400 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Part 2 

 LIFE OF LITTLE CLEAR CREEK 



This tranquil little stream (pi. 3), once famous for its trout fishing, 

 traverses the hatchery grounds, and disappears in the woods below under 

 a canopy of overarching alders. It leaves the pond at present by a little 

 artificial fall, runs through a big, tubular iron culvert under the railroad, 

 tumbling over a little bed of stones at the end of the culvert, and then 

 traverses a parrow bit of brookside meadow, bordered by spring bog full 

 of balsam trees. Then it enters the fish ponds. Passing the hatchery, 

 and all the fish gates, it is free again for a little open space before enter- 

 ing the woods below. From the pond to the woods below the hatchery 

 is less than a quarter of a mile; and in this short space the following 

 studies were made. 



In the undisturbed portion of this course the brook glides alternately 

 over beds of rippled reddish sand or percolates through tangled mats of 

 river weed, Potamogeton, and stonework, N i t e 1 1 a , or clumps of 

 bur reed, Sparganium. It has an average depth of perhaps a foot, 

 and a width of about 10 feet. Its depth varies very little with the 

 weather, a continuous downpour of rain for days raising its level but a 

 few inches. 



In the edges of the woods were seen scattering stemless lady's slippers, 

 and banks of that dainty little favorite of Linnaeus, the twin flower, while 

 the star flower and the bunchberry and the yellow Chntonia and the red 

 elder berry made these places bright in June with their flowers and in 

 August with their brilliantly colored fruit. 



From this little strip of water we did more or less collecting every 

 day of the session. While we thus gained some general information as 

 to what the stream contained, we were desirous of making our knowledge 

 more exact by quantitative studies, for which unfortunately our breed- 

 ings, requiring constant attention, left us very little time. We did, how- 

 ever, make quantitative studies of the animal life of two little patches of 

 the creek, made a count of the cast skins of dragon flies left along a strip 

 of the bank, made qualitative studies of the insect life of the ripple below 

 the bridge, and of the hatchery pipes and troughs, and made some 

 scattering observations of more or less interest, which will constitute the 

 subject of this chapter. 



Quantitative studies. These were made from two patches of 

 Little Clear creek, each approximately 15 square feet in surface area. 

 They do not include the animals that slipped through our nets, the 



