.-^> THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL- 



(Entered According- to Act Of Congress, In the year 1879, by the Forest and Stream Publishing Company, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JULY 22, 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



Answeus to Correspondents 493 



Arohtoy :— 

 The Grand National Tournament ; New York Archery Club ; 



North-Side Club; A rcheiy Invention 487 



Cricket:— 



Matches and News Notes - , 498 



Editorial:— 

 Mr. Frfd Mather with (he Forest and Stream : The Berlin 

 M.slals; AS.ieiorv Organize! for Work : The Americans at 

 Wimbledon; Team ~ Discipline ; Mr. Cher's Fenera- 

 tions; The Velocity n; Shot; How lines a Dok Scratch? 

 Adirondack Man: 'English Aun-lhnr SI reams; Old Guns; 



Notes 484 



Fish Culture:— 

 Hatchinif the Spanish Mackerel : The International Fishery 



Exhibition at Berlin ; Isinglass from Fish Skins 48S 



Game Bag and Gun;— 

 Game Prospects; Notes from the Shu. direr <j rounds; Maine; 

 Nebraska Game Notes ; A n F.elio of i he Rig Shots ; Snipe 



Shooting ; Powder Measures ; ShootJug Matches 495 



GAME Protection:— 

 Summer Woodcock Shooting ; Connecticut Woodcock Shoot- 

 ing; Delaware Woodcock Shooting ; A New Canadian Pre- 

 serve; Migratory Quail in Missouri 495 



The Kennel:— 

 Tioks on Dogs : Irish Setters ; Toronto Dog Show ; A Whole- 

 sale Litter ; A Ponsioned Dog ; Notes 492 



Miscellany :— 



Beminiseences of English Kivers; Camp Notes 487 



Natural History:— 

 Haunts and Habits of Bears; Breeding of the Shorolttrk in 

 Winter: Disappearance of Larks in Scotland; Lactation 



in Virgin Animals ; Arrivals 489 



Publishers' Department 493 



The Bifle :— 



Bangeand Gallery 497 



Sea and Biver Fishing :— 

 The Late Appearance of Canada Salmon ; California Trout ; 

 Hluensbing at Long Branch; Martha's Vlnevurd; New 

 Jersey; Wisconsin Bass Fishing; lienor than Doctor's 



Bills; St. Clair Fins Bass Fishiinr; Rill Lake 492 



Yachting and Canoeing:— 

 Yachting News .' Write it in Golden Letters ; Buffalo Yacht 

 Club: Ueverly Yacht Club; National Yachting Associa- 

 tion ; The Canoe Conj'rcss; The Largest Club ; A Chance 

 toTry 499 



ptninmqnces of English fivers. 



SECOND PAPER. 



THE conclusion of our last paper left us wandering 

 somewhat aimlessly by the banks of streams whose 

 names as great trouting waters live only in the fading 

 memories of a generation fast passing away, and whose 

 discolored waters form a melancholy contrast to the wild 

 and romantic scenery reflected on their surface. 



If personal associations have caused me to linger too 

 long among scenes where tales of big trout told by gray 

 headed men round winter firesides are more plentiful 

 than any more solid realities, I must hold out as my ex- 

 cuse that these hasty sketches are in no wise intended as 

 a recapitulation of the best British trouting waters, but 

 are rather prompted by the feelings that many of our 

 anglers would be glad to take a peep, even on paper and 

 in the hands of an indifferent guide, at those streams 

 whose names are indelibly bound up with the whole 

 history of our craft, and from whose banks has sprung 

 that hereditary enthusiasm that nerves the arm of every 

 Anglo-Saxon fly-fisher in every olinie ; from the mabseer 

 slayer of the Him alayas to the colonists who have turned 

 the sparkling rivers of New Zealand and Tasmania into 

 what promise to be the finest trout streams in the world ; 

 from the mignty salmon slayers of the Metapedia and 

 the Restigouche to those hapi>y beings whom fate per- 

 mits to revel in the fresh piscatorial pastures of "loam 

 fleck'd Oregon." 



The towers and spires of Durham's lofty cathedral and 

 university are left behind as the Edinburgh mail train 

 dashes northward. Streams that have once been bright 

 and clear foam down beneath lofty viaducts that span 

 their now turbid floods. Mining villages teeming with in- 

 dustry in its grimiest form, alternate with stretches of 

 silent moorland that for a few moments might deceive 

 the stranger with the idea that he was approaching some 

 sportsman's paradise, till he finds himself gliding slowly 

 over the high level bridge, beneath which the Tyne, 

 black with filth, but dear to tho hearts of professional 

 oarsmen, is dimly seen through the fog and smoke of New- 

 castle. Upward through the murky air floats the roar 

 and din of that busy city, giving way in turn to the 

 bustle and the clatter of the finest railway station in the 

 North. 



