*'OUT OF THE DEPTHS." 215 



The bream is another excellent fish, not nearly of so 

 large a growth as the trout, but still just the right size for 

 a pan-fish, full-grown specimens weighing from one to two 

 pounds. These, too, are caught with hook and line, with 

 minnows, earth-worms, or sawyers, as bait. Minnows are 

 easily caught, close in shore, with a fine hand net ; as to 

 earth-worms, we doubt if there is a country in the world 

 so destitute of these familiar denizens of the Northern sub- 

 terranean barn-yard as the piney-woods region of Florida. 



In the clay hammocks there are plenty of them, also in 

 the muck-beds along the lakes or rivers ; but in the sands 

 of the pine lands they are indeed of the genus vara avis; 

 in all our own diggings and grubbings we have met with 

 but two S2:)ecimens of the genuine red earth-worms, and 

 can not account for the finding of those. So the earth- 

 worm, as bait for fish, is a fraud for the pine-lander, and 

 he has to fall back upon the fat, white, chubby "sawyer," 

 whose busy chip ! chip ! can be heard beneath the bark of 

 the pine trees all day and all night. 



Sawyer is the name given it, but its true name is Scolytiis 

 destructor, which is the scientific designation of a small 

 wood-boring beetle; and that which the Floridian terms 

 the sawyer is the larvae of this insect, which, starting from 

 the inner part of the tree, where the mother has laid her 

 eggs, works its way outward, growing larger and fatter as 

 it progresses, until, when the searching angler finds it be- 

 tween the bark and the wood, nearly ready to develop into 

 the full-grown state, it is a tempting tid-bit for bream and 

 perch and for all the smaller fish of lake or stream. It is 

 quite true that the sawyer's head is rather tough and its 

 cutting tools hard and sharp ; but the rest of it is so fat 

 and toothsome in their eyes, that the eager fish heed not 

 these disadvantages, but rush open-mouthed at the delicious 

 Scolytus destructw whenever the opportunity offers. 



