FOREST AND STREAM. 



195 



steamer Donahue, bound for the landing of the same name, 

 to take the cars through the beautiful and rich valley of 

 Sanoma to Cloverda.e, and from thence by stage to the 

 North Forks of the Navarro river, in Mendicino cou nty, 

 about ninety miles northwest of San Francisco. We think 

 there can hardly be any scenery of the same quiet and 

 mild character more lovely than that which prevails in the 

 journey from the beautifully situated town of Cloverdale, 

 till the solemn and majestic redwoods are reached, about 

 some eight or ten miles from the North Fork House, on 

 one of \he fine branches of the Navarro. Anderson's Yal- 

 ley is certainly one of the most enchanting, in both its nat- 

 iud-1 and cultivated beauty, in the State. 



The rounded and variously formed hills, and the moun- 

 tains on both sides are clothed most handsomely in oaks 

 and a variety of other trees and shrubs, and their tops are 

 crowned with the graceful and spirally shaped redwoods. 

 The vegetation at this season is of course more parti-colored 

 than at any other, and the autumn woods are very charm- 

 ing, with their brown or yellow foliage, and some of their 

 stems adorned with crimson-colored creepers, and at their 

 feet the pretty, brilliant, pink-tinted shrnbs of the poison 

 oak. At about 11 p. m. we reached our point of destina 

 tion, thirty-five miles from Cloverdale, having performed 

 the journey in seventeen hours from San Francisco. The 

 North Fork House is situated in the middle of the red- 

 woods. It is but a small clearing, and at a small distance 

 from it nearly all around rise the monstrous burnt stumps 

 and tall timber trees of these redwoods, (8egnoia s&mperm- 

 rem) a species of the cedar. A capital supper, with well- 

 cooked venison and other viands and varioas accessories, 

 was made ready for us by our kind, pleasant, and active 

 hostess, Mrs. Averill, to which our long and rather 

 fatiguing stage travel caused us to do ample justice. The 

 next morning we made preparations for a raid on the deer 

 and trout, my nephew going for the former and your more 

 than three-score years and ten correspondent aiming for 

 the latter sport. The deer abound in large numbers in this 

 vicinity, which is densely wooded, witn much corer and 

 underbrush, and very mountainous, the scenery from the 

 elevations appearing much like that in the Pennsylvania 

 mountains; but on a considerably larger scale. "Here," 

 as the famous Frank Forester observed, when speaking of 

 deer hunting, "there is no work for the feather-bed city 

 hunter— the curled darling of soft dames. Here the true 

 foot, the stout arm, the keen eye, and the instinctive pres- 

 cience of the forester and mountaineer are needed; here it 

 will be seen who is and who is not the woodsman by the 

 surest test of all— the only real test of true sportsmanship 

 and venerie— who can best set afoot the wild deer of the 

 hills, who bring him to bay ov to soil most speedily, who 

 ring aloud his death halloa, and bear the spoils in triumph 

 to his camp or shanty, to feast on the rich loin, while 

 weakly and unskillful rivals slink supperless to bed. 

 No written instructions can give this love to the tyro; noth- 

 ing but long practice and the closest experience can give to 

 the eye of man the ability to follow the path of the devious 

 and pasturing deer through every variety of soil and sur- 

 face, with a certainty as unerring as that attained by the 

 nose of the bloodhound." 



And so, indeed, our deer hunters (and there were several 

 good ones at the North Fork) found it in this vicinage, for 

 the range is immense, various in features, and fatiguing 

 and difficult for the pedestrian. However, in about 

 eight days twelve good deer, young and old, chiefly does, 

 were killed by the hunters, my nephew and a friend of his 

 together. About two miles from our inn, and in sight of it, 

 are several "bald hills," and in the forest bordering these 

 the hunters had a delightful camp just inside the forest on 

 the ridge, and which commanded a splendid and most ex- 

 tensive view of many tiers of hills and mountains for a 

 great many miles, covered with immense redwood forests. 

