pos- 
session and to have been heavily fined. The law 
will, no doubt, be thoroughly tested in the 
courts, and if carried far enough, the situation 
will be cleared up. 
After a law has been long on the statute 
books without being taken seriously by the 
officials, whose duty it is to see that its pro- 
visions are carried out, its sudden enforcement 
alway seems a hardship to those who suffer by 
it, and not only a hardship, but an outrage. 
The indignation of such sufferers, however, 
should be directed not against the officials who 
enforce the law, and who thus fulfil the oath of 
office which they have taken, but against the 
Legislature which passed the law. If the statute 
is obnoxious and does not represent the popular 
conviction and the popular will, enforcement of 
it will develop the fact and lead to its repeal. 
But so long as it exists on the statute books 
it must be assumed to be alive; and executive 
officers have no option but to enforce it. We 
assume that Commissioner Whipple means to 
execute the law as he finds it. We have had in 
times past game commissioners who have openly 
decried certain statutes as foolish and have an- 
nounced that they did not propose to enforce 
them. 
HAPPY LABRADOR. 
We know Labrador as a field of summer sport 
and adventure, and a country inviting to ex- 
ploration and often associated with hardship 
and suffering. Of the inhabitants the outside 
world has only vague conception; it hears of 
them chiefly at the times of periodic famine, 
when because of the failure of the fisheries the 
people are reported to be starving. In a report 
of an official visit to the Labrador seaboard in 
the summer of 1905, Sir William MacGregor, 
Governor of Newfoundland, of which Province 
Labrador is a dependency, is given an ex- 
tremely favorable picture of the character of 
the people. Labrador has some 10,000, of whom 
3,500 are white, settled along the south coast; 
the rest being Indians, half-breeds; and 3,000 
Eskimos in the north. It is visited in summer 
by 20,000 Newfoundland fishermen. Yet there 
is no court nor jail, magistrate nor policeman, 
nor any other officer of the law on this 1,000 
miles of seaboard, where all these people are 
wrestling a subsistence from the ocean. For 
thirty-three years there has been no session of 
court held. 
