


FOREST AND STREAM. 
361 
eer ors 
re ee  —— 
hind the American vessels in improvements and fittings. 
The provisionment of the men was also much better on the 
Yankee crafts. All this led the Nova Scotia men to seek 
employment on board of our vessels, and a great propor- 
tion of these men number to-day among the most thriving 
and energetic of our Gloucester citizens. The Portuguese 
too form no small percentage of our northern fishermen. 
They are natives of the Western Islands, are quite clannish, 
devout catholics, and are prudent and industrious. Then, 
toc, comes a sprinkling of those rovers of the sea, the 
Swedes and Norwegians, and the Danes and Finns, who 
soon merge their nationality into that of the universal 
Yankee fishermen, and when sailing into our harbors, for- 
get their fiords and estuaries. 
The enterprise of a single fishing town of Massachusetts, 
Gloucester, which represented in 1872 no less than $3,414.- 
325 as the result of its fishing industry, is worth recording, 
and evidence of material success is shown, when last year 
the increase of tonnage was 16,982 tons over that of the 
previous year. For these and many other interesting facts 
recorded by us, we are indebted to Mr. Proctor’s Book of 
Gloucester fishermen. 

oe = 
LHe PHILADELPHIA ZOOLOGICAL 
SOCIETY. 

HERE is every reason to suppose that under later 
most commendable 
energetic management, this 
enterprise, the Zodlogical Society, of Philadelphia, will 
shortly be put in thorough working order, and that before 
especially 
planned for the exhibition and study of wild animals and 
six months are over, the elegant grounds, 
rare birds will be thrown open to the publi& 
Zodlogical collections are from the nature of things, 
among the most difficult to manage, and any idea of arriy- 
ing at even a moderate degree of perfection, before a long 
Such 
institutions are necessarily of very slow growth, and re- 
series of years have elapsed, is almost impossible. 
quire at the outset a large capital and constant care. 
It may be positively asserted that prior to the organiza- 
tion of this Zoélogical Society in our sister city, there never 
has been conceived in the United States a plan for the col- 
lection or exhibition of animals in any respect equal to those 
originated abroad. Our own Zodlogical department at the 
Park, though quite good of its kind, and reflecting great 
credit on its most intelligent director Mr. Conklin, occupies 
- but a second or third position in the Park itself. 
of being the prominent feature, an institution by itself, it 
is simply subsidiary, an adjunct to the Park; and in one of 
Instead 
the late reports of the Park Commissioners, the Commis- 
sioners themselves stated, substantially, the impossibility 
of giving the Menagerie greater prominence without inter- 
fering with some of the main features of the Park itself. In 
fact, as was fully appreciated by Messrs. Vaux and 
Olmstead, to construct and carry out a Park, such as our 
Central Park, is one thing, and to manage and develop a 
Zodlogical collection quite another, and that, to build 
up and manage one alone well, was sufficient occupation 
for any single board of officers. , 
Zodlogical collections and the results to be derived from 
them, are very much more complex than they were thirty 
yearsago. If public curiosity alone was to be gratified, a 
circus show might suffice. Opportunities for study in all 
the branches of comparative Natural History must be 
afforded, and in addition, certain utilitarian claims must 
be attended to. Acclimatization, how to take animals com- 
ing from other countries, and to adapt them to our own 
purposes and uses, must be thought of. We are only too 
pleased to state that it is exactly with such ideas, to advance 
science and to utilize nature’s resources, that the Philadel- 
phia Society has been founded. 
From the Commissioners of the Fairmount Park, the 
Philadelphia Society have obtained thirty-five acres of 
ground at the Thirty-Fifth Street entrance of the Philadel- 
phia Park, and they are now improving ten acres of this 
space by laying it out and constructing walks, buildings, 
cages, houses, and preparing for the proposed collection of 
the Society. 
Of course the expense of an undertaking of this character 
is great; but it is believed that the necessary means to ac- 
complish the opject proposed, can readily be obtained. 
