388 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
For Forest and Stream. 
NORTHWOOD CAMP. 
W HERE sweet scented breezes blow, 
Where moss-bordered springs o’erflow, 
Where the bluest skies are seen 
Through the arching evergreen. 
Where the mist of morning weaves 
Bridal robes o’er quivering leaves. 
Dimpled ripples, laughing break 
On the marge of crystal lake. 
Mirror’d cloudlets kiss and play, 
Languid lilies float all day, 
Till the evening’s blushing rays 
Bathe the hills in purple haze. 
Softly o’er each shaggy height, 
Droops the cool and starlit night, 
Hunter’s song, and flash of oar, 
Wake the echoes on the shore. 
Cheerily toward the forest home, 
Trophy-bearing athletes come; 
Now the genial blaze leaps higher 
From the log-heaped, crackling lire. 
Sun browned men, with eager zest, 
Seek the woodland feast and rest, 
Lull’d by music of the glades 
Dream of bright-eyed wives and maids. T. W. A. 
This Journal is the Official Organ of the Fish Cultur- 
ists’ Association. 
FLASHES FROM THE “BLUELIGHT.” 
SECOND WEEK. 
A LTHOUGH some foggy weather early in the week has 
somewhat restricted the number of the “Blueligfit’s” 
trips, yet the successful results of nearly every haul of the 
dredge when out, has furnished material enough to fully 
occupy all hands in the laboratory in preserving and classi¬ 
fying. No time has been lost since. Beginning near 
home, that we might familiarize ourselves with our imme¬ 
diate surroundings, we explored the eel grass shoals and 
others in the vicinity within the limits of Fisher’s Island 
Sound. Then we went outside into rougher water, and to 
the eastward of Watch Hill. We lay for hours hauling 
the trawl and dredge on the sandy bottom, and rolling 
in the southeast swell in a lively fashion anything but 
agreeable. I fear that the occupants of the handsome 
hotels of that much lioteled sand hill, who gathered in 
crowds under the delightful shade of their umbrellas, and 
watched our proceedings with evident interest, formed an 
erroneous idea if they thought that happiness unalloyed 
existed in that trim little steamer, with her awnings and 
flags, gently rocking in the refreshing breeze. It looked 
fine, no doubt, but we on the spot knew how it was our¬ 
selves. Sounds of inward woe and tribulation could be 
heard faintly through the green baize screen which gives 
to one end of the “Bluelight’s” saloon the dignified title of 
“after cabin,” and a lack of interest was observable among 
a number of the party as the slimy contents of the dredges 
were dumped upon the examining table. There was no 
rivalry then. Harvard and Yale were each equally will¬ 
ing to relinquish to the other the precious plums in our 
mud pie, and the little “donkey,” as it buzzed and splut¬ 
tered and rapidly wound up and reeled in our lines, with its 
“dizziness-producing motion,” wound up the enthusiasm 
of our collectors and sent them reeling away. Not all, 
though. Some had hauled dredges from a hundred fath¬ 
oms deep in open sailboats in the Bay of Fundy, hauling 
in the slippery line from the icy waters by hand over hand, 
and of course our position was to them comfortable enough; 
others had in last summer’s work in Casco Bay learned the 
tricks of the “Bluelight,” and how to accommodate them¬ 
selves to them, and were serene. Even at dinnertime 
chowder bad lost its charms to some, and frugal meals 
were made on pickles and hard tack. 
