430 AMERICAN GAME FISHES. 



of his willow twig, on shady afternoons, along the banks of 

 the streams. So many unquestionable fish he counts, and 

 so many shiners which he counts, and then throws away." 



I have spent a good many hours in the company of the 

 Perch, but my most successful day at Perch-fishing was in 

 June of 1874, on the Little Suamico River, in North-eastern 

 Wisconsin. 



I had gone up there on a hunting and fishing trip and had 

 taken with me a bright young student, a Scotch boy from a 

 Wisconsin farm, afterward well-known to naturalists as 

 Charles Leslie McKay, and who later was lost on the shores 

 .of Alaska, while in the service of the Smithsonian Institution. 



Two years before, the fires had raged through the pine 

 woods of Oconto County, burning the trees and carving great 

 ponds in the dried muck. The dark trunks rose like skele- 

 tons of the living things they had been, but the bird-life was 

 as full among them as ever, and all about us the white- 

 throated sparrow whistled and the rose-breasted grosbeak 

 kept up his querulous questionings. The yellow-breasted 

 chat made the bare condition of the trees a subject for his 

 best jokes, and we found one compensating advantage amid 

 the dismal scenery in the fact that we could hear the birds 

 so well. But we came this time for fish, not birds, and all I 

 need say is, that Perch, near the mouth of the little river, 

 were as plenty as the shiners, and of the shiners we caught 

 more than we cared to count or keep, or even to throw away. 



THE DARTERS — Etkcostonia. 



But more interesting than the real Perch was a little fish 

 in blue and crimson which we found lying in the bottom of 

 the river, insensible to any bait we were able to offer it. It 

 was not more than two inches long, and as slender as a 

 shingle nail. We rigged up an impromptu dip-net and suc- 

 ceeded in taking some of them. We had never seen them 

 before, and that is not strange, for they were then new to 