 The writer, who was chiefly engaged in trout fishing in 

 the North Fork of the Navarro (the best fishing being 

 either two miles up or two down that wild and rcmantic 

 stream), visited with his worthy landlady this beautifully 

 situated camp, and was most hospitably entertained by the 

 sportsmen, nice ribs of venison being roasted a la hunts- 

 man's mode, over the camp fire. There were some very 

 good hunters in this camp (besides my nephew, who made 

 a capital beginning in this department of sporting, his 

 great forte, however, being casting the fly for salmon and 

 trout, and for which delicate art there can hardly be his 

 superior), namely, the two Hectors, McOail and Sweet, the 

 last of Messrs. liancrof t's firm in the city. Before we left 

 for San Francisco these gentlemen changed their camp to 

 two miles up the main Navarro river, about six miles 

 from the North Fork House, where thev expected to find 

 the deer feeding on the acorns that abound there. 



As to the brook trout fishing in the neighborhood of the 

 North Fork House, they abound in goodly and sufficient 

 numbers a short distance from that point up and down the 

 stream. The water is very clear, and in the bright sun 

 light they do not take the fly very readily, except in the 

 hands of the most skillful fly-fisher; but in the early 

 morning and late in the evening he can have excellent 

 sport. The writer found the best mode of taking them in 

 plenty, if he desired a full basket for the table, or for his 

 friends, was to obtain a few earth worms, catch some 

 small chubs, cut them in small pieces, place them on 

 his fly hook, and cast with his fly rod as far as he could in- 

 to the deepest pools, allowing his line to sink gradually to 

 the bottom, give sufficient time for the fish to swallow the 

 bait, which they did most ravenously, and he was reward- 

 ed handsomely for what he confesses to be not the most ar- 

 tistic or sportsmanlike mode of capturing the game covet- 

 ed beauties. The writer found the flavor of the trout in 

 these streams remarkably fine, the flesh being rather firm, 

 but very sweet, and somewhat similar, he thought, in rich- 

 ness of taste, to youug salmon. 1 could enlarge on the grat- 

 ifying subject of this trip to a great length, but space for- 

 bids, and 1 will merely add to what I have said that the 

 journey to this place, of only one day, is reasonably cheap; 

 that the board at the North Fork House is but $2 per day, 

 the fare good, of ecreat variety, and well prepared; and that 

 mine hostess, Mrs" Averill, is most attentive, diligent in bus- 

 iness, and kind to her visitors; also that the hire for car- 

 riage and horseback travel is quite moderate. 



E. J. Hoopbb. 



S^t l&idhn** 



THE HAMBURG AQUARIUM. 



— A London paper says, when the Prince of Wales land- 

 ed at Portsmouth on his return from India, there was so 

 much eagerness on the part of the people to see him that 

 his carriage could make no progress. Suddenly a happy 

 thought struck a bandmaster. He told his men to strike up 

 "Tommy, Make Room for Your Uncle." The people laugh- 

 ed, cheered and staightway took the hint* 



BY DB. H. DOBNEE, LATE SUPERINTENDENT OF THE ZOO- 

 LOGICAL GARDEN OP CINCINNATI. 



THE open ing of the New York Aquarium reminds me 

 of the time of my being Secretary to the Hamburg 

 Zoological Society, when it belonged to my duties to su- 

 perintend the well-known Aquarium forming an interest- 

 ing part of the Zoological Garden. Before I became con- 

 nected with this institution the builder and inventor of 

 modern aquaria on a large and improved scale, Mr. W. A. 

