THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL- 



LEntered Accardlug to Act of Conpfreas, in the year 1879, by the Forest and Stream Publishing Company, in the Otiiee of the Librarian of Congresa, at Washington 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY. SEPT. 9. 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



EniTonTAL:— 

 The Tilestoa Memorial T^ind; The Pennsylvnnia State 

 Trials; The Turbot and Sole in Araerica; A DiBitrHco to 

 thoUitle World; Twenty-three Miles an Hour; From the 

 Wa'er tn the Fire : The Identlfteatlon of Fish; The Creed- 

 mdOrPrtll Meeting: Dick, the Wcodooek; Taiham's Trap 



Shot; Profeasor. Jordan; Wild Rice 103 



ThB -PO KIDMAN Toorist:— 



hQoek Fishlnsr in Table Bav 1(S 



Natdbai. Historv:— 

 Animals of the Mounta'ns of North Carolina and Tennessee ; 

 Herons and Cormorants; Owls; Cool; Arrivals 108 



PtSH CXTLTtTRE:— 



Soles Airain Hrouirht to America; Corlflgh Hatching Has 

 BeenSucocssful: California Salmon Etrffs; Trout Murder. IDT 

 8ea and RrvEB Ftshtno :— 

 Alnskan luhlhyolngy: Black Bass in the Delaware; The 

 Maine Honds; The Hole is Lett Vot; Minnpsnta Fishing; 

 Maxintuckte: A Bitr Trout; Striped Basa Fishing; New 

 Fish; ••UlueGiir'Trip ,...■ 1(R 



Gamb Bao and OtTN :— 

 EfflcientGamoProtection; Hall Shooting; APraotical Game 

 Consinhle; Shooting Not, s from Minne«ota; An Adiron- 

 dai-kTHp; Wisconsin; TheShattuok SinK-le-Barrel Gun; 

 Adirnndacks; Pistol Arms; Th.i City oC Worcester; C^n- 

 ton Gun Cluh; Capt. Brll's Panther Story: Calltornia 

 Sporting Items: Fraser River Gun Club ; Uogardus and 

 the Little Bogardi; Shooting Matches 109 



The Kennei, :— 

 Modern Cocker Spaniels: J. H. Whitman's Kennel : Of Eng- 

 lishe Dogges; Dog Notes from Minnesota; A Hint as to 

 Anatomy: A Ketrievfr's Intrili;?enco ; A Dog- Tanner; 

 That Washligton Leirer; NfiilomU American Ki-nnel 

 Club; Montreal Show; Npbrsiska Trials; St. Louis Show; 

 Beaih of M. Von Culin; Kennel Notes i. , 110 



The Kifle :— 

 Range and GaUery; Rubber Front Sights ; A ProtesBlonal's 

 Views Xll 



Arcitert:— 



Private PraoMce Club ; Archery Tournament 114 



Cricket:— 



Poor Cricket ! Matches and News Notea . 114 



Yaohtiko and (UXOEtNO:— 

 YachtmurKows; Hoyal Nora Scotia Y. S. ; 19.87-22.89: New 

 lork Cuni.Li Ciun; American Canoo Association ; Merits of 

 the Cau\-a3 Canoe , Ij5 



ANSWER.S TO CORRKSPOVDENTS 117 



PttBLISHERS' DEPART.MBNT JOg 



For advertising rates, instructions to correspondents, 

 etc., see prospectus at end of reading matter. 



F 



OREST 



s 



TREAM. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1880. 



THE TILESTON MEMORIAL FUND. 



mitor Forest and Stream .- '^^'' ^°"''^' *"'■ **• 



I have to acknowledge the receipt to date of further subgcrip- 

 tiona to the " Tileston Memorial Fund " as follows : - 



Prnviouslyacknowlgd.. 8650 (lO I Jacob Pentz So CO 



„?;r'°'"''J'"'""^''''0«- UuBoia Wagstafl 5 00 



KKT ^ND Stream .... 5 00 Phrou i.t Remsen 5 "o 



B 00 

 . S6S0 00 



cj,i; AKu OTKEAM .... 5 00 Phojui.t Rems 

 ^Friend 6 ml | John F. Vail.. 



Total.. ^ 



At a meeting of the oommlttee, it was decided to close the fund 

 onOet.8ih. 



Wo have named this late date as our treasurer (Mr. Morris) has 

 received notincation from several cUibj that they would send us 

 subscriptions after the regular meetings, which take place this 

 moath, and wo trust all parties who are making oollcclions will 

 send them in as soon as possible. Yours truly, 



Fred. N. Hail, Secretary. 