Here are always to be seen, during the fishing season, 

 a good sprinkling of anglers in tweed suits, and hats en- 

 circled by casting lines and flies ; some with rod and 

 basket only, bound for the higher waters of fcfce Tyne, 

 which afford good trout fishing ; to the Coquet or other 

 streams that they can snatch a few hours upon between 

 trains. Others again carrying valises or having port- 

 manteaus labelled for more distant haunts— the rivers 

 of Western Yorkshire, perhaps, or the Scottish border- 

 joy depicted on their faces and elasticity in their steps at 

 the anticipation of a week or a fortnight's oblivion from 

 office stools and counting houses. The two hours' run 

 through the well cultivated plains of East Northumber- 

 land presents more of agricultural than piscatorial inter- 

 est to the traveler. The Wandbeck, it is true, crosses our 

 course, and we catch a sight of the Coquet, famous for 

 its bull trout, winding off toward the sea, at the mention 

 of which river the mind of every well-informed British 

 angler reverts to the name of Rothbury, a famous resort 

 of anglers. 



Talking of anglers' resorts, it is strange, strange that is 

 according to the generally received British traditions, 

 that the best trout fisherman in England, more often 

 than not, hail from great cities. A town-bred man is in 

 matter of sport generally rated, till he has proved himself 

 otherwise, as a muff by the squire, the sporting parson, 

 the gentleman farmer and by the booted and breech'd 

 doctor, lawyer, or land agent of rural England ; but in 

 my opinion your wandering city angler who has fished 

 from the Orkney island to the Lands End and is at home 

 upon every kind of water and with every breed of trout, 

 is by far the most formidable antagonist you could well 

 choose to fill baskets against. Neither is this so 

 strange when one comes to look into the matter. In the 

 first place he rarely fishes preserved rivers and conse- 

 quently has to deal with all the wariest and most ed- 

 ucated trout in the country, from his youth up. In the sec- 

 ond place there is more gregariousness among this class 

 of British fishermen, and consequently a constant element 

 of competition enters into his sport. He probably be- 

 longs to a fishing club or association in his native town, 

 which meets quarterly or annually and perpetuates the 

 glories and immortal memory of Father Izaak around 

 groaning tables and with flowing bumpers. Then there 

 are the actual competitions for prizes which the different 

 clubs hold periodically, the bugbear of country fishers 

 i whose more contracted lines may be thrown on waters 

 selected for such competition. These are perhaps more 

 common in Scotland than south of the border, and many 

 is the time I have retired disgusted from the river bank 

 before the ominous announcement of some rustic: "The 

 fushin club's oot the dee." However, all this kind of 

 thing tends to create a class of fishermen more generally 

 skillful and more uniformly successful than the country 

 squire, the parson, or the doctor. whose efforts are natur- 

 ally concentrated upon their own local stream, which is 

 probably preserved by the former, and consequently con- 

 tains a less educated race of finny inhabitants, and more 

 numerous, from their comparative immunity from perse- 

 cution. These men, again, though they may be most 

 skillful preformers in their own particular class of river, 

 are often from the narrowness of their experience usable 

 to make much show under altered circumstances. The 

 Devonshire local angler, for instance, who is an adept at 

 wading up bushy streams and picking out quarter-pound- 

 ers with a short line from the most (to outsiders) unlikely 

 looking holes, would be almost a novice, when started on 

 the banks of the Itchen or the Kennet or any other of the 

 clear chalk streams, to drop a fly at the end of fifteen 

 yards of line over the nose of wary three-pounders. 

 The latter individual, again, would probably lose all 

 the flies in his book and his temper besides, upon a well 

 wooded west country brook, and on an American moun- 

 tain stream would most likely break his neck into the 

 bargain ; but for casting a long line deftly and handling 

 big fish he has no superior. Now your cockney, if I may 

 apply such an opprobrious term to a disciple of Izaak, is 

 as a rule equally tit home among the waiy monsters that 

 lie beneath the willows and the osiers that fringe (the 

 slow gliding tributaries of the Thames, and among the 

 tangled thickets, the over-arching boughs and the slip- 

 pery rocks that exasperate the tyro upon n io tmtaiu brooks. 

 His ideas on flies are more liberal if not nearly so ortho- 

 dox as the local sportsman who firmly believes that there 

 are certain flies without which it is perfectly useless to 

 rig up a rod beside his stream. 