 Lloyd, was still Superintendent of the Aquarium, and it is 

 with great pleasure I think of the many hours I used to 

 observe* his ingenious methods in feeding and treating all 

 the different forms of aquatic life. In September, 1870, 

 Mr. Lloyd left Hamburg to return to his native country, 

 and to build there the Crystal Palace Aquarium in Syden- 

 ham, near London, on a larger scale, though after the same 

 principles which ho had found to be successful in Ham- 

 burg. During the four years which I spent in the Ham- 

 burgh Zoological Garden, observing and describing the 

 different forms of almost every class of animals, I had oc- 

 casion to see many interesting features of animal life. 

 Hoping that you will kindly allow me to occupy some 

 place of your valuable paper, I shall try to describe a few 

 things that were to be seen there. 



The Hamburgh Aquarium can scarcely be compared 

 with the new one in New York. There is no great hall for 

 visitors, no rustic work, no whale nor sea lion, no music, 

 no library, no reading nor smoking-room; there is noth- 

 ing worth mentioning besides the tanks and the animals. 

 The whole building is only 94 by 39 feet. The floor 

 is ten feet deeper than the surface of the neighboring gar- 

 den space, and the roof is so low as to become nearly con- 

 cealed by common shrubbery of six to eight feet high . 

 This was done to protect the animals against the high tem- 

 perature of the summer, it having been found by experi- 

 ence that the animals of the nortnern seas, which almost 

 exclusively are kept in the European Aquaria, do not live 

 ia water the temperature of which exceeds 65°. The 

 main hail of the Hamburg Aquarium is 53 feet long, 10 

 feet wide and 16 feet high in the center. Each of the long 

 sides are lined by five tanks, the two larger ones being 

 each 12 feet 2 inches long, the eight smaller ones each 5 

 feet 10 inches. Three small adjoining rooms contain tanks 

 of smaller size, the first one six tanks of 5 cubic feet each, 

 the second six flat tanks, the surface of which can be seen 

 by the visitors, and the third holds a large basin for a gi- 

 gantic Japanese salamander . 



The construction of the tanks is essentially the same as 

 in the New York Aquarium; so is the system of aerating 

 and circulating the water. As it is my chief purpose to 

 tell something of the animals exhibited in Hamburg, I 

 shall not dwell lengthy on the exteriors, as the building or 

 the construction of the tanks and so lorth. The less so as 

 the New York Aquarium is far superior in everything of 

 this line. To have some plan and order in my recollections I 

 shall begin with animals of the higher classes and proceed 

 as the system indicates. There having never been exhibit- 

 ed mammals or birds in the Hamburg Aquarium, the first 

 objects of my remarks are the turtles, some species of 

 which have been kept there. 



Everybody is familiar with the grotesque form of the 

 turtles, and whoever has seen a land tortoise slowly crawl- 

 ing on its elephantous feet may well be inclined to take 

 these animals lor neglected step-children of nature. Slen- 

 der and agile movements as they are exhibited by animals 

 with a flexible spine are totally denied to these apparently 

 miserable creatures, and they fall an easily captured booty 

 to anybody who is able to heave the weight of their clumsy 

 body. Their only protection against the assailant claws, 

 beaks, or teeth of their ravaging enemies, is the partly 

 bony, partly horny, shield which surrounds the body on 

 all sides. But now look at the terrapins and turtles in 

 their fluid elements. How easy does the water carry their 

 ponderous mass, how quickly does the animal divide the 

 dense element, and how suitably does the form of their 

 body seem to be adapted to the movements of swimming! 

 The tortoises of the laud and the turtles of the sea are very 

 dissimilar brothers; indeed, unlike in faculties and man- 

 ners, in mode of diving, and in mastering or utilizing the 

 surrounding creation. It is easily to comprehend that the 

 slowly-moving land tort oises can get their living only by 

 applying to the vegetables, while their roving relatives 

 feed on animals; that the former are scarce and of large 

 size, while the latter abound in rivers and seas, and occur 

 in all dimensions from the size of a dollar up to the bulk 

 of four hundred weight. Gray, in his catalogues of the 

 British Museum, enumerates only thirty different species 

 of land tortoises, against 227 of those in rivers and seas. 



