66 



FOjREST AND STREAM. 



[Feb. 14, 1889. 



Mr. L. R. Brown, of the "Q" offices, is a frequent; visitor 

 to the club grounds; Mr. H. A. Sloan, of South Water 

 street, is prized by many men outside the Mak-saw-bas; 

 Mr. G. W. Randle, one of the heaviest game handlers in 

 this market, is also one of the ardents; Chas. P. McAvoy, 

 of the McAvoy Brewing Co., and J. J. Gore, of the big 

 firm of Chapin & Gore, ought to pretty nearly be able 

 to liquidate matters, and Fire-Marshall D. J. Swenie cer- 

 tainly can if they can't; John Watson comes pretty 

 nearly being a household word, and s > does Charlie Kern; 

 Cbas. Wilcox, T. Benton Leiter, J. W. C. Haskell, W. L. 

 Shepard, T. W. Wilmarth — all these are names you hear 

 about both in the city and around the clubs. It is useless 

 to begin singling out names, for there would be about 

 seventy- five singles. It is better to take a pot-shot at the 

 flock, as below: 



Officers— President, R. B. Organ; Vice-President, W. 

 P. Mussey; Secretary, C. S. Petrie; Treasurer, J. A. Kin- 

 ney. Board of Managers: R. B. Organ, W. P. Mussev, 

 T. Benton Leiter, W. H. Haskell, C. S. Petrie. 



List of Members— W. A. Barton, A. J. Baxter, Dixon 

 Bean, Matt. Benner, L. R. Brown, H. C. Buechner, C. 

 Bentham, W. J. Campbell, G. S. Chapin, H. P. Crane, C. 

 A. Crane, F. F. Croxton, Joseph P. Card, A. E. Dyer, W. 

 C. Dyer, C. Ben. Dicks, E. E. Flint, W. H. Gleason,E. H. 

 Goodrich, J. J. Gore, W. H. Haskell, H. C. Hoyt, J. W. 

 C. Haskell, Charles Husche, FredHenrotin, J. T. 'Hasting, 

 H. P. Ishaun, J. A. Kinney, S. S. Kimball, Chas. Kern, 

 C. C. Lamos, W. H. Leckie, T. Benton Leiter, Jos. Leiter, 

 W. H. Lees, John Matter, Chas. P. McAvoy, Chas. H. 

 Mears, H. J. Milligan, G. F. Morcum, Wm. P. Mussey, 

 T. H. Miller, Geo. G. Newberry, J. Milton Oliver, R. B. 

 Organ, Chas. S. Petrie, Michael Petrie, J. W. Parmlee, F. 

 W. Pond, C. E. Rollins, G. W. Rumble, G. W. Randle, J. 

 A. Sharp, H. A. Sloan, P. E. Stanley, L. P. Sutter, Jacob 

 Sutter, Jesse Sherwood, D. J. Swenie, W. C. Stone, W. L. 

 Shepard, W. R. Smith, F. P. Taylor, J. E. Tilt, J. Thomp- 

 son, John Watson, John F. Whiting, John B. Wiggins 

 T. W. Wilmarth, J. W. Woodward, Chas. S. Wilcox. L. 

 K. Waldron, J. H. Wall, Everett Wilson, F. S. Waters. 



The membership is always full and applicants are 

 always waiting for a vacancy. There is a good deal of 

 comment in that. 



The Mak-saw ba Club has put down a great many quail 

 annually on their grounds. It is an understood rule of 

 the club that a member fchall put down two quail for 

 every one he kills. If it were .not for marauding na- 

 tives, it would be easy to make many bags of 38 as one 

 shooter did this fall. This club surely emulates the man 

 who makes two blades of glass grow where but one grew 

 before. 



