144 
reversed. But the supply of the striped 
bass is very much less than that of the 
sardine. Last year’s catch of sardines 
exceeded a hundred millions of pounds 
on our California coast. Hveryone knows 
the striped bass. It is a game fish that 
sportsmen pay good sums of money to go 
fishing for, and when people hear that 
the market-man has striped bass they 
think it must be a particularly good fish, 
for they have heard so much about it. 
When they learn the price they feel sure 
that it is the best. On account of this 
demand the fishermen received from ten 
to fifteen times as much for the striped 
bass as they do for the sardine. 
Not only do we pay much more for 
such expensive but beeause we 
demand them we increase the price of the 
cheap fishes on account of more expensive 
waste. Figure it this way. A wholesale 
dealer pays $15 for 100 pounds of striped 
fishes, 
bass. He pays $1 for 100 pounds of 
sardines. He may lose sometimes on an 
off day as much as 25 per cent of his fish. 
Of course, this excessive waste is very 
unusual, but it will illustrate what we 
wish to say. Thus he loses $3.75 on his 
striped bass and 25 cents on his sardines, 
and as he has to average his loses to some 
extent the cheap fish have to bear more 
than their share of the burden and are no 
longer cheap fish. 
To put it briefly, if we ate only the 
plentiful sorts of fishes the price could 
be made much less, for if the dealer did 
not have to handle the expensive sorts 
his loss would be less. 
There are other cheap fishes besides 
the sardine that are good: the rex-sole, 
the shad, the sablefish, the mackerel and 
others. We have picked out the sardine 
to compare with the striped bass only 
because of its abundance. It should 
always remain a cheap fish. 
COMMITTEE ON ZOOLOGICAL INVESTIGA- 
TIONS, CALIFORNIA STATE COUNCIL 
OF DEFENSE. 
FEW ELK IN 1859. 
The following interesting item relative 
to the killing of an elk in the vicinity of 
Stockton is doubtless of far greater inter- 
est to us at the present than it was to 
the readers of the “Stockton Argus” in 
1859. It can be seen that even at this 
date the elk had become practically ex- 
CALIFORNIA FISH 
AND GAME. 
terminated in the San Joaquin Valley. 
We are indebted to Mr. William Cohen 
for the item: 
“An elk weighing some 425 pounds was 
brought to Stockton on 25th October from 
Middle River, where it was killed on 
Saturday last by Robert Dykman, the 
hunter, to whose superior skill with the 
rifle we are indebted for the larger por- 
tion of game of this description that finds 
its way into our market. Mr. Dykman 
was three days upon the trail, in which 
time he followed his game from near the 
mouth of the Mokelumne, across the San 
Joaquin and Middle River, a distance 
of about thirty-five miles. The horns 
were some six feet in length, with antlers, 
the longest of which were eighteen 
inches. The head and horns weighed 75 
pounds, which were retained here, and the 
remainder shipped to San Francisco, 
where the scarcity of cervine provision 
commands for it a higher price than 
could be obtained in our own market.— 
Stockton Argus, October 25, 1859. 
SALT FOR DEER. 
Some salt bricks were furnished forest 
officers in Trinity County by the Commis- 
sion in 1945. The deer made good use 
of this salt after they had become accus- 
tomed to the bricks. The. forest officers 
who made this experiment, as well as 
others familiar with wild life, believe 
that much greater utilization of the salt 
would have resulted if ordinary loose salt 
had been provided. Salt in this form 
could be placed on logs by squaring off 
one side and boring two-inch auger holes 
five-sixths of an inch deep and filling these 
with salt. The salt logs might be cut 
where cattle do not ordinarily travel and 
additional safety would be furnished by 
he small holes from which salt cannot be 
licked so easily by a cow. 
There is a real necessity for salting 
deer. It is, of course, well known and 
recognized that cattle absolutely must 
have salt to grow in weight and to remain 
healthful. As deer have always used 
licks, it is assumed that this method of 
salting is satisfactory. 
One of the advantages of salting deer 
is that they do not have to leave the high 
feeding grounds to travel a long distance 
to some lick that is usually near a stream 
at some low elevation, with little feed in 
