THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL- 



Entered According to Act ot Congress, In the year 1881, by the Forest and Stream Publishing Company, In the Office of the Librarian of [Congress, at Washington.; 



Terms. S'l a Year. 10 Cts. I 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, AUGUST II, 1881. 



CONTENTS. 



EDlTOUIAn : — 



The Sunlit? Climbing Question ; A Matter of Morals ; A Tot 

 Luck Dinner ; Fish Culture for Long Islaud ; Transpor- 

 tation of Shad Eggs ; A Lobster Law Needed ; Otago Ae- 



chinatization Society ; Notes 28 



The Hpoktsmas Toueist : — 

 A Southwest Virginia Deer Drive : To My Setter, " Scout ;" 

 A Week of Fragrant Memories; The Magalloway Coun- 

 try ; From Mooaehead Lake to the Main St. John— Part 

 III. ; Lake Poygan ; Green Pond ; Thanks for the 'Pos- 

 sum '. 25 



Natttbaij Histom : — 

 The Way of a Serpent Upon a Rock ; How Did the Pish Get 



There? 28 



Game Bag and Gun :— 



The Illinois Sportsmen ; Nebraska Game Grounds ; A Good 



Word for Adirondack Guides ; Pot-Hunting Blackbirds : 



Shooting at Port Jefferson ; A Brace of Woodcock ; Wild 



Celery ; Prairie Chicken Shooting ; Philadelphia Notes ; 



OsakiS, Minn. ; Ducking Resorts 29 



Sea and Bivek Fishing : — 



International Fishery Exhibition ; Blueflahing at Cape May; 

 The Blue Gills— 1881 ; Damping at Springfield; Nova 

 Scotia Fishing ; Cauadiau Salmon Rivera ; Fishery Statis- 

 tics 30 



Fisbcdi/tobe :— 



Do Owls Eat Trout V The Paradise Fish ; A German Book 



on Fishculture 32 



The Kennel : — 



The Dog Castaways ; Preventives of Hydrophobia ; Heroes 



of Fire sudWater 33 



Rifle and Tkap Shooting 35 



Yachting and Canoeing : — 

 New York Yacht Club; Bevorly Yacht Club; Racine Ca- 



noea; Sophia; Cutter Coming ; Atalauta <6 



Answeks to Cokkespondents 37 



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Address: Forest and Stream Publishing; Co., 



Nos. 39 and 40 Park Row, New York City. 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



Tliiirsday, August 11. 



THE SNAKE CLIMBING QUESTION. 



ri^HE original question broached in Forest and Stream 

 _l_ was whether our venomous serpents could climb per- 

 pendicular trees. It is well known that all constrictors do 

 so. None of our correspondents in relating their experi- 

 ences say whether the black snake circled around the tree, 

 went up it with the same serpentine motion which it uses on 

 land, or whether it adopted a vermicular movement and 

 pushed itself straight up by contraction and expansion, its 

 abdominal plates holding into the roughness of the tree. 



We have seen the water snake nearly helpless on a plat- 

 form of hemlock boards used to cover the raceway of a trout 

 pond. It wriggled with an eel-like motion, but the slivers 

 of the boards pointed the wrong way for it to get hold. On 

 turning it around it went off rapidly, the plates of the ab- 

 domen holding in the wood enough to give it a point to 

 push against. 



We have seen the black snak ascend a sapling by twining 

 about the trunk and going up with a spiral motion, but we 

 have never seen them cliinb large tree trunks, although we 

 have seen them in the trees. Will our Washington cor- 

 respondent describe the motion of the snake he saw climb 

 up a perpendicular wall ? and will our Eldred correspondent 

 tell us how the snake descended from the tree ? 



A MATTER OF MORALS. 