^' » I ^ 



The Pennsylvania State Trials.— We had a veiy 

 pleasant call this week from Mr. Theodore Morford, who 

 expressed his regret that he had been obliged to decline 

 the honor of serving as one of the judges at the Pennsyl- 

 vania State Field Trials itj November, he having pre- 

 viously arranged to officiate at Vincennes, Ind., for the 

 National American KeHnel Club's Field Trials, which 

 occur on almost the same date. 



—The present number of the Forest and Stream is of 

 special interest to anglers. Our nest issue will be equally 

 rich in material of great value to the shooting fraternity. 



■ I I I » 



—We conclude to-day the publication of "Englishe 

 Dogges," a book which certainly deserves a place among 

 the curiosities of sporting literature. Those who desire 

 the work In more convenient form may secure the book 

 by writing to "The Bazaai-," 170 Strand, W. C, London. 



THE TURBOT AND SOLE IN AMERICA, 



^A PHILADELPHIA gentleman is trying, through 

 J^ the newspapers, to revive the long obsolete belief 

 that the turbot and sole of Europe occur on our coast, 

 Although he has never seen them himself, and fails to 

 bring forward evidence that any one else has seen them, 

 he insists that they occur in the greatest abundance in 

 New Jersey, particularly in the vicinity of Atlantic 

 City, "and doubtless all along the Atlantic coast, from 

 Portsmouth, N. H., to Wilmington, S. C," (sic). He 

 upbraids the American public for their incredulity, 

 though this does not surprise him so much when he calls 

 to mind that "our Government Fish Commissioner has 

 actually contemplated sending a steamer to English 

 waters to procure turbot-seed to plant along our shores.' 

 He would not be surprised if incredulity were to continue 

 longer "under such official indorsement." He accounts 

 for the ignorance regarding them by the theory that the 

 English trawl-net is unknown in America, and that our 

 fishermen wotddnot know how to catch such lish if they 

 were aware of their presence, and have not become aware 

 of their presence because they have no means of catch- 

 ing them. He intimates that he is preparing to form a 

 company for the purpose of developing a turbot fishery 

 upon our coast ; an enterprise "in which but little will be 

 risked and the results will be a surprise to all." He closes 

 one of his letters to a New York journal with the follow- 

 ing apppal : "I trust that you will not let this question 

 subside, but persevere in calling attention to it until we do 

 away with the extraordinary anomaly of this enlightened 

 nation being within reach of treasure that for more than 

 a century they have been unaware of, and have remained 

 presistently blind to." 



All this is very entertaining, and furnishes a neat text 

 for a few remarks on the history of this belief as well as 

 an opportunity for demonstrating to the public a fact 

 which has for forty years or more been known to ichthy- 

 ologists, that the turbot and the sole never have been 

 seen on the Western side of the Atlantic, and never wUl 

 be, unless they are introduced by artificial means. 



From the beginning to the end we encounter the weU- 

 known sources of confusion — the giving of old world 

 names to species which re.semble in a general way the 

 old world species which bear them, and the unquestion- 

 ing acceptance of these names as authoritative by per- 

 sons who are not trained to close discrimination. 



When Boston was occupied by the British during the 

 revolutionary war, the oflicerB of the fleet are said to have 

 been bountifully supplied with turbot which were caughl 

 in the neighborhood of an outer harbor. This fact is re 

 corded by Dr. J. B. C. Smitli, in his Natural History ol 

 the Fisheries of Massachusetts (Boston, 1833), ou the 

 authority of William Ladd, Esq , Jlaine. He also men- 

 tions "a statement of Mr. Parker, the conductor of the 

 Marine Telegraph," who told him that "many years be- 

 fore, Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin brought out to this coun- 