With one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the Society 
will be enabled to place the Garden upon a solid and per- 
manent basis, and permitit to be opened to the public in the 
spring of this year. “We think that little arxiety should be 
felt by the management as to its success, as there has never 
been a Zodlogical Society of any merit founded in a large 
city, where the receipts did not exceed the expenditures. 
Such has been the example furnished in London, Paris, 
Berlin, Bremen, Vienna, and Amsterdam. In London, 
alone, 600,000 persons visited the ‘‘ Zoo” last year. 
When the Centennial Exhibition draws to Philadelphia 
the whole people of the United States, few will fail to visit 
the Zodlogical collection. 
To show that a commencement has been made, the Super- 
intendent of the Garden is now in the Cape of Good Hope, 
and will return by the way of Calcutta with a ship load of 
curiosities for the Society, and to-day the donations of 
animals of our own country destined for the Philadelphia 
Zodlogical Society are largely in excess of the present ac- 
commodations. One excellent feature of the Society, and 
which we trust will be carried out, will be to inaugurate a 
course of lectures, with publications by the Society, which 
will make the Garden not only a source of amusement but 
of education. 
To start such an enterprise, and keep the collecting 
grounds in a thoroughly perfect order, the Society, though 
not soliciting pecuniary donations, would be happy to re- 
ceive them. What they ask is that persons interested in such 
subjects should subscribe to the stock, which with every 
prospect of success, would seem to be able to earn readily a 
dividend of six per cent, in cash, per annum, besides giving 
to the holder of such stock a certain number of free admis- 
sions. For each fifty dollars of stock a subscriber is to re- 
ceive five single admission tickets worth twenty-five cents 
each, in addition to six per cen!., or in place of these tickets 
an annual ticket for every two hundred dollars subscribed, 
admitting at all times during the year, any person the stock- 
holder may name. 
The plan of the Garden submitted to our notice, seems to 
be clearly conceived in every way, and with ample room 
and accommodation for all the birds and beasts, and with 
aquaria for the fish. : 
We trust that some of our citizens will aid our Philadel- 
phia friends in their efforts, in a work which must reflect 
credit on the whole country. 
That a commencement has been made, is very certain; 
for, but yesterday, we saw the following from an ex- 
change :-— 
‘‘ A car load of wild animals from the Rocky Mountains, 
for the Zodlogical Gardens of Philadelphia, arrived at Oma- 
ha Saturday.” 
The management is composed of Dr. “W. Camac, Presi- 
dent; James C. Hand, Esq., and J. G. Fell, Esq., Vice- 
Presidents; F. H. Clark, Esq.. Treasurer; John J. Ridg- 
way, Esq., and Dr. J. L. Leconte, are the Secretaries; and 
among the managers we see the names of such well-known 
Philadelphians, of Messrs. Graff. Vaux, Wistar, Childs, 
and Drexel. 

So. 
BO NEV WAY TO COLLECT DEBTS. 

HAT our American Indian is endowed with a peculiar 
originality, even his most bitter enemies must allow. 
Civilized man when he sheds blood, does it in an approved 
manner, undoubtedly owing to that superior culture ac- 
quired by years of patient practice. If the Spanish Volun- 
teer, naturally excited by the contest, after wounding the 
Cuban rebel, jabs his bayonet through and through his 
fallen foe, there are precedents for such things; but for the 
Comanchee to plunge an ugly butcher knife into one’s vitals, 
and then to end the performance by a thorough yet curious 
tonsorial process, shows in the Indian a fine perception of 
the dzarre, which is unique in character. 
It is by no means the aboriginal male alone who has these 
idiosyncracies. The squaw has quite as much originality 
as the brave. A number of bonnets having been sent out 
to the female portion of a tribe, and the Ottoe ladies, not 
knowing how to wear them, is not to be judged as 
showing any peculiarities of the kind we would describe, 
nor the fact of their having had the bonnets put on their 
heads properly by their more intelligent white sister, and 
when the bonnet got displaced, the perfect inability on the 
part of the Ottoe squaws to determine which was the front 
or which was the back of it. 
