Notes and Queries 



163 



fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose 

 bright blossoms are filled with the music of the 

 bee ; and on the surface of the waters to view 

 the gaudy flies sparkling like animated gems 

 in the sunbeams, whilst the bright and beauti- 

 ful trout is watching them from below ; to hear 

 the twitter of the water birds, who, alarmed at 

 your approach, rapidly hide themselves be- 

 neath the flowers and leaves of the water lily ; 

 and as the season advances, to find all these 

 objects changed for others of the same kind, 

 but better and brighter, till the swallow and 

 the trout contend for the gaudy May fly, and 

 till, in pursuing your amusements in the calm 

 and balmy evening, you are serenaded by the 

 songs of the thrush and melodious nightingale, 

 performing the offices of paternal love, in the 

 thickets ornamented with the rose and wood- 

 bine." 



Among anglers the weight of authority seems 

 to be greatly in favor of stream fishing. There 

 is something irresistibly charming about a liv- 

 ing stream of water. Pliny has compared a 

 river to human life, and your writer has been 

 many times struck with the analogy. Its 

 small beginning, pure and undefiled ; its rip- 

 ples, rapids, bubbles and noise corresponding 

 with the laughter and gaieties of life ; its quiet 

 stretches and still deep pools, reminding us of 

 the contemplative or thoughtful periods of ex- 

 istence ; its reflection of the sunshine and the 

 shadows ; its increasing size and strength, as 

 it runs along ; its course altered or changed by 

 obstructions ; its contamination by contact with 

 impure outside influences ; and, finally, in its 

 latter stage, moving with deep, almost imper- 

 ceptible current, recalling declining years and 

 old age. And when its course is finally run 

 and its waters are lost in the abyss of the 

 ocean, it reminds us of the termination of life 

 and the commingling with the great majority. 



green. In a state of domestication it becomes 

 a goldfish or golden ide as a permanent form. 

 There is no known fish which is so susceptible 

 to treatment as the carp, of which these forms 

 are the transmutations. Witness the triple- 

 tailed goldfish and the wonderful king-i-yo of 

 Japan. 



Albinism in Fishes. 



The coloration of fishes depends chiefly upon 

 the arrangement of pigment cells, or Chromato 

 phores, which lie in the lower strata of the 

 epidermis. The entire absence of these pig- 

 ment cells results in albinism. The same is 

 true of birds and animals as of fishes. This 

 has been observed in haddocks, flounders, 

 carps, eels and goldfish. In our public ponds 

 a very large proportion of the goldfish are al- 

 binos — silverfish they are generally called. In 

 its native waters in China the goldfish is a dull 



The Castalia Club — Stocking with Fish Atoms. 



Mr. J. W. Oswald, of Toledo, Ohio, has 

 kindly sent us a half-tone electro of the new 

 club house of the Castalia Club, which we give 

 below. The name Castalia, according to 

 Frank C. Hibbard, was given to these Ohio 

 springs on account of the great purity of their 

 waters, which resemble, in many respects, the 

 waters of the famous Grecian fountain. The 

 Castalia spring furnishes to the members of 

 the club six miles of grand trout waters, which, 

 through the building of runways, twisting and 

 turning, snake like, covers an area of only one 

 hundred and ten acres of land, which is owned 

 in fee simple by the club. The enterprise of 

 the members and the ingenuity and skill of 

 their engineering has made Castalia Club the 

 model, as it is one of the most fruitful, trout 

 clubs in this or any other country. They have 

 a \vell-equipped hatchery, under an accom- 

 plished fish culturist, Mr. Andrew Englert, 

 and as many as 400,000 trout fry, two months 

 old, are placed in the stream each year. The 

 club will soon learn, if it has not already, 

 that with its superior facilities for hatching 

 and rearing trout, the yearlings, if planted, 

 will yield better results than the fish atoms so 

 profusely put in their stream, with no appre- 

 ciable results. The late U. S. Fish Commis- 

 sioner, Marshall MacDonald, conferred a boon 

 upon the anglers and the public when he put 

 this fact on record in his annual report in 1886. 

 He wrote: "The distribution of trout fry 

 from this station (Wytheville, Va.) has been 

 conspicuous for the failure to produce appre- 

 ciable results in the improvement of the streams 

 stocked. Rarely did we find any evidence of 

 success from such work. The change in our 

 methods of handling the trout, namely, rearing 

 them at the station and distributing after they 

 have attained a length of five to six inches, 

 has, on the other hand, met with most encour- 

 aging success." 



And yet, in the face of this experience, 

 which is general, most of the trout clubs plant 

 the diminutive fry and the State Fish Cora- 