Enough of this, however, for the train is standing on 

 Berwick bridge, and far beneath us the bright waters of 

 historic Tweed are mingling themselves with those of 

 the German ocean, and washing the walls of the ancient 

 and independent commonwealth of the North, The 

 many-arched and moss grown bridge that has borne 

 many a host to bloody fields from either side, still spans 

 the stream which carries to the sea the waters of a mm- 

 dred more whose names have been dear to the hearts of 

 generations of anglers. As we enter Scotland and trav- 

 erse the fifty miles that lie between Edinburgh and the 

 border, every bend in the line reveals some object of 



southern entrance to tho Frith of Forth— and the spray 

 dashes in clouds over the lonely ruin of Fast castle— ren- 

 dered historical by the tears that three generations of 

 Anglo-Saxons have shed for the woes and the untimely 

 ends of Edgar Ravenswood and Lucy Ashtcn. We must 

 not linger, much though we should wish it, in the ancient 

 town of Dundas, with its solitary street and its storm 

 beaten castle; we must pass it and the hills above it from 

 which the Scots rushed down to their doom on Crom 

 well's pikes. We must leave behind us the Bass rock, 

 raising its gigantic form out of the ocean, and the wide 

 plains, too, of East Lothian, waving with the heaviest 

 crops that in all the world can be found. We must be 

 content with a distant sight of Edinburgh, with its cloud 

 of smoke hanging heavy against the crimson evening 

 sky, and turn southward to where the long low line of 

 the Lammermuirs cuts the horizon from the.Frith of Forth 

 to the Tweed. One river only of angling notoriety and 

 two or three small streams empty themselves into the 

 German Ocean between Edinburgh and Berwick, for it is 

 westward throughout the valley of the Tweed and its 

 many famous tributaries that course down the valleys of 

 the Lammermuirs and the Peebleshire Mountains, that 

 the footsteps of the tourist angler instinctively turn — 

 and away again beyond them to the Clyde and its feed- 

 ers, and southward to the many streams that have made 

 Dumfries famous as a fishing country. That the trout 

 producing capacities of this picturesque and rugged 

 country 7 are pretty strong may be surmised by the swarms 

 of rod and basket carriers, that upon any of the " fast 

 days " or holidays set apart by the Scottish people fill the 

 trains running south and west of Edinburgh. Let the 

 angler upon Northern waters, unless he wish to be 

 hunted from pool to pool and to sleep upon the floor 

 in the village inn, be careful to ascertain that none of 

 these auspicious days are embraced within one of his 

 trips. Let him fall back for a space upon any private 

 water that he has the run of, and let the great host of 

 piscators gather back again to their work in the cities, 

 and two or three days besides elapse for the recovery of- 

 the female autocrats, who preside over the " Anglers' 

 Rest" and the " silver trouts," from the clean sweep of 

 their larders and cellars, before he venture out among 

 the moors and mountains where the capabilities of these 

 little old-fashioned hostelries will be his sole dependance. 

 Snug and comfortable retreats are these little inns, 

 however, in ordinary times. The spirit of "Meg Dods" 

 still presides over many of them. The lamb is fresh from 

 the mountains, the trout from the stream that ripples 

 past the door. The bottled beer from the famous brewer- 

 ies of Edinburgh makes amends for a lack of variety ; 

 and the flavor of the toddy makes one forgive the want 

 of externals and conveniences, without which the ordi- 

 nary modern hostelry would collapse. These, however, 

 are peculiar institutions ; they are not intended for, and 

 are not patronized by, tourists in the strict sense of the 

 — ord. Neither the English or the Americans who swarm 

 ,-er the Highlands in July, August and September— ex- 

 ,jpt for a peep at Abbotsl'ord and Melrose, perhaps — ever 

 penetrate the south of Scotland, and these little inns are 

 kept up solely for the use of anglers, who are generally 

 quiet, easy-going people, who have enough at home of 

 modern improvement and advance, and consequently 

 prefer the old-fashioned and somewhat primitive charac- 

 teristics that mark the houses with which often their 

 earliest recollections of relaxation and holiday are con- 

 nected, and would be the first to cry out if instead of the 

 little cramped, familiar cottage some magnificent hotel 

 should rise in its place before their sight upon their next 

 Easter vacation. Camp life is denied at home to English 

 sportsmen ; that is, neither climate nor the surroundings 

 are suitable for it, even if it were necessary ; and yet the 

 support derived from the temporary sojourn of a few 

 anglers every spring and summer at these little inns is so 

 modest as not to take the business out of the hands of 

 the peasant class, and consequently to retain for it the 

 double charm of inexpensiveness and rural simplicity. 



There is a great deal of unpreaerved trout fiBhing in 

 Scotland, more especially, strange to say, in the south- 

 ern districts, and those most accessible to the stranger ; 

 unpreserved, that is to say, as regards fair rod-fishing, 

 for the right is by no means abandoned by the proprie- 

 tors, and netting is strictly illegal. As far as my expe- 

 rience goes, there is no other part of Great Britain where 

 the owners of fisheries have shown then- sense and their 

 liberality to such an extent. Upon some streams the 

 right of the pubbc to fish has become a tradition of old 

 standing ; it has never been abused, and, contrary to the 

 general opinion on such matters, finds those same waters 

 to-day as well stocked as many others which for half a. 

 century have merely produced trout at a heavy annual 

 cost for a minimum of benefit even to their owner. That 

 the preservation of shooting in a densely populated coun- 

 try is absolutely necessary is patent to the veriest dul- 

 lard ; but with fishing it is a totally different matter, and 

 the amuBing jealousy with which some riparian owners 

 close up their fisheries (I say some, for it is not the rule), 

 oven making it a favor to their very friends, argues an 



the right the Northern Ocean thunders ignorance incredible upon piscicultural matters, That 

 against the wild and gloomy headland of St. Abbs— the I there ia a wide difference between the liberality ol these 



