

Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal. Copyright, 1907, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
GrorGe Brrp GRINNELL, President, 
346 Broadway, New York. 
CHARLES Bb, REYNOLps, Secretary. 
346 Broadway, New York. 
Louts DEAN Speir, Treasurer. 
346 Broadway, New York. 



Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy. t 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 

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. 

BACKWOODS TELEPHONES. 
THE backwoods telephone, now so generally 
available camps 
institution to which the sportsman of the old 
school finds it difficult to accustom himself. Per- 
haps, if he has not been in the woods for a long 
to guests of and inns, is an 
time, he takes notice of the change when, after 
dinner, as he sits smoking in the “office,” a bell 
rings, some one says, “Hello!” and there ensues 
the usual series of disjointed, meaningless re- 
plies to questions whose nature can only be 
surmised. Small talk ceases and all listen to the 
one-sided conversation they would gladly turn 
a deaf ear to. 
The receiver having been replaced on its hook, 
the landlord may announce: That a neighbor 
has reported the loss of a horse and requested 
that it be intercepted if it comes down the trail; 
that some one at a distant camp is ill and a 
physician’s services are needed; that a sportsman 
has asked for a team to take him and his’venison 
to the railway; that a party of campers re- 
quests to be helped in transporting their duffle 
to some favorite lake or stream; or it may be 
a simple request for the stage driver to pur- 
chase tobacco or artificial flies or cartridges or 
| what not on his: next trip. 
Perhaps Mr. So-and-So, of Philadelphia, is 
holding the long wire until he ascertains if the 
trout are rising or if the leaves are fallen suf- 
ficiently to make it worth his while to “take that 
trip now.” Mr. Jones, of New York, may be 
saving time by inquiring direct as to the avail- 
able accommodations for himself and party if 
they come on at a certain time for the fishing, 
etc. 
3ut the backwoods telephone—while the old- 
school sportsman may anathematize it and aver 
that in the old days it would not have been per- 
mitted in the woods—serves a useful purpose. 
Not a few lives have been saved through its 
agency. Disasters have been averted or mini- 
mized and unhappiness prevented. Wives, 
worrying at home, as wives will, have been com- 
| forted by talking to husbands too thoughtless or 
\| too much occupied to write every day to assure 
‘| those at home that they are actually still alive 
and well. And—men are called back home by it 
ere their vacations are half gone. © 
It may seem out of place—this slender wire 
| strung from balsam to basswood and from hard 
| maple to spruce—but while it has played a large 
part in “‘civilizing” the wilderness, it has become 
one of its institutions and it saves alike long 
tramps and delays which, in the old days, were 
part and parcel of our vacations. 

THE BISON BILL VETOED 
THE action of Governor Hughes, in vetoing 
the Adirondack bison bill, is: astonishing, to say 
the The f and the 
American Bison Society, acting in complete ac- 
cord,’ proposed to establish small herds in dif- 
ferent States, and the one in question was to 
have been located near Indian Lake, in the Adi- 
rondack 
least. friends of the bison 
Mountains. An appropriation of $20,- 
000, with which to purchase the necessary land, 
fence it and purchase and care for a small herd 
of bison, was carried by a bill which passed both 
branches of the Legislature, but when this came 
before the Governor he vetoed it, doubting, as he 
said, “whether there had ever been any bison in 
the Adirondacks,” and 
it questionable whether it 
“attempt to maintain” 
With 
not deal, 
raising severa 
country is 
considered 
worth while to 
therefore he 
was 
bison there. 
the merits of these questions we will 
the complete success attained in 
herds of bison in the Eastern hill 
well known. It is the sur- 
prising, in view of this knowledge, that Governor 
Hughes should’in this way confess his lack of 
infermation regarding a plan that has the sup- 
since 

more 

port of the Government, the people and the press. 

