NOTES AND QUERIES. 
[Under this Department Heading queries relative to Angling, Ichthyology and Fish Culture 
will be answered. | 
Stream Trout Fishing. 
Will you please advise me, at your conven- 
ience, as to how I can obtain a thorough knowl- 
edge of stream trout fishing, through publi- 
cations on the subject. 
I have been enjoying the sport for two sea- 
sons on our trout stream, Prairie river, which 
you have undoubtedly heard of, and have de- 
veloped into a very enthusiastic trout fisher- 
man./ I realize that there is very much to 
learn, and would, therefore, like to spend the 
winter evenings perusing literature (not too 
expensive) which will be beneficial to me. 
I doubt not that the rudimentary knowledge 
would be of great help to me, as I have simply 
had the assistance of friends who, I fear, are 
far from being experts at ‘‘chucking bugs.” 
Your suggestions and assistance in this will 
greatly oblige IRN I Jel, 
MERRILL, Wis., Jan. 5. 
It is to be regretted that no modern work 
has been published in America on the subject 
named by our correspondent, and the infor- 
mation he wishes is to be had only by wading 
through a number of books, and, even then, 
the result will not be entirely satisfactory. 
Perhaps the most complete lessons (outside of 
the mere manual of fly-casting) can be learned 
from our American Walton-——-Thaddeus Norris 
—who wrote and published a work on fishing 
about thirty years ago. ‘‘ Uncle Thad,” as he 
was familiarly called by his angling chums, 
was more thoroughly imbued with the spirit 
and love of the art of angling than any other 
man America has produced, and he wrote 
knowingly and earnestly of the art he had 
grown to love so well. He was a thorough 
mechanic in the manufacture of angling gear, 
but, unlike some modern authors, did not allow 
skill at the work-bench to take precedence over 
skill and enthusiasm on thestream. His book, 
‘««The American Angler’s Book,” will cost you 
$5.50. Two other books, ‘‘Scott’s Fishing in 
American Waters,” $2.50; the ‘‘ Practical Ang- 
ler,” by Kit Clark, $1.00, and THE AMERICAN 
ANGLER (bound), Vol. XXI, $3.00, about make 
up the total of really useful American books on 
the subject; and those published in England, 
which number scores of hundreds, would be 
apt to mislead the novice, owing to the differ- 
ent methods and terms used on English waters. 
We can furnish all of the books referred to, 
but you should, after carefully reading them, 
depend upon practice and stream-study for 
perfection in the art of trout fishing. It takes 
years of experience to make an ideal trout 
angler —a real mossback of the lins and lakes. 

Can Black Bass See at N ght? 
I send you a clipping from one of your con- 
temporaries wherein the question of black bass 
ranging at night is discussed, and, in the dis- 
cussion, Dr. Alfred Herde, of this city, states 
that he has examined, microscopically, the eye 
of this fish, and does not believe that it has the 
power of sight after nightfall. Will you 
please give us your opinion on the subject. 
CHICAGO, Jan. 23. Tuomas Doy te. 
We have caught hundreds of black bass af- 
ter nightfall, from g o'clock until midnight. 
We have taken them on an artificial fly, trailing 
it in shallow water, as in trout fishing, and 
have seen the gleam of the wake, five or six 
feet in length, of the bass, made by the rush of 
the fish for the fly. Again we have seen, 
quite late at night, a black bass when feeding 
on a shallow bar, where the water did not en- 
tirely cover its back, elbowing, shouldering or 
bellying its way over the flat after the fright- 
ened minnows, which were jumping and scur- 
rying in every direction. We know it was a 
black bass, for our black and grey palmer 
hackle, thrown a foot ahead of the spot where 
the fish was making a racket, brought him 
safely to our landing net. Asfurther evidence 
that black bass appear to see clearly and 
strongly at night, we instance the fact that 
when fishing for them on the Schuylkill river 
during the dark hours, we found that they took 
a darkish fly in preference to the white miller. 
This curious trait we accounted for by observ- 
ing that, during the day, the fish were feeding 