MESSRS. WM. B. MERSHON, the Secretary of the 

 Michigan Sportsmen's Association, and A. H. Mer- 

 shon, the President of the East Saginaw Game Protection 

 Club, recently attempted, by due process of law, to punish 

 three men, Amos Coon, Charles Cary and John Hatfield, of 

 Harrison, Mich , for having killed and had in possession 

 venison out of season. It was positively proved in the 

 trial that the deer had been killed out of season, and the case 

 was a clew one, but the jury, after a short deliberation, 

 brought in a verdict of "not guilty," aud afterward ex- 

 plained that "it might have been a tame deer ; didn't prove 

 it was wild." 



The game clubs are naturally disgusted with such a farcical 

 administration of justice, and are tailing pains to report 

 abroad the laxity of local morals in the county where men 

 can kill tame deer all the year round in the woods. It 

 seems that for one of the most brutal and outrageous of inde- 

 cent crimes ii the calendar the Clare County penalty is, as 

 fixed by a jury recently, a flue of twenty-five dollars. This 

 is clearly a matter of morals. Before the sportsmen of 

 Michigan can hope to secure auy respect for the game laws 

 among these people they must mend the morals of the com- 

 munity, and instil into it some more healthy regard for the 

 ordinary decencies of life than the verdicts of their juries in- 

 dicate that thej r now possess. 



A POT-LUCK DINNER. 



THE "POT-LUCK CLUB" dined in honor of the birth- 

 day of its President. Its President is Hon. R. Barnwell 

 Roosevelt. The name is familiar to our readers. He is sus- 

 pected of being a Fish Commissioner of New York. He is 

 accused of belonging to the fish-eating club with the jaw- 

 breaking name. It is whispered that he presides at the Fish- 

 cultural Association. And he is guilty of writing on the 

 lateral motion of crabs. See our last issue. 



Therefore we are not going to tell you who he is. The 

 Pot-Luckers are literary. They boil over with wit. Its Sec- 

 retary is a gifted literatteuse. She gave the spread. She is 

 called the Queen of the Pot-Luckers. The pot was: in luck 

 on August 6. It was a full pot. All had full hands. No 

 one was high. 



The President was a year older than he was ever known to 

 be before. His age was announced. We won't tell it. We 

 don't think him as old as he claims. He wants to overawe 

 us by a claim of priority. Appearances are deceitfol and we 

 judge by acts. By this standard he is twenty-one. 



Journalists, poets, and artists comprise the Pot-Luckers. 

 Essays and clams. Poems and lobster salads. Pictures and 

 chowders. Speeches and chicken fixings. Songs and green 

 seal. This is the impression left by a pot-luck dinner. A 

 President who dou't preside too much. A hostess who en- 

 tertains royally. These are the after-thoughts. 



FISHCULTURE FOR LONG ISLAND. 



AT a meeting of the New York Fish Commission, on the 

 4ih hist, at the office of Mr. R. B. Roosevelt, it was 

 decided to establish the long-talked-of station on Long Island. 

 Our readers may remember that Mr. Blackford was added to 

 the Commission because he favored the placing of a station 

 for both fresh and salt water work on the island. 



It is much to be regretted that the Legislature did not 

 make a special appropriation for this purpose, but, as it did 

 not do so, the Commissioners set apart $3,000 to begin the 

 work. This is a small amount to establish new works with, 

 but it shows a disposition to begin. There is much that 

 might be done on the islaud in the way of breeding and of 

 observation of the habits of our sea fishes. It is the best 

 place in the State of New York to establish a carp pond, 

 from whence young could be distributed to those Ashless 

 portions of the State where only little turtles and polly wogs 

 grow. It is the home of the trout, which can be bred in 

 most of its streams, and its bays formerly swarmed with 

 valuable food fishes. 



We hope that the Commission will take up the oyster, the 

 scallop, the clam, lobster and crab and do for them what it 

 has been done for the fishes — increase Lhem aud study their 

 habits. In fact Long Island offers many facilities for fish- 



culture and for investigations, which have been neglected. 