Chicago, HI., Feb. 4.— The reports of shooters lately in 

 from the South will serve to give some light on the ques- 

 tion, where do the ducks go? Mr. Jesse Cummings, who 

 was one of the Chicago party who went to Galveston 

 after canvasbacks, says they found a brackish lake near 

 the Gulf about fifty miles from Galveston, known as 

 Stevenson's Lake, where the canvasbacks swarmed in 

 thousands. Other bays and creeks along the coast, clear 

 on down to the Mexican coast, were fairly alive with 

 mallards and other ducks, and their numbers surpassed 

 anything he had dreamed. The birds, however, showed 

 more than their Northern cunning, they being hunted 

 all the way along their flight. Market hunters were 

 among them even there, and one Chicago commission 

 man was sending two or three barrels of canvasbacks to 

 Chicago every day, packed on ice. The shipping re- 

 quired daily trips of a sailing vessel to Galveston. 



In sleepy old Mexico, however, there seems to be found 

 a section where the ducks are not harassed so continu- 

 ally, and where they are found in wonderful abundance. 

 Mr. Wilfrid N. Lowe, president of the Illinois State 

 Sportsmen's Association, is just back from a trip which 

 extended as far south as the City of Mexico. He says 

 that along the Casa Grande River the railway train passed 

 within forty yards of great banks of ducks and geese, who 

 did not stir, or at most only lazily flopped away to alight 

 a little further on. At the lakes" known as Las Palomas, 

 Mr. Lowe and his friends had all the jack snipe and duck 

 shooting they wanted, and they found the birds astonish- 

 ingly fat. The laguna country near Chihuahua is also 

 a tremendously slocked wildfowl country; indeed, great 

 portions of interior Mexico swarm with waterfowl, con- 

 trary to popular belief. 



Gen. Pacheco invited Mr. Lowe and his friends to visit 

 his ranch in Mexico, west of the railway, and assured 

 him that every man of the party should kill a deer every 

 day, and see bear and other big furred game as often as 

 they liked. Mr. Lowe had a most enjoyable trip, and 

 like everybody else who visits that wonderful old coun- 

 try, he returns infatuated with it. 



Mr, F. P. Taylor says that he saw more quail in the 

 Indian Territory than he thought there were in the 

 world. Other game also is abundant. The numbers of 

 greyhounds kept by ranchmen is increasing. The Burt. 

 Barnett outfit has a pack of over twenty. The Indians 

 are all in earnest hopes that the Springer bill will never 

 be passed by both houses of Congress. They know it 

 would be the worst thing for them that ever happened. 



The Fox River Association is still growing. The offi- 

 cers wish it generally published that they desire commu- 

 nications from other clubs and sportsmen's associations 

 relative to this work in hand, and that they wish all such 

 organizations to join in one great organization, so that 

 all opposition may be at once crushed and overcome. 

 The Rock River Association is a good one and a strong 

 one, and in practically the same work. Do the Rock 

 River men know the size and importance of the Fox 

 River Association? Would it not be well for the two to 

 join forces and membership? There promises to be a good 

 membership from the Sandwich Club. 



The following papers descriptive of the shooting clubs 

 of Chicago, with illustrations, have been printed in the 

 Forest and Stream: 



Fox Lake District, Dec. 27. 



Mineola Club, Jan. 10. 



Fox Lake Shooting and Fishing Club, Jan. 24. 

 Odd Corners About Fox Lake, Jan. 81. 

 Fox River Association, Jan. 81. 

 Waltonian Club, Jan. 31 and Feb. 7. 

 Tolleston Club, Feb. 7. 



Others are in preparation. Next week will be given 

 the English Lake Club. 



It is again impressed upon me that Forest and Stream 

 goes even unto the uttermost ends of the earth. Since 

 beginning the duck club articles which have lately been 

 running in the paper I have had all sorts of letters drop in 

 on me, though not any sort I was not glad to get, for such 

 letters from unknown friends are among the most prized 

 treasures of any writer's collection. I have tried to 

 answer some questions about Western duck shooting 

 methods in work already published or to follow, and to 

 private letters have replied as best I could. A few weeks 

 ago a gentleman of Chelmsford, England, wrote in re- 

 gard to work he was preparing for the London Field, 

 to-day I got a letter from a manufacturer of artificial 

 flies in county Tyrone, Ireland, wanting to know if 

 Chicago duck clubs could supply him with certain 

 varieties of duck plumage that he needed. Can they? 