There comes to us from California a most curious and 
original method of collecting debts, practiced by the red- 
skin there, which is wonderfully suggestive. To dun is 
brutal. Everybody knows that, and has felt the humilia- 
tion of dunning or being dunned. The Indian, desirous of 
collecting his small bill, has too much dignity, is too high 
toned a gentleman, with his native nobility, to bother the 
debtor for his small balance of account. Oh tailors and 
bootmakers ! what an example there is for you to be taken 
from the much despised savage ! 
Pey-yoh-gash or the ‘‘Lone Hand,” is indebted to Hey- 
ya-mush or ‘‘Nimble Fingers,” to the amount of seven 
beaver skins and a deer hide. The Lone Hand is slow of 
payment: What does Hey-ya-mush do? He simply pre- 
pares a stick—not to wail his debtor with—but a little stick. 
He decorates this stick in a peculiar way, paints a ring or 
so of gaudy color round it at each end, then he carries it, 
and tosses it without uttering a syllable into his debtor’s 
wigwam, simply as a gentle reminder. The delinquent 
Indian sees it, is struck with remorse, takes the hint, and 
getting together the peltries, liquidates his debt on the 
spot. Strange people! It is a terrible stigma on any Indian 
to have these sticks cast up before him, and it is rarely 
ever resorted to. 
Fancy such a method employed for the collection of 
debts with us. Why it seems to us that it would be almost 
an incentive to get over head and ears in debt. The 
weather, say,is cold, and a man owes money pretty generally 
all aréund. His creditors might commence by pitching in- 
to his house logs of wood, as reminders, until he had 
acquired a measured cord of sound hickory logs for his 
drawing-room fire, with no end of kindling material for the 
kitchen; enough fuel in fact to keep himself warm with for 
the rigors of the whole winter season, and still leave his 
debts unpaid. 
Certainly we have not the nobility of the Indian. Nor 
would we advise at least in New York, that parties about 
the first of the year, who are owed money, should imitate 
the savage. Very certainly, if they did, the debt to the 
wood yards would be very heavy and the price of 
coal would rapidly decline. 
oo 
—A pack of wolves in Sherbourne County, Minnesota: 
chased a couple of lawyers five miles, and the New Orleans 
Republican thinks it showed a lack of professional courtesy. 
the gentlemen experts themselves. 
OUR LADY SPORTSMEN. 

T is gratifying to note the growing interest taken in out- 
door recreation by our ladies. Forest AND STREAM 
has no less than six upon its list of contributors, and two 
of these write as intelligibly of the ‘art of fly-fishing as do 
We count among our 
female acquaintances many who handle a pair of sculls 
most deftly, and there is the wife of a certain clergyman, 
himself famous as a student of Nature, who is equally 
handy with rod, gun, and oar, besides being a masterly 
whip. Another lady who is now dead, the wife of an ac- 
complisked author and journalist, spent several years upon 
the Nile in company with her husband, and became noted 
among the boatmen all along the river as an extraordinary 
pistol shot. She used to hit birds on the wing with her 
ivory-handled revolver. One summer’s day, a year ago, a 
gentleman of our acquaintance bantered a married lady to 
shoot a pistol, and put up his felt hat at twenty paces, ex- 
pecting a little shriek when the report followed. The next 
day he was looking over a hatter’s collection, and mourn- 
fully exhibiting his own tile with seven bullet holes in it. 
Equestrianism is a more common accomplishment, while 
archery is indulged in by ladies in many localities. Of 
accomplished lady skaters there is no end. Nothing is 
more charming than a lady suitably attired for the proper 
and untrammelled enjoyment of these out-door pastimes, 
her cheeks rosy with the exercise, and her movements as 
lithe and agile as a fawn’s. Many ladies of the Blooming 
Grove Park Association two years ago adopted the practice 
of wearing what they call ‘‘mountain suits,” which are 
made of bloomer trowsers, a blouse belted at the waist, 
high boots, and felt hat or jaunty velvet cap with plume. 