Our party is now increased to eighteen naturalists, and 
is made pleasant by the presence of several ladies, who, 
interesting themselves principally in the seaweeds and 
mosses, have beautiful and valuable collections, and do not 
hesitate at wet feet or the prospect of a ducking to secure 
their coveted treasures. Students themselves in natural 
history, and members of families of gentlemen devoted to 
science, their labor this season will undoubtedly add much 
to the value of our work. And when we go out on calm, 
still evenings with small boats to capture with our towing 
nets the luminous crustacse and jelly fish, their presence 
and evident appreciation and enjoyment of the occasion 
turns the task into a pleasure. When fishing for these 
creatures silence is not necessary, and a little music does 
no harm Collections of sea weeds and mosses make most 
beautiful albums, and I wonder are not more generally 
seen. Our collections, though, embrace not only the little 
silky filaments of purple, green and crimson floss, and deli¬ 
cate, translucent leaves, but have among them gigantic rib- 
4 bons of dark green, scolloped and grooved, some thirty to 
forty feet in length—the Laminarias longoevura and digitata , 
for instance. , 
Our party has been subdivided, and, according to their sev¬ 
eral tastes, each branch of study has its devotees. Some make 
the “invertebrates” their specialty, and it is to these that 
the microscopes reveal the wonders of almost another 
world. Little eggs, no bigger than a grain of mustard 
seed are placed in the focus, and there stand revealed 
within their transparent films little wriggling, twisting 
monsters, that one needs faith to believe will (or would 
iiave but for their untimely demolition on the altar of sci¬ 
ence) eventually become fish, crabs, lobsters, jelly fish, or 
, other creatures, to whom no resemblance is as yet to be 
seen by the non-expert. ... ,, 
A little scrap, like a tiny black stick, or more like the 
tenth of a black pin, lying inert on the table, is placed in a 
saucer of water; from one end there protrudes at once a 
little antenae—crowned head—and it begins to swim rapidly 
about in its prison, the weight of its tube (for it is a tube- 
worm, the S&rapus) keeping it in an inclined position, like 
a man treading water. This creature is a rarity; one was 
found fifty years ago in American waters, and described. 
European naturalists doubted; no worm of the tube maker 
carried his tube with him, but crawled from it when dis¬ 
posed for a journey. None had been found since, and the 
Serapus was set down as existing only in the imagination 
of the assumed discoverer. We found dozens of them in 
one haul of the dredge, and now its existence is beyond 
doubt. The crab and lobster receive great attention, and 
are made the subject of close investigation by some; and it 
is to be hoped that the knowledge gained in regard to them 
may prove beneficial, by enabling methods to be devised by 
which the rapidly exhaustive processes to which the latter is 
subjected may be checked, to the gain of the general com- 
J munity. 
I ' Our leading crab man is not here yet. A letter was sent 
| him announcing the discovery of the eggs of the “fiddler 
j crab,” and that they were hatching. It is presumed that 
j this will bring him, if alive. 
| Others more directly connected with the workings of the 
j Fish Commission, turn their attention to fishes, and through 
t their own exertions and the accommodating spirit that we 
find in most of the fishermen, and in the men managing 
j and owning pounds and seines, procure many fare and val- 
; uable specimens. Two fine drum fish have been received— 
one skinned and dissected here, the other forwarded in ice 
to the Smithsonian Institution, where a plaster cast, colored 
from the original, will be taken of it, and his skeleton, 
nicely prepared, be kept for study. An occasional fine 
Spanish mackerel, or a bucket of soft shelled crabs, have 
their value, although not exactly in a scientific point of 
view. The people lend us a willing hand, and come daily 
with something new for the “professors.” One “jolly 
young fisherman” came in with a hermit crab, divested of 
his borrowed shell. “I guess this chap is new to yer, ain’t 
it?” he said, exhibiting his prize; “it’s what we call a bait 
eater.” “No,” I said, “you are mistaken, it is a Eupagurus 
bernhardus , and generally inhabits the shell of the Lunatia 
heros .” He gazed at me a moment, remarked “Gerry!” 
and turned away. 
In endeavoring to further the interests of this portion of 
the work, I started out last week with Captain Chester on 
a cruise after bluefish and mackerel. The day was lovely, 
breeze fine, and everything just right; but although we 
worked hard, and tried all the waters from Fisher’s Island 
to Montauk Point, running across Phelp’s Ledge, and 
through the tide rips off the Point away out into the At¬ 
lantic, we did not get a strike. And the fishermen have 
since caught but very few in their pounds. The fish have 
evidently passed this point in their migration eastward, and 
Fig. 2.—Egg of skate, half natural size. 
if this week we do any better it will be because the schools 
off' Barfiegat—spoken of in last week’s Forest and 
Stream —pay us a visit before leaving for parts unknown. 
A few mackerel were all our count for a long day’s fishing. 
