826 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
species of fish and crawfish, during which it is thought 
fishing should be prohibited? 28. Do the fishery laws 
excite complaints? Are any changes asked for ? 28. What 
measures must be taken to prevent irrigating canals, and 
other artificial ditohes, from being a cause of the de¬ 
struction of fish? 
SALT WATER. 
1, What is the condition of the fishery products in the 
sea adjacent to your district ? Have they diminished, or 
do they hold their own? To what cause is their diminu¬ 
tion attributed? 2. What are the species that have more 
particularly disappeared or become rare ? Which are sed¬ 
entary and which migratory ? Is it as abundant as form¬ 
erly in the immediate vicinity of the coast ? 8. What 
observations have you been able to make tending to prove 
that the periodicity of appearance of certain species is 
due to their rising towards the surface or approaching 
the shove, rather than to any migrations ? 4. Are thero 
any modifications to the existing regulations asked by 
the lessees of the seashore, owners of oyster parks, mus¬ 
sel parks, reservoirs of fish, etc., and what are these 
modifications? Do the fishermen ask any modifications ? 
5. What are the inconveniences caused by carting off 
seaweed, rock, eel-grass, etc., with reference to the re¬ 
production of fish? 0. What are the fishing implements 
particularly destructive to fish and their fry V 7. Is the 
supervision sufficient? Are there complaints about it? 
8. Indicate especially favorable places for establishing 
parks, reservoirs, and fish-cultural basins, places for 
penning up fish, crustaceans and mollusks? What species 
of fish are best adapted to being raised in this way ? 
9, What are the means which seem proper and are de¬ 
manded in the region to remedy the exhaustion of the 
sea water, and to favor the preservation and production 
of fish ? 10. What would be the probable effect on re¬ 
population of temporary interdictions of all fishing upon 
certain lengths of the coast? Upon what portions of the 
coast could these interdictions be most advantageously 
carried out ? What reclamations would be made ? 
Spawning of the Speckled Trout op Lake Superior. 
—All along the rocky shores of Lak9 Superior speckled 
trout of large size afford excellent sport to the angler 
during the month of June, and sometimes later. These 
trout are caught chiefly with minnows, although they 
will frequently take the artificial fly with avidity. 
Angling for these trout is technically known [as “ rock 
fishing,” in distinction from the ordinary stream fishing, 
of which there is an abundance, as many streams of vary¬ 
ing size empty into Lake Superior all along the coast 
from Marquette westward. While the'trout of the brooks 
and rivers are numerous, and some of them large, their 
average size is much less than of those caught along the 
rocks ou the precipitous shores of the lake. The two 
classes of fish are undoubtedly identical, although their 
habits and food are quite different, the stream fish sub¬ 
sisting on the grabs, larvse, flies and whatever finds its way 
into the running water, while the rock fish feed on the 
minnows and fry which seek the shallows along the main 
shore of the lake. Hence, minnows being the custom¬ 
ary and habitual food of the latter, afford the best bait, 
although, as we have said, artificial flies’are not whoHy 
rejected, as we have ourselves proved by repeated experi¬ 
ments. 
It has been a matter of speculation to most persons as to 
where the fish go when they disappear in July ; but the 
fact is apparent that they not only seek the cooler water 
of the deeper lake, but that they follow the small fish, 
which are chiefly the young of the herrings and white 
fish. They do not go into the rivers to spawn, hut select 
the sandy bays close to shore, wherever found, for their 
deposits, which are made in October. It is probable that 
the water of the streams is too cold for proper incubation, 
as the ova mature and hatch more quickly in water of a 
certain temperature than in that which is warmer or 
colder, and that the fish, therefore, resort to the warmer 
water of the shallow sand-bars. This supposition is sus¬ 
tained by the fact that very few, if any, trout are caught 
at any time in the gelid waters of the several rivers and 
streams which empty into the Great Nepigon Lake, 
which lieB fifty miles north of Lake Superior, with which 
it is connected by the Nepigon River—those streams 
being largely fed all summer long by melting snow and 
ice. Nepigon Lake is shallow and warm, while Nepigon 
River is cold and deep; hut the latter has many sandy 
hays and shoals along its course, as well as several con¬ 
necting lakes, and these afford spawning beds for the 
trout, just as the sandy bays of Lake Superior do. 