THE CONTRACTING WORLD. 
Ir is beginning to be well understood that the 
Dark Continent is no longer buried in obscurity. 
Of late years it has been crossed. and recrossed 
by explorers, and very recently railroads from 
north and south and east and west are penetrat- 
ing rapidly toward its once distant center. Some 
of them have already almost reached it. 
Several years a20 we pointed out the facility 
with which a trip might 
happy hunting grounds where the wilde-beeste, 
the zebra and the rhinoceros grazed, then scarcely 
more disturbed than in the days of Dr. Living- 
stone; and where the king of beasts made his 
casual luncheon from the 
fireman or brakeman snatched from the passing 
railway train. We the trip to this 
happy hunting ground as desirable for the aver- 
age hurrying American, and trips 
have been made while more are in contempla- 
tion. But the big-game hunter must bestir him- 
be.made by rail to 
occasional engineer, 
suggested 
some such 
self unless he is prepared to face dangers greater 
than those from roaring lion or peevish rhino- 
ceros or charging elephant—unless he is ready to 
expose himself to those dreadful perils which in 
the open season threaten the big-game hunter 
in the forests of Maine, the and 
Michigan, the danger of the unbilleted bullet. 
We are told that a personally conducted expe- 
dition of young Frenchmen is soon.to start for the 
west coast of Africa, and, by boat, railway train 
Adirondacks 
and boat again, is to visit the headwaters of the 
Niger River, where exploration, study of native 
tribes, and of general natural history, with big- 
game hunting are to furnish entertainment for 
the travelers until such ‘time as they turn about 
ZO, 107 
( VOL. LXIX.—No. 3. 
1 No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
to return to the coast and thence to Ja belle pays. 
About the same time another large personally 
conducted expedition starts for Zanzibar, whence 
the after thats 
interesting, will be conducted to Mombasa and 
thence by train will go to Lake Victoria Nyanza, 
breadth eC 
in the, luxurious steamboats and yachts which ply 
various tourists seeing much 
whose length and will be passed over 
those waters. 
Che 
revealed. 
North America have been long 
Africa is exposing itself to the 
Cook. Automobile 
secrets of 
ago 
all-seeing eye of 
tours are 
being made across farthest China, where the 
“foreign devil’ seems to have suffered the fate 
of the personal devil of our grandfathers. The 
desolation of the Gobi Desert, with its frightful 
and the [ 
heats morasses of the Siberian forests, 
resound to the honk of the successfully 
motor 
passing 
car. The regions which the advertising 
management of periodicals yearning for more 
readers can send their young men to explore have 
all been exhausted except the North Pole, which 
Mr. Walter Wellman announces he will find this 
summer in the interest of a Chicago paper. 
WHILE we indorse the opinions of several 
that the 
brook trout waters is in its proper place, 
contributors brown trout in depleted 

and 
that its increase in such waters should be en- 
couraged, we also agree witha contributor when 
he says, in another colymn, that the greatest 
care should be exercised in regard to the plant- 
ing of brown trout in Adirondack waters which 
are in eyery way adapted to the native brook 
trout. 
trout, they should not be planted, but there are 
large numbers of the 
these, it 
Where there is no need for introduced 
which brook 
and 
streams in 
trout ‘will never again thrive, 
naturally follows, are ideal waters for the brown 
trout. 
ad 
SAINT SWITHIN’s day, July 15, was a favor- 
able one for the vast army of outdoor people, as 
it was generally fair, and therefore, according 
to the old adage: 
“St. Swithin’s day, ’gin it be fair, 
For forty days ’twill rain nae mair. 
St. Swithin’s day, ’gin it shall rain, 
For forty days it will remain.” 
Clear, fair weather is supposed, therefore, to 
be in store for the angler, sailor and camper. 
But if it rains—well, Candlemas day and the 
groundhog superstition are equally — reliable. 
Founded on superstition, both myths neverthe- 
less are still taken seriously by a great many 
people who are practical in most things. 
bd 
Ir is the manifest duty of the Elks Society, 
Philadelphia, to 
elk-tooth 
ments, affected by some of its members. 
now in convention in declare 

orna- 
Official 
action by the society: will bear more weight than 
It is high time the practice should 
against the custom of wearing 
anything else. 
be discouraged. 
g 




















