 A site for operations will soon be selected, and we invite 

 those having knowledge of suitable locations to send them to 

 this office. The Commissioners want a stream of good trout 

 water, which never fails, near where it comes into clean salt 

 water. They cannot buy such a place and must depend 

 upon leasing it ; or, better still, upon the offer of it by some 

 public-spirited citizen, or of some village which would like 

 such an institution near it. They would like to begin work 

 next month, if possible. 



TRANSPORTATION OF SHAD EGGS. ' 



MANY of our readers will recollect that there have been 

 several attempts to transport the eggs of shad, and to 

 keep them at a low temperature in order to retard their hatch- 

 ing for a period long enough to get the fry across the At- 

 lantic before they starved to death. The first attempt was 

 made in 1874, by Mr. Mather, who lost his fish from starva- 

 tion on the tenth day, just as the steamer reached Southamp- 

 ton. The impossibility of feeding shad fry and the lack of 

 natural food in water which has been stored in the dark 

 tanks of ships, renders a sea voyage much more difficult than 

 one on land, where fresh supplies of river water containing 

 infusoria can be obtained daily. 



There has been great difficulty in handling shad eggs with 

 a view to their transportation and the can designed for carry- 

 ing them in water and securing aeration by motion of the 

 car, planned by Mr. Mather and tried by Prof. Milner the 

 above mentioned year, did not work. Since then but little 

 has been done in this direction except to experiment to de- 

 terniine*'"how long the fry could live without food. This 

 year, however, one of the most important results of the shad 

 woik has been an improved method of transporting the deli- 

 cate shad egg, which cannot bear the rough treatment to 

 which the ova of salmon and trout can be subjected, and 

 which will certainly lead to great economy in the production 

 of this valuable fish. 



Heretofore the usual method has been to keep them in 

 pans or buckets of water, which is frequently changed, after 

 they are impregnated and have passed through the stage 

 which fishculturists technically call "coming up"— /. «., a 

 hardening from an absorption of milt and water. The quan- 

 tity of water required to be changed necessitated not only 

 much labor but constant watchfulness, especially if, as often 

 happened in the work of the U. S . Fish Commission, they 

 had to be so kept from eight to twelve hours in this way 

 before reaching the hatching station. 



Col. McDonald, who has had charge of this work on the 

 Virginia rivers, often found that there was a serious loss of 

 eggs during this time, and set about to remedy it. He took 

 one of the ordinary salmon egg trays, with a wire cloth bottom, 

 such as is in general use, and on this placed a sheet of wet mus- 

 lin. On the latter he put from one to two layers of shad eggs 

 after they had remained long enough in the pans to "come up." 

 A dozen of these trays were then placed in a stack and 

 crated up, after which they were transported at convenience 

 by the Launch to the Washington Navy Yard, a distance of 

 twenty-one miles, during which time they received no atten- 

 tion whatever, only being kept out of the sunshine. They 

 uniformly reached the hatching house in first-rate condition 

 and sometimes were not placed in the hatching cones until 

 twelve hours, and in one case seventeen hours, after im- 

 pregnation. This would allow plenty of time to place them 

 on ship board just before sailing, thereby making a gain of 

 several days over those which started across the ocean in 

 1874 which were hatched at Holyoke, Mass., on Friday, and 

 were delivered at Hoboken on the ship next morning. Eggs 

 so treated could be hatched on the ship the fourth or fifth 

 day out and might reach England before they suffered for 

 want of food. 



Under this plan the work under Col. McDonald was con- 

 ducted upon a new principle. Instead of taking the stations 

 to the eggs, as has been done, he now, and in future will. 

 bring the eggs to the stations. These stations may now be 

 placed at points convenient for the distribution of the fry 

 instead of in inaccessible locations. For example ; all the 

 eggs taken on the Potomac River can be brought to Wash- 

 ington and hatched in the old Armory building, at no extra 

 cost for engineers or machinery, and the young fish can then 