Hybrid Shad.— Seth Green calls attention to the close 
resemblance between the young hybrid shad (the hatch 
of the shad spawn impregnated with the melt of the 
striped bass), and the young shad proper. The culture of 
this hybrid has been pursued at the Hudson River 
Hatchery for the past four years. It any of these fish 
are captured, Mr. Green requests that they be forwarded 
to himself at Rochester, or to the Hon. R. B. Roosevelt, 
No. 78 Chambers street, New York. 
4 Success in Tennessee. — Nashville, Nov. 12fk,—The ac¬ 
counts from the few counties in our State where fish pro¬ 
tection laws were passed, are so wonderful, that I do not 
hesitate to say that by the time the next Legislature 
meets such laws will be passed for the whole State. The 
increase in South Haxpeth in particular, is almost incred¬ 
ible This, too, without any protection, except as against 
seines traps, dams, and harpoons. Legitimate angling 
beine permitted all the while, our fishmongers are re¬ 
ceiving their full supply of Northern Lake fish, but there 
is meat prejudice here against eating them, on account 
of the long time since they are taken from the water, 
though kept perfectly fresh on tee. Col. Akens will 
shortly be off on a fishing excursion. J. D. H. 
nnd §ivet[ <gjishing. 
FISH IN SEASON IN NOVEMBER. 
FRESH WATER. 
Black Bass, Micropttnu r,«(mo- I Pike or Pickerel, Esox lucius. 
ides; M. nigricans. I Yellow Perch, Perm flaveeeens 
Muskalonne, Es ox nobtHor, \ 
BAI/T WATER. 
Sea Bass, Scimnnps oceUatw. I Cero, Cyhium. reoale. 
Striped Bass, Rwcus lincaius. Bonito, Santo yclamys. 
Wcaktlsh, Oynoseion regalis. I King-fish, Menl (cirrus nebutosus, 
Bluellsh, Pomatomus saltatrix. 
—To send fish long distances, clean carefully, and dust 
the interior well with strong pepper ; then pack them in 
fresh grass or nettles, and send them off as soon as posi- 
sible. Treated thus they will keep their color and fresh¬ 
ness for a considerable time. 
Rhode Island — Newport, Nov. 12th. —The fishermen 
have had fine luck of late. Codfish have again come on 
to their winter feeding-grounds, and are in fine condition. 
Blackfish are caught nearly all the year round. COOT. 
New York — Shelter Island, L. I, Nov. 8th.— The fish¬ 
ing season generally ended yesterday, and the several 
steamers and yachts came in during the day with their 
colors flying to mark the final trip. I cannot at present 
give you the gross amount of fish caught, but it reaches 
to many millions; aud as oil is rising and scraps for ma¬ 
nure in great demand, this business must pay well this 
year. MoL, 
Tennessee — Nashville, Nov. 12th. —Our anglers had 
less amusement during the last season than for many 
summers past, The drought and great heat unfitted the 
many streams for the sport, and the disposition to run 
away to the Northern lakes did the balance. One gentle¬ 
man assures me that though he caught mountain trout, 
muscalonge and the famous grayling, for sport he had 
yet to find more desirable spots than he knows on the 
rivers in our State. Of course, he admits the gameness 
of the grayling and the great abundance of other kinds 
of game fish, hut he says the hard work to get at them 
counterbalances, in a great measure, the pleasure. I have 
heard of some few parties lately who have taken hand¬ 
some creels in Buffalo aud Harpeth ; and now is the sea¬ 
son for jackfish in the Cumberland. A gentleman caught 
a shad a few days ago, with a fly while fishing for bass. 
From Reelfoot Lake fabulous accounts always come, hut 
I cannot appreciate the sportsmen who revel in that 
class of fishing. _ J, D, H. 
Fish as Food for Animals. —“The cattle at Province- 
town feed upon fish with apparently as good relish as upon 
the best kinds of fodder. We have seen the cows at that 
place boldly enter the surf in pursuit of the offal thrown 
from the fish-boats on the shore, and masticate and swal¬ 
low every part but the hardest bones. A Provincetown 
cow will dissect the head of a cod with wonderful celer¬ 
ity. She places one foot upon a part of it, and with her 
teeth tears off the skin and gristly parts, and in a few mo¬ 
ments nothing is left hut the hones. It is said that some 
cows there will, when grain and fish are placed before 
them, eat the whole of the fish before they will touch the 
grain.”—[ Barnstable (Mass.) Journal, Feb. 1th, 1838. We 
have accounts of the feeding of fish to stock in the East, 
centuries ago. It is a regular practice in Northern Nor¬ 
way, where dried codfish are used to piece out the- stock 
of hay that does not suffice for the long winter. In 1856 
Prof. Stoeckhardt, of Saxony, received a sample of Nor¬ 
wegian fish-guano, which he fed to a half-year old pig 
“which did exceptionally well on this northern food,”— 
[American Agriculturist. 