Nowhere the perfect adaptation of the turtle's form to 

 the medium is better to be studied than in an aquarium, 

 The large, flat ovary forelegs, situated just at the heaviest 

 part of the body, which is tapering towards the- hind part, 

 are the chief motors, and the flat body, resembling in its 

 form that of water beetles, rays, or flatfish, glides by their 

 means easily and continuously through the water. 



The Hamburg Aquarium exhibited usually three marine 

 turtles — one common green one (Chelonia vii'idis), the log- 

 gerhead (Oh. caouana) and the caret {Oh. caretta), sometimes 

 also the rarer carey (Oh. virgatta). The greater number of 

 these animals never took food, and lived only a compara- 

 tively short time, the loggerhead alone quickly acclimatiz- 

 ing, and moving around with the greatest ease and appar- 

 ent satisfaction . The latter used to feed on shrimps, and 

 would occasionally take small pieces of cut fish, but grad- 

 ually it became dull, and I neyer succeeded in keeping it 

 alive for more than three months. Fresh water turtles, 

 lizards and crocodiles being kept in large terraria in other 

 places of the Zoological Garden, 1 proceed in mentioning 

 some interesting amphibians. 



The first among them is the gigantic salamander (Sicbol- 

 dia maxima). It was presented to the aquarium by a 

 wealthy merchant, who himself captured the animal in 

 Japan, and sent it to Hamburg. There it lives since 1864, 

 now being of the length of more than 4} feet. It is kept 



in a small fresh water pond, the front of which is a large 

 plate glass, thus facilitating the view. 



The managers of the New York Aquarium having made 

 arrangements to procure some of these very interesting 

 animals, it will hardly be necessary to give a description 

 of them. Imagine a common salamander swollen to the 

 gigantic size of four or five feet, with a flat and 

 broad head, an extremely wide mouth, eyes not larger 

 than a pea, with four short paddling feet and a high, 

 compressed tail, and you will get an adequate idea of the 

 Ticboldia, There it lays in its clumsy majesty, close to 

 the transparent front in a selfmade gioove at the bottom of 

 its tank, totally immoveable, hardly changing the direction 

 of its puny eyes. You might think its being dead, for 

 even the movements of breathing are wanting. But you 

 remember that salamanders are lung-breathing animals and 

 that they must come to the surface to get their provision 

 of air from the atmosphere, and you have patience enough 

 to await their ascending. But you might watch for hours, 

 for the salamander will occasionally lay for two hours and 

 more before changing its position. Like frogs in winter, 

 it takes air out of the water through the soft skin, and 

 therefore needs a minimum of exertion to get a sufficient 

 quantity of it. 



One day the strange animal occasioned my particular at- 

 tention. " I happened to come to the Aquarium on an un- 

 usually rainy and stormy day and was astonished to hear tho 

 doorkeeper, whose station was near^to the salamander, utter 

 with a certain emphasis: "I was thinking already that we 

 should get bad weather, the salamander was stirring all 

 forenoon yesterday." Curious what might cause this re- 

 mark. I examined the man closely and heard the following : 

 "Uusually the gigantic salamander is moving very little. 

 Sometimes it will lay for eight days, sometimes for a fort- 

 night in the selfmade grove near the glassfront, only 

 ascending in intervals of two orthree hours to draw breth 

 or opening its enormous mouth with a sudden jerk to swal- 

 low one of the fish that effme too near to its head. But on 

 single davs its behavior is totally changed. It begins to 

 crawl around, rows with its short thick paddles, moves its 

 large tail, endeavors to keep itself on the surface continu- 

 ally, in short, shows excitement by all possible means. 

 These movements are continued for three to five hours 

 before the animal falls back to its usual dullness, which 

 will be kept up for a longer or shorter time. It is remark- 

 able that these excitements do not return in regular periods, 

 but occur frequently in one month, seldom in an other. 

