FOURTEENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 23 



only twelve miles awaj', than they are here. In the last men- 

 tioned lake no big smelts are found. An idea of the abundance 

 of these little smelts may be had from the fact that a few even- 

 ings since three fellows dipped a shorts sack full (about three 

 bushels) in less than an hour. That this party of wholesale fish 

 killers were under the influence of something stronger than brook 

 water was proved by what followed, for tying up the mouth of 

 the sack, they threw it into the stream and allowed it to drift 

 with its contents out into the lake. 



"No person pretends to know anything about when these 

 waters were stocked with smelts, but in all probability they 

 were here long before the country was settled. Although 

 they have been ruthlessly wasted year after year, their numbers 

 have been larger this season than at any time previous. With 

 the exception of the ten or twelve days that they are spawning 

 in the spring, no smelts are ever seen in the streams here. They 

 are caught some through the ice in winter and in ver}' deep 

 water almost always. Those caught through the ice, or with 

 hook and line at any time, are generally larger than those taken 

 in the streams in breeding time. On the whole, smelts in these 

 parts are something of a puzzle, and the people who see the 

 most of them simply expect them to put in an appearance at 

 about such a time, kill them by the thousands when they do 

 come, and think no more about them until their next 

 appearance." 



A year passed after the first attempt to get eggs, and late in 

 February, 1885, while looking through Fulton Market, New 

 York, Mr. Blackford told me that smelts were coming in from 

 the southside of Long Island. I sent Mr. Walters down to Brook- 

 haven, a place on the eastern end of the Great South Bay, where 

 the Carman's River or as formerly called, the Connecticut River, 

 comes i.n. I will here digress to say that the Shinnecock Indians 

 are reported to have had a tradition that this river was a continu- 

 ation of the great river of that name, which, by means of some 

 subterranean passage under Long Island Sound, breaks out 

 again on the island. The Connecticut River of Long Island is 

 about five miles long, and the smelts often run up it in great 

 quantities, but are said not to go further than half a mile from 

 its mouth. They begin to run in about the 15th of February, 

 and the run lasts one month. They are taken with seines and 

 gill-nets, and an average catch for one man is seventy-five per 

 night. 