In spite of our bad luck, though, Noank promises well 
for the especial fish investigations. Situated at the mouth 
of Mystic River, the waters of the harbor, and to a certain 
extent those of Fisher’s Island Sound, in the vicinity, are 
quite brackish, and it is probable that the young of many 
marine fishes will be found. It is one of the principal 
ts from which New York is supplied with fish, and 
some forty smacks of good capacity and fair proportions 
are owned here and employed in the fisheries, thus afford¬ 
ing us good opportunity for collecting facts and specimens. 
More than forty species of fish have been already col- 
jrjcr 3 .—Figure of clear-nosed skate (Raia eglanteria), showing eggs an 
position in the oviducts, a. a., Eggs. b. b., Ovaries, with immature 
egg. c., Junction of oviducts. # 
lected; nothing, however, of importance except the large 
“drums” (Pogonias chronis ) before mentioned. This species 
seems to find here its northern and eastern limit, none hav¬ 
ing been taken at Wood’s Hole on previous expeditions, al¬ 
though one, probably a straggler, was seen by Mr. J. H. 
Blake at Provincetown. Our own trawl has as yet brought 
up mostly flounders of several varieties, and skates, of 
which latter fish one haul covered our deck. 
Most every one has seen the skate, and knows it by sight, 
but few would recognize in the young skate the character¬ 
istics of the matured one; and not one in a thousand but 
would be puzzled to decide in what kingdom, animal or 
vegetable, he would locate the egg, although it is found fre¬ 
quently on our sandy beaches, thrown up by the waves 
with masses of sea weed, and resembling the empty husk 
of some curious nut. The egg of the skate is about two 
inches in length by one and a quarter inches broad, shaped 
like a sack, with four horns at the corners, each about two 
and a half inches long. This egg is composed of a parch¬ 
ment-like cover, and is of a dark green hue. Carefully 
cutting one open, the little skate is found within, lying 
quiet, as though lifeless, with its long tail coiled closely 
around its body and head; if very young, the fish is hardly 
discernible at first, for he is but little more than a little 
transparent line, resting on an oval mass resembling the 
yolk of an egg (which, for that matter, it is) nearly an inch 
in diameter; but carefully removed to a dish of water, he 
soon gains vitality, and with corkscrew movements of his 
tail endeavors to swim away, but is too securely anchored 
by the ovarian sac, and can only wriggle. In this state, 
to the naked eye, no fins are visible—simply a little line, 
enlarged at one end a trifle, where two specks denote the 
eye. A little later in life, had we left him alone, he would 
have presented an appearance more akin to that of the full 
grown skate. But between these extreme stages of his ex¬ 
istence he has passed through many changes. At first a 
mere transparent line, with no fins nor gills, gradually lit¬ 
tle threads or branchia have formed from near to his head; 
he grows broader by degrees, and the tail, which at first 
represents nearly the whole of him, grows shorter in pro¬ 
portion; the branchia become transformed into gills, and a 
portion of the tail is either absorbed or dropped off, for at 
first there is a fair proportion of it, reaching beyond the 
caudal fin, and in the older fish the fin completes the crea¬ 
ture as in other fish. These changes occur while it is still 
too young to cut clear of its locker of fresh provisions, 
which its ovarian sac supplies. But now, grown stronger, 
it can carry this with it as it swims. The beautiful pink 
and transparent straw color which marked the earlier stages 
of its existence have deepened into brown and yellow, and 
the spots and markings of the mature fish begin to appear, 
and finally it emerges from its egg, left thinner at one end, 
ready to go on its own way and seek its own living. The 
skate has one peculiar feature: the teeth of the female are 
very different from those of the male. In the former they 
are sharp and shafied like the teeth of a saw. In the lat¬ 
ter, flat grinders, like those of the sheepshead. As they 
probably feed on the same food, the “reason why” I can’t 
find out. 