We have seen certain ladies among the Adirondacks that 
wore very becoming plaids, with leathern waist belt. In 
dresses of this description the limbs have full play. Briars 
and brambles get little hold; flowing skirts do not impede 
locomotion. Some weeks since some of our lady friends 
wrote for this paper some designs for out-door costumes, 
and when summer ccmes again we shall urge their adop- 
tion by our fair readers. 
Herewith we publish a very fresh and breezy letter from 
a lady in Indiana, which ought to make our languid city 
belles sick with envy, or at least prompt their aspirations 
and emulation. We wish our lady readers would oblige us 
with their fishing, boating, and shooting experiences, what- 
ever they may be. The records of some, we feel, would 
put those of what are termed ‘‘lords of creation” to 
blush :— 
Epiror Forrest AND STREAM:— 
You extend a kind invitation to ladies to write for For- 
EST AND STREAM. But what can we say that will do for 
the pages of a paper that seems almost entirely devoted to 
sports pertaining to stream, field, and woodland? Gener- 
ally speaking, we are not ‘‘much” as huntresses, and no 
great adepts in the art piscatorial. 
I had not thought I could care at all for a publication so 
essentially belonging to the “lords of creation,” yet I find 
myself strangely interested in almost every article. There 
is so much fresh, out-door breeziness about them as to make 
even us domestic goddesses long to desert our pedestals in 
the kitchen and roam over the hills and down the dales, 
free as the wild winds around us. 
How delightful the ‘“‘Autumn in Nova Scotia!” and I 
trudged around after Fred Beverly through the swamps 
and glades of Florida with a deal of enjoyment. Then 
the boating, shooting, and fishing—especially the black 
bass fishing in the Maumee—for haven’t I waded the “‘rif- 
fles” of that dear old stream many a time in the days of 
my childhood, when the water rippled low over its rocky 
bed! And when it got higher have coasted along the shore 
on “slabs” (got more than one ducking, too,) and rowed a 
light skiff from shore to shore times without number. I 
remember how jubilant I was, and how I crowed over win- 
ning a race, fairly and squarely, against a ‘‘chunk” of a 
boy who bantered me for a row across the river. We each 
had a skiff, light as a feather almost. The ‘Bald Eagle” 
was the name of mine, and really it was worthy of the 
name, for it skimmed over the sparkling waters like a bird, 
and I experienced a thrill of delight as the prow touched 
the grassy bank and I sprang lightly out, while my rival 
was still a full boat’s length behind. It is needless to say 
“he wer’ mad,” and hurried off home to hide his head in 
his mother’s apron, I guess. 
‘‘Pretty business” (do I hear you say), ‘‘Miss Prim, for a 
twelve-year-old girl to be engaged in! Better be in the 
house learning to knit and sew than being sucha romp!” 
Yes’m, I have no doubt, and I feel awful sorry I was such 
a Tom-boy. Isuppose it was only because we were born 
to be hung that whole swarms of us little Miltonvillains 
were not drowned outright. But I often wonder if I do 
not, in a great measure, owe the grand good health I have * 
enjoyed all my life to the boating exercise of those long 
days ago. “EMILY JANE.” 
Wayne coanty, Indiana, January, 1874. 
oe 
—PorrrRaiT oF ‘‘BELLE.”—The pair of portraits of 
“Belle,” champior pointer of England, will positively be 
ready for mailing on January 20th. We have to apologize 
to our subscribers and friends for the delay. There has 
been considerable difficulty in obtaining an artist who is 
accustomed to draw highly bred pointers, and the rainy 
weather has been much against us. 
et Oo 
—Can the Grangers be politically honest if they have 
oats to sell? 
