106 WASTE-LAXD WAXDERIXGS. 



tliougli every precaution was taken, not to injure tliera, 

 they quickly succumbed. The mere act of lifting them 

 from the water and immediately returning them proved 

 a shock, and twenty seconds exposure to the atmos- 

 phere was fatal. 



The kingfishers for many a mile seemed to know of 

 this school of fish, and they followed it as closely as 

 gulls do the moss-bunkers along our sea-coast. Again 

 and again these voracious birds would dart into the 

 midst of the young shad, and swallowed them usually 

 without preliminary butchering. 



I foUovv^ed these fish a short distance, when, as though 

 the tide had turned, they very suddenly reversed their 

 positions and moved slowly towards the river. Consid- 

 ering their helplessness, it is a marvel that any of their 

 number should ever reach the ocean. I^ot simply for 

 the reason that the kingfishers followed them so closely, 

 but because they were also attended by numbers of pike, 

 perch, water - snakes, and had even to run the gantlet 

 of scores of hungry turtles. This in the creek where I 

 saw them. What their experiences in the river were to 

 be can be imagined. 



]^evertlieless, centuries ago, the cunning Indian fish- 

 ermen, at this very bend of the creek, captured thou- 

 sands of shad by methods of their own — perhaps be- 

 neath the larger of the oaks still standing here. 



Loskiel records, " There is a particular manner of fish- 

 ing which is undertaken in parties, as many hands are 

 wanted, in the following manner : when the shad -fish 

 {Alosa clujyea) come up the rivers, the Indians run a dam 

 of stones across the stream, where its depth will admit 