During the week we have made nineteen successful hauls 
of dredge and trawl. One of the most important and in¬ 
teresting results of our explorations in Fisher’s Island 
Sound is the discovery that in this immediate region there 
is a complete'mixture of the northern and southern species 
of marine animals. Here we have captured in the same 
haul, animals which range northward from Greenland, Ice¬ 
land, and Spitsbergen, together with southern species 
which extend southward to Florida, the West Indies, and 
Brazil. The delicate southern coral Astrangia dance is as¬ 
sociated with the northern red anemone (JJrticma crascicor- 
nis ), and the elegant Alcyoniuni carneum. Most of the new 
additions to the fauna of southern New England are Arctic 
species, which had never been found previously south of 
Cape Cod. 
Next week we are going to see what we can find in the 
deep waters of the “Race,” and with seventy fathoms 
depth, while nowhere near is there more than thirty, we 
will beyond doubt get valuable results, for depth gives low 
temperature, and low temperature new forms of life. 
Piseco. 
SALMO QUINNAT AND SALMO SALAR. 
^ Bucksport, Me., July 14th, 1874. 
Editor Forest and Stream:— 
Iu your issue of July 9th, F. M. Webber, of Charlestown, N. H., makes 
some remarks about the relative health and vitality of the young salmon 
of Maine and California, hatched from eggs distributed last season, 
which I think may lead to erroneous conclusions unless explained. Af¬ 
ter reciting the facts that the eggs of California salmon were taken from 
flsh that were seined on their spawning beds, and those of Maine salmon 
from fish that had been impounded several months next preceding the 
spawning season, and that the young of the former enjoy the reputation 
of superiority in liveliness and fat growth, your correspondent remarks: 
“Large numbers of both kinds were hatched in one hatching house this 
last winter, and I observed a vast difference in them. Many of the 
Maine alevins clustered down against the screens, and their yolk sac was 
continually being drawn through the wires and burst, in this way killing 
them, andleaving only the head and vertebrae on the inside of the 
screens. The California alevins were constantly struggling up stream 
and trying to jump very high cleats and reach the fall of water at the 
head of the troughs, making so much noise about it as to tempt me to go 
and watch them to see what they were about.” 
An explanation of these phenomena is offered in the following queries: 
“I would be glad to know if the different circumstances under which 
the spawn of the two different kinds of fish were taken may not have 
had a good deal to do with the vitality of the young flsh, or is the differ¬ 
ence only owing to the fish being of two different species?” 
“May not the fact of the Maine salmon having been kept (so to speak) 
in a semi-stagnant condition of life for three months before the spawning 
season, have prevented the progeny from becoming as full of vitality as 
they should be?” 
A careless reader of the above paragraphs might infer that weak¬ 
ness was the rule among the Maine salmon and the exception among the 
California salmon. Such, however, could hardly have been the inten¬ 
tion of your correspondent, who would, no doubt, in making a full state¬ 
ment of the case, admit the existence of both healthy and unhealthy flsh 
in each brood. I cannot doubt that the majority of the Maine salmon 
exhibited all the natural activity and vigor of the species, or that they 
crowded toward the upper end of the hatching trough or other place of 
confinement. Such certainly was the behavior of the Maine salmon 
hatched at Bucksport, where they crowded the upper ends of the troughs 
in dense bodies, and showed every sign of perfect health and vigor. If 
those hatched at Charlestown were generally deficient in these qualities 
it must be owing to some extraordinary circumstance not yet explained. 
The whole number lost, both in the alevin and egg stage, out of the 
160 000 eggs of Maine salmon sent to Charlestown was 19 , 003 . This is 
not a large percentage, but is larger than occurred to the eggs I sent to 
most other parties: but by no means so large as the loss on most of the 
shipments of California eggs last season. I do not attribute these losses 
to original deficiency of vitality, but to certain unfavorable circumstan¬ 
ces attending their manipulation at some stage or other. In the case ot 
the California eggs a sufficient explanation is found in the fact that they 
were a long time on the way east, at a season of the year when the 
weather was warm and decay proceeded very rapidly. In the case of..he 
Maine eggs in question I think I can offer a satisfactory explanation. 
Part of those sent to Charlestown were taken in extremely cold weather, 
ice forming readily in our pans, and constant care being necessary to 
prevent freezing of the eggs themselves, which was sure to occur when 
ice formed on the sides and bottoms of the pans. In spite of precautions 