 Not believing them to be utterances of bodily sufferance 

 and pain the animal being in perfect health, it did not 

 seem unreasonable to take sudden changes of the atmos- 

 phere as the cause of these remarkable movements. To 

 come to a positive result I instructed the doorkeeper to 

 watch the animal on purpose and report to me every day 

 how many hours it stirred in the above mentioned manner. 

 After having continued these observations for a whole year 

 I went to the Directors of the Hamburg "Seewarle," 

 where all meteorological events are scientifically recorded. 

 The Director, Herr von Freeden, ordered an extract of the 

 average daily character of the weather to be made for the 

 same time, and now I have carefully compared the two 

 series of observations. I then found the following: The 

 salamander had stirred 52 times in the year; 34 times the 

 weather changed to worse on the second or third day after- 

 wards; 12 hours jthere was no extraordinary change and 

 six times remained dubious. To test also the reverse of the 

 medal, I noticed also the average character of the weather 

 on those days for which our animals had made no indica- 

 tion, and thus it was found that of 183 of these days 104 

 were pointed out as fair, 15 as bad and G4 as undetermined- 

 Taking nothing but the results of the observations, I was 

 right to say: if the salamander is stirring about for several 

 hours, there is greater probability for our soon having bad 

 weather than fair one. 



I beg leave to add a few words to the foregoing assertion. 

 The belief that some animals are able to perceive earlier 

 than we the coming of bad or fair weather is widely spread 

 among the people. Tree frogs, mudfish (Cobitis) and spi- 

 ders demonstrate, so it is the popular saying, either by 

 uneasy movements, or the latter, by altering their webs, 

 that there will soon be a change in the weather. The 

 birds of passage return eariy in good years, and they leave 

 us ratber early if heavy frosts are expected in fall. To 

 notice only one instance, in the year 1872, which was dis- 

 tinguished in Europe by an exceedingly warm and beauti- 

 ful spring, eighteen species of birds of passage arrived in 

 average twelve days (some of them three or four weeks) 

 before the average time of the foregoing twenty years. 

 Certainly no thinking man will ever believe that the birds 

 or lower animals are enabled to what commonly is called 

 prediction or prophesy, but at the same time well estab- 

 lished facts cannot simply be denied. If we repeatedly 

 observe that certain animals accommodate their behavior 

 to the weather fully setting in at a future time, there is no 

 escape from the conclusion that they must have perceived 

 certain foretokens which were totally lost on ourselves. 

 But is it probable that these foretokens exist? Is it prob- 

 able that, for instance, a heavy and long-lasting rain may 

 be perceived twenty-four hours ago by a peculiar electric 

 condition of the air, or by something else? I concede that 

 the facts collected at meteorological stations iather prove 

 against than for the adoption of this opinion. In single 

 instances in may be positively impossible that a change 

 coming twenty-four hours afterwards can be indicated by 

 any local foretoken. But it being indisputable that every 

 natural event, consequently every change in the weather 

 is perceived by a continuous chain of causes, and as these 

 causes sometimes may occur at the place itself, or In its 

 immediate neighborhood, it is not impossible that certain 

 aDimals may be impressed by these casual conditions. It 

 is a fact that some animals get distinct impressions from 

 exceedingly trifling incitements totally inexistent for our 

 senses. We only refer to the power of smelling in dogs 

 and the power of feeling in bats. Should it be impossible 

 that animals possessing a very soft, pliant body, as, for 

 instance, our gigantic salamander, have a very acute sensi- 

 bility for all electric conditions of the air which certainly 

 precede many changes of the weather. 



In conclusion I would say the following: The fore- 

 tokens of a change in the weather do not always exist at 

 the place itself where the change will occur afterward, 

 and, therefore, no animal whatever is able to trace the 

 same infallibly ; but many observations teach that certain 

 animals are impressed by foretokens of a coming change 

 at a time when our senses are not yet sufficiently incited by 

 them, 



To la eonti?w*d t 