SOME FISHES OF OREGON. 
We are indebted to Fish Commissioner Webber, of New 
Hampshire, for the following interesting letter :— 
Astoria, Oregon, Sept, 21st. 
Mr. Webber : Your letter of a few weeks ago, contain¬ 
ing a request from Prof. Baird that I would send him a 
specimen of the “ queer fish ” taken in the Columbia, and 
mistaken for shad, was duly received and will be acted 
upon next summer, 1 wish now to ask if, in your opin¬ 
ion, it would be possible to so pack impregnated spawn 
of Eastern brook trout that they could be sent from your 
State to Oregon with a fair chance of arriving in good 
condition. Mr. Livingstone Stone, in his book on “ Do¬ 
mesticated Trout,” says (page 146): “They— trout eggs 
—have been sent to England and California without loss 
hut 1 have corresponded with persons who are interested 
in the business, as well as thoroughly informed, and they 
assure me that there are none in California. I will say 
that this attempt is not to stock a private pond, but a 
stream in this vicinity, and for the public benefit. 
This morning at daylight I started out to catch the first 
salmon of the season. The summer varieties, tire can¬ 
ning fish, bite neither fly-spoon nor bait. We catch the 
fall salmon, of which the silverside is the most numer¬ 
ous and best quality. It is too early yet, so I caught only 
one — a small one, about three pounds. My spoon — a No. 
20 Mann’s Perfect Revolving — was taken by a large one— 
I judge about twenty pounds; hut he was not well 
hooked, and tore away. I also caught, in two hours’ 
trolling, twenty chubbs, a fish that resembles a coarse 
and overgrown dace, except that his head is larger in 
proportion, being nearly one-third his length, which in a 
full-grown fish is over two feet ; weight from one to five 
pounds. Their flesh is said to be white and of good 
flavor, and notwithstanding the numerous bones they are 
highly prized — by Chinamen, I think, one of these days, 
I will have one cooked and give them a trial, on the sly 
of course, for it would ruin the reputation of a “white ” 
man if it was known of him. While I was fishing, a stur¬ 
geon—a little fellow, 150 pounds or so—leaped out of the 
water, a hundred yards away. I have seen them larger 
than that. I remember one that was brought into the 
cannery at Brookfield that weighed 350 pounds on tine 
scales (Fairbanks, not his own — a sturgeon has no 
scales). 
Here is a new sensation for you. You are standing on 
the wharf, with one end of a half-inch Manilla hue in 
your hand, and at the other end, fifty yards away, a 150 
or 200 pounds sturgeon has anchored himself. You are 
trying to pull him out of the water, and he is trying to 
pull you into the water. How long do you think you 
would keep up the contest? Old sturgeon fishers never 
throw their line overboard till they have taken a couple 
of half hitches around some convenient spile. The story 
is told of a fisherman who fished for sturgeon in a small 
skiff ; he had fastened the line to the painter, and sat 
hack in the stern waiting patiently for a bite. It came 
—the bite did—and the sturgeon that came with it was 
one of the strongest, if not the largest, of his kind ; he 
pulled so hard as nearly to draw the skiff’s bow under 
water. After dashing wildly in various directions for a 
few minutes, the fish seemed to have made up hiB mind 
wliat was best to do, for he started in a bee-line for the 
bar, a dozen miles away, at a rapid rate. The matter was 
growing serious ; the fisherman could not go forward, as 
his weight, added to the strain upon the painter, would 
surely have Bwamped the skiff, He could only sit in the 
stem and wave lus handkerchief as a signal of distress. 
Fortunately this was seen from another boat, which ap¬ 
proached and rescued the skiff by cutting loose the 
painter. This story waB told me for the truth ; but 
whether true or not, there is nothing impossible about it. 
There is another queer fish caught here—the “porgie.” 
In appearance it is like a flat fish, such as are caught in 
Eastern ponds, hut larger, weight two or three pounds. Its 
body is nearly circular, but it swims upright, not flat, like 
a flounder. The strange thing is, it brings forth its young 
alive. They come in from the sea at flood tide, and are 
found wherever the water is brackish. I have caught 
them in front of the city, fifteen miles from the ocean. 