 Why, of course they can. Chicago can do anything. 

 All this only satisfies me even more that people read even 

 the very poorest part of this journal; and I believe if I 

 wanted the earth I should advertise for it in Forest and 

 Stream with a pretty good show of getting what I was 

 after. 



Mention was made some weeks ago of a big ducking 

 trip undertaken by some Chicago shooters. The party 

 was finally made up, I believe, of Messrs. W. B. Cbat- 

 field, Jesse N. Cummings and R. W. Cox, who were 

 accompanied by John Taylor, the keeper of English 

 Lake Club House, and Tim and Frank Wood, keepers of 

 the Swan Lake Club. The party have returned after an 

 absence of about a month. They went to Galveston Bay, 

 Texas, and they actually got among the canvasbacks and 

 had big shooting. 



Mr. Fred Taylor has been back from his Indian Terri- 

 tory trip for some weeks. I have been unable to find 

 Mm, and should be afraid to approach him, anyhow, on 

 account of the largeness of the time he must have had, 

 I want him to talk to somebody else a good while first, 

 because they say he is not always safe when loaded with 

 a turkey story. E. Hough. 



175 Monroe .Street. 



New York Society for the Protection of Game.— 

 At the meeting of this society last Monday night a check 

 for §2,000 was turned over to Secretary T. N. Cuthbert, 

 to be used for the prosecution of game dealers who have 

 been selling quail and grouse out of season. Fish Com- 

 missioner Eugene G. Blackford and Mr. E. P. Rogers 

 were elected members. 



Fred A. Allen of Monmouth, 111., sends us a price list 

 of his excellent duck and goose callers. He is doing a big 

 business in calls, and his success is a new instance of the 

 truth that it pays to advertise a good thing. 



Fobest and Stream, Box 2,833, N. Y. city, has descriptive illus- 

 trated circulars of VV. B. Lcffin swell's book, "Wild Fowl shoot- 

 ing," which will he mailed free on request. The book is pro- 

 nounced by "Nanit," "Ulnan," "Dick Swiveller," "Syhillene" and 

 other competent authorities to be the best treatise on the subject 



"Sam Lord's Camps.'" By JR. E. Robinson. No-w ready. 



THE HAGFISH. 



MOST of us doubtless have looked upon the hagfish, 

 or slime eel, as a curiosity chiefly on account of its 

 blind, lipless, and parasitic existence: its dentition 

 adapted to burrowing into the flesh of its prey; its large 

 eggs provided with a homy case and polar threads for 

 adhesion, and its wonderful capacity forgiving off slime. 

 We learn something still more singular, however, from 

 the writings of Willielm Miiller, J. T. Cunningham, and 

 Fridtjof Nansen concerning the life history of Myxine, 

 namely that it nearly always combines two' sexes in one 

 individual. As the studies of Nansen, the curator of 

 Bergen Museum, Norway, and recent explorer of the in- 

 terior of Greeland, are the latest and most satisfactory 

 on this interesting subject, we cannot do better than 

 quote from liis paper in the annual report of his museum, 

 Bergen, 1888: 



"On opening large specimens of Myxine we generally 

 find well developed ova in their sexual organs. If we, 

 however, take smaller specimens, of about 28 to 32 centi- 

 meters in length, and examine their sexual organs, we 

 generally find that the anterior portion is but slightly 

 prominent, and contains very small and young ova, while 

 the posterior portion is often very broad and prominent, 

 is lobate, and has a distinct whitish color along its 

 margin, and has, in all respects, the appearance that we 

 would expect to find in a testis: and this it really is. If 

 we take a piece of the margin of this portion of the gen- 

 erative organ, tease it, and examine it in the fresh state 

 under the microscope, we generally find abundance of 

 spermatozoa in various stages of "development. There 

 can thus be no doubt that that portion of the generative 

 organ is a real male organ. * * * Those young speci- 

 mens of 28 to 30 centimeters in length are consequently 

 hermaphrodites, with quite immature ovaries, but well 

 developed testes, and they must be able to perform male 

 functions. If we now examine somewhat more minutely 

 the generative organ of the large specimens, which gen 

 erally contains a number of large and well developed 

 ova, we find that those ova occur only in the anterior 

 portion of the generative organ and that the mesoarium 

 of this portion is veiy broad and prominent, while the 

 membrane corresponding to the mesoarium of the pos- 

 terior portion of the generative organ is very narrow and 

 carries no reproductive elements, neither ova nor sperma- 

 tozoa. 



