Lake Maxinkuckee, Physical and Biological Survey 327 



This is as it should be. The white-fish is an aristocratic fish that 

 will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species is wholly 

 in the interest of the wealthy owners of fishing tubs, who have 

 nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all of the 

 white-fish out of the lake a little faster than the State machine 

 can put them in. Poor people cannot get a smell of white-fish. 

 The same may be said of brook trout. While they will bite a hook, 

 it requires more machinery to catch them than ordinary people can 

 possess without mortgaging a house. A man has got to have a 

 morrocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo jointed 

 rod, a three-dollar trout basket, with a hole morticed in the top, 

 a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington 

 pattern, with red tassels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy 

 in a side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style a speckled 

 trout will see him in Chicago first, and then it won't bite. The 

 brook trout is even more aristocratic than the white-fish, and should 

 not be propagated at public expense. 



"But there are fish that should be propagated in the interest of 

 the people. There is a species of fish that never looks at the 

 clothes of the man who throws in the bait, a fish that takes what- 

 ever is thrown to it, and when once hold of the hook never tries 

 to shake a friend, but submits to the inevitable, crosses its legs and 

 says, 'Now I lay me', and comes out on the bank and seems to 

 enjoy being taken. It is a fish that is the friend of the poor, and 

 one that will sacrifice itself in the interest of humanity. That 

 is the fish that the State should adopt as its trade-mark, and culti- 

 vate friendly relations with and stand by. We allude to the Bull- 

 head. 



"The Bull-head never went back on a friend. To catch the Bull- 

 head it is not necessary to tempt his appetite with porterhouse 

 steak, or to display an expensive lot of fishing tackle. A pinhook, 

 a piece of liver, and a cistern pole is all the capital required to 

 catch a Bull-head. He lies upon the bottom of a stream or pond 

 in the mud thinking. There is no fish that does more thinking, 

 or has a better head for grasping great questions, or chunks of 

 liver, than the Bull-head. His brain is large, his heart beats for 

 humanity, and if he can't get liver, a piece of thin tomato can will 

 make a meal for him. It is an interesting study to watch a boy 

 catch a Bull-head. The boy knows where the Bull-heads congre- 

 gate, and when he throws in his hook it is dollars to buttons that 

 'in the near future' he will get a bite. 



"The Bull-head is democratic in all its instincts. If the boy's 

 shirt is sleeveless, his hat crownless, and his pantaloons a bot- 



