NATURE'S CALENDAR 



February 2 



gave an account of how the lowly, hid- 

 den, inv^ertebratesof our woods and waters 

 met this forbidding season, so now I mean 

 to give some facts of the winter life of the 

 higher kinds of animals, many of which 

 enliven a landscape otherwise apparently 

 lifeless. 



The fishes have only to go into water 

 so deep that it cannot be frozen to the 

 bottom in order to escape discomfort, 

 though it is certainly a time of less luxury 

 with them than summer, when air and 

 water are full of insects; on the other 

 hand, they need less food for their dimin- 

 ished activities. At any rate, fishes exist 

 in health and apparent happiness beneath 

 the ice of the deeper rivers and ponds, as 

 is well known to many who fish success- 

 fully, with both lines and nets, through 

 the ice, though this is practised more in 

 Canada and the country about the Great 

 Lakes than in the East. It is done con- 

 siderably upon the Hudson and its trib- 

 utaries, however, nets similar to fykes, 

 taken up and turned with each change of 

 tide, being lowered for "scale fish " — that 

 is, for striped bass, white and yellow perch, 

 mainly, white suckers (scarcely edible at 

 other seasons), goldfish, sunfish, tomcod 

 (locally, the frost-fish), and frequently cat- 

 fish of two or three kinds. 



By line-fishing through the ice in the 

 ponds and quiet riv^ers of New York and 

 New England, one may catch pickerel 

 in great numbers, black bass (the small- 



February 3 