 try a trawl-net, such as are used on the coast of Holland, 

 for taking sole for the London markets, with which he 

 succeeded in capturing that delightful fish in Ipswich 

 Bay, which was not before supposed to exist here.'' The 

 fish found in this manner were no doubt the common 

 flat fishes of Massacuhsetts Bay. The common flounder 

 Pseudorhombiis dentatus, taken in Provincetown water, 

 where it is commonly called "plaice," was in 1840 sold 

 in Boston under tJie name "turbot." Capt. M.^ckinnon, 

 of the Royal Navy, who visited this country in 1850, con- 

 ceived the idea that turbot ought to be found on tht- 

 shores of the United States, and took pains to search for 

 them with a trawl-net. The net which he used has been 

 reported ten years before by Mr. Nathan Smith, an 

 American gentleman, who had hoped to introduce them, 

 but had never used them. Capt. JIackinnon tried the 

 net at Newport, R. L, and succeeded in taking a number 

 of different kinds of flat fish. He carefully refrains, how- 

 ever, from pronotmcing any one of them to be identic-al 

 with the turbot or the sole, though from the vagueness of 

 his language it is evident that his ichthyological knowl- 

 edge was very scanty, and that he was not accustomed to 

 observe the differences between the different species of 



fishes which somewhat resemble each other. His exper- 

 iences are described at length in his book of travels, er= 

 titled "Atlantic and Trans- Atlantic Sketches, Afloat and 

 Ashore," (Harper & Bros., New York, 18o3, pp. 166-1 0\ 

 Capt. C. C. Churchill, IT. S. A., who saw the results tf 

 Capt. Mackinnon's experiment, tells us that the fish taki n 

 were the common species of New England flat fishes and 

 floimders. 



We fancy that the inspiration of the new advocate of the 

 turbot-in- America question, as well as tlie information 

 upon which he bases his conclusions, were drawn from 

 this very same book of Capt. Mackinnon. for he uses 

 many of the same phrases, and he repeats in almost the 

 same words Capt. Mackinnon's statement: "The fi.sh 

 markets in America are not at all in keeping with the 

 sizeand wealth of the cities." A statement which, how- 

 ever trtie it may have been thirty years ago, will he 

 amusing to any one who has recently had opportunity to 

 compare the fish markets of America and Europe. The 

 Philadelphia gentleman stims up his evidence as follows ; 

 " The turbot, sole and plaice are, however, in abundance 

 in your deep water sand banks. Tney were caught there 

 in 1813 by English sailors, and in 1880 turbot have been 

 obtained off Atlantic City, if the Baltimore American is 

 any authoiity." 



The notion that the introduction of the English trawl 

 in America would be novel and would at once open up a 

 field for a fishery industry of boundless extent, deserves 

 a word. The trawl has been assiduously used by tl.e 

 summer collecting party of the United States Fish Com- 

 mission for ten years past, and also by Prof. Agassiz upon 

 various exploiting trips. The steamers of the fish com- 

 mission have used it on every portion of the New Eng- 

 land coast, and as far north as Halifax. Prof. Agass z 

 has used it in the Gulf of Mexico and on the coast of 

 Florida, and during the present summer, while on the 

 coast survey steamer Bache, has employed it in running 

 live lines of research at right angles to the coast from 

 Cape Hatteras at points nearly equidistant between CHjar- 

 leston and Cape Cod, one of them directly out from the 

 entrance to Delaware Bay. These lines were carried from 

 near the shore to a depth of twelve hundred fathoms or 

 more. 



In 1854 Prof. Baird made a careful exploration of the 

 coast of New Jersey with a special reference to the rislies, 

 and since that time every stretch of coast line from 

 Brownsville, Texas, to Eastport, Maine, has been thor- 

 oughly investigated by the officers of the United States 

 Fish Commission. It is true that a new species of fish is 

 occasionally discovered, but the new fishes always belong 

 to one or two classes. These are either swifi>s%vimmiiig 

 species, members of the West India fauna, which come 

 upon our northern shores in summer, or they aie inhabi- 

 tants of waters more than six hundred feet deep which 

 had never previously been explored. The turbot and the 

 sole are shallow water species, and had they occurred in 

 our waters would have been discovered many years ago. 



There are thirteen species of flat fishes on the eastern 

 coast of the United States. Two of these belong to the 

 same family with the sole, but are utterly worthless as 

 articles of food. The nearest relative of the sole is of len 

 called the American sole {Achirus lineatiLti),and is known 

 on the coast of New Jersey as the "hog-clioker," " cover- 

 clip," or " cover." Of the eleven flat fishes, only two are 

 positively unfit for food, and these two, strangely enough, 

 are the representativesof the sub family (i?/ioj/ib«iHs) to 

 which belong the turbot and brill of Europe. One of 

 these {Lophopnetta maculatu) is sometimes called the 

 "spotted turbot," and in New Jersey is called " window- 

 pane " or " daylight," because it is so thin that when held 

 tothe light the sun can be seen througli its translucent 

 flesh. The most important flat fish i.s the halibut, wliich 

 is identical with that of Europe. This species and the 

 pole flounder, which has recently been brought to Ight 

 in our waters by the Fish Commission, are the only nvo 

 of the thirteen referred to that are found on both s-idt- s of 

 the Atlantic. We have in our waters an abundance of 

 flat fish, some of which, for instance, the common 

 flounder of the New York market, Fscudorliombius den- 

 tatus, are probably fully equal to the turbot for food 