When talren in the hand and pressed on the abdomen 
the young, about the size of a capper cent, can be 
spawned to the number of forty or fifty, still partly en¬ 
veloped in the membrane in which they are formed. 
Tomcod fishing, too, is now in order. They, like the 
porgie, are found wherever the water is slightly salt. 
They are a perfect little codfish, ten inoheB to a foot 
long. 
At the risk of making myself tiresome, I must relate an 
event that occurred last fall. I was out for salmon, in 
company with Mr. A. J. Megler, and when off Smith’s 
Point, a mile from town, a salmon fastened on his spoon. 
While he was playing him, a Beal came up and fastened on 
the salmon, raised him out of the water, and kept shak¬ 
ing h im as a terrier does a rat. We shouted to him, beat 
the water with our oars, and soon frightened him 
away and secured our salmon. Soon Capt. Munson, of 
the little steamer Magnet, came down in his skiff, with 
his rod and spoons of his own make, to join in the sport. 
We told him of the circumstance, He laughed and said 
it was a very good fish story. In a few minutes he 
hooked one, and Mr. Seal was promptly on hand and re¬ 
peated his performance; and so he continued to do, when¬ 
ever a salmon was hooked, for the rest of the day. There 
are but few seal in the river now. I saw one to-day. In 
spring they come by thousands, with once in a while a 
sea-lion for variety. A seal will sometimes play round a 
salmon-net all night, eating off the heads of the fish as 
they are caught. I have seen boat-loads of fish where 
fully one-fourth had been served in that way. The under 
side of the head is the choice part, though when hungry 
he will eat the whole of it, ana perhaps more than one of 
them. If you want to hear swearing in a dozen different 
languages, be around when the seal himself gets entan¬ 
gled in the net. He will wind it round and round him, 
until the fishermen reach the scene of his labors and dis¬ 
patch him by repeated blows of the salmon club, or slioot 
him with the revolver, which is a part of every fisher¬ 
man’s outfit. I once saw a sea-lion that was caught in a 
net. He had entangled the whole net—250 fathoms, and 
worth when new twice as many dollars—into a hopeless 
snarl, with himself nearly helpless in the center. In this 
condition he was towed ashore and killed with a Henry 
rifle, the revolver of the fisherman proving nearly use¬ 
less. The net had to be cut into many pieces. He was 
as large as a small ox. 
Capt. Munson has jnst been in, and says he was after 
the salmon this morning. He caught a fifteen-pound one 
and a boat load of chubbs. C. J. Smith, 
^ The Trout of Utah. —To correct a prevalent impres¬ 
sion that the trout of Utah do not generally take a fly, 
the Captain of the Fourteenth Infantry, stationed at Fort 
Douglass, writes, saying:— 
I have taken quantities in all the streams within a ra¬ 
dius of seventy-five miles, with flies, and I know to have 
been taken from the Provo River at least 1,000 pounds 
with no other lure. All my acquaintances hi the city, 
and all our officers here, used flies exclusively the entire 
season. I have uot fished in the lakes; consequently can’t 
vouch for the action of the fish iu those places. 
C. B. Western, Captain Fourteenth Infantry. 
Natural §ir>forg, 
THE DISEASES OF WILD ANIMALS. 
by professor jean yilain. 
LlVanslalod from the Revue Zotiloyique.'] 
S OME naturalists have asserted that wild animals, 
when in a state of liberty, are almost entirely free 
from disease, and that the latter afflicts them only when 
in captivity. I know that this is entirely erroneous, and 
it can be proved that captive wild animals are more ex¬ 
empt from ailments than those roaming at large. 
While First Surgeon of the Thirty-first Regiment of the 
Line, then stationed at Alabera, in Algeria, I dissected 
the carcasses of about fifty lions. The lungs of twenty 
of them were affected; one-half of them were almost 
gone, showing that consumption is prevalent among the 
lions of the Sahara and the Sahel. 
At the Jardin des Plantes, here in Pans, seven lions 
have died since 1869. All of them were bom here. I dis¬ 
sected them, and found that their lungs were entirely 
healthy. To what was the difference due ? They receiv¬ 
ed their food regularly, and were carefully protected 
from inclement weather, while the lions in Ainca had to 
