THE NATURE PHOTOGRAPHERS 



89 



Lines to the Violet. 



BY H. GORDON HAWKINS, W KSTFIELD, MASS. 



O gentle, shj-. retiring flower 

 Of green banked dell and mossy wood. 

 Little knowest thou thj' power 

 That within us works for good. 

 For when petulant and weary, 

 We see thy gently nodding head. 

 Gone is the thought that life is dreary, 

 And all our evil dreams have fled. 

 And ever in thy clear blue eye, 

 Where with our thoughts we sense thy worth, 

 We see the trace of Him on high 

 Who holds the destinies of earth 

 And rules in love. 



Some Fishing Experiences. 



Philadelphia, Pa. 

 To the Editor : 



Grassy Sound is a summer fishing- 

 place with about one hundred cottagers 

 who spend only the summer month > 

 there. It is on Hereford Inlet, an arm 

 of the Atlantic Ocean, near Anglesea, at 

 the end of the Jersey coast near Cape 

 May. 



The following notes of my fishing ex- 

 periences at this place may be of interest 

 to some of vour readers. 



A TEN POUND EEL. 



AN EIGHTEEN POUND SHEEPSHEAD. 



Last year I caught a seventy-five 

 pound channel bass ; this year an eighty 

 pound one, that fought for his life for 

 half a mile, while the boat drifted with 

 the tide. 



An eel, the largest ever caught in the 

 Sound, weighed ten pounds and meas- 

 ured nearly five feet in length. I got 

 it into the boat with my bare hands, in 

 spite of its size and slipperiness. 



Sheepshead are rare and hard to 

 catch. One may fish for weeks and not 

 get one. It is a slow biter and generally 

 hangs around old piles, wrecks of boats 

 and overhanging banks where there are 

 mussels, fiddler crabs or soft clams. It 

 is a handsome fish with black and yellow 

 stripes, and big teeth like those of a 

 sheep with which it crushes the hard 

 shells of its favorite food. 



Sharks come in the Soimd in schools, 

 and either follow a school of small fish 

 in or come in after small fish. When 

 swimming it always shows its dorsal fin. 

 ^^'hen it is hookell, the struggle becomes 

 furious, but the shark is speedily ex- 

 hausted. 



There is nothing artificial al)out the 

 i:)hotograph of the snake. It shows the 