"If we examine specimens of Myxine of sizes between 

 that of these large females and that of the hermaphrodite 

 previously mentioned, we will often find specimens in 

 which the anterior portion of the generative organ is 

 rather prominent and contains oblong young ova, while 

 the posterior portion is of testicular nature and not very 

 prominent. These specimens seem consequently just to 

 be in a transitory stage between male and female state. 

 Indeed, on examining a sufficient number of specimens, 

 we will easily be able to find every transition stage from 

 hermaphrodite males to fully developed females, and 

 the rule seems to be that, the larger the specimen is, the 



more are the female organs developed, and the more do 

 the male organs disappear. 



"From what has been stated above we seem already 

 entitled to conclude that Myxine is generally, or always (?) 

 in its young state a male; while at a more advanced age 

 it becomes transformed into a female. Indeed, I have 

 not yet found a single female that did not show traces of 

 the early male stage. 



"Myxine glutinosa is a protandric hermaphrodite. Up 

 to a body length of about 32 or 33 centimeters it is a 

 male, after that time it produces ova. The proportion 

 between the posterior male portion of the reproductive 

 organ and the anterior female portion is not constant; 

 the male portion is generally about one-third of the whole 

 length of the organ. The few true males of Myxine 

 observed are probably transformed hermaphrodites. The 

 young testicular follicles, or capsules, have a structure 

 quite similar to that of the young ovarian follicles. 

 * * * Nearly ripe spermatozoa may be found in speci- 

 mens of Myxine at every season of the year. Myxine 

 deposits its ova at every season of the year." 



Deposited eggs of the hagfish are excessively rare. The 

 few specimens existing in museums have been obtained 

 by dredging, but the actual places of deposit remain to 

 be discovered. Perhaps we must seek them in deeper 

 water than that in which the fish itself is habitually 

 taken. A slime eel of a related genus was trawled bv 

 the Albatross in upward of 400 fathoms off the coast of 

 California, containing many mature eggs. 



We are indebted to Mr. Thomas Lee, one of the na- 

 turalists aboard the Fish Commission steamer Albatross 

 during her voyage to the Pacific, for the following inter- 

 esting communication about the southern hagfish, or 

 slime eel, Myxine australis: 



"While running through the Straits of Magellan in 

 February, 1888, I was much surprised by the slime-pro- 

 ducing powers of the hagfish. We took these fish at a 

 number of anchorages; but at Boija Bay the supply 

 seemed inexhaustible. At night we were skinning and 

 skeletonizing a number of gulls and cormorants, and put 

 all the refuse from the laboratory tables into our fish 

 baskets. This bait proved most attractive, and the bas- 

 kets came up with large quantities of hags and entirely 

 covered with a mass of slime. I then tried holding a hag 

 with stout forceps, to see how much more of this slime it 

 could produce. The fish tied itself into a ball about the 

 point of the forceps and almost immediately covered it- 

 self with slime. Repeatedly removing the slime I think 

 I collected a pint before the supply seemed to slacken, 

 and even then it seemed a hopeless job to get the fish free 

 from it. I could not discover how it was produced, and 

 can only testify to the fact of its very rapid production 

 and in great quantities." 



Couch describes a slime eel {Myxine yhdinosa) that 

 was placed in a receptacle holding three or four cubic 

 feet of water and filled it so entirely with slime that the 

 whole mass could be lifted out with a stick in a single 

 sheet. The lateral line at the sides of the belly contains 

 108 large glands, or mucous sacs, each with an open pore 

 on the upper surface, from which the slime is poured 

 out. Capt. J. W. Collins states that he has seen trawls 

 which were in the water three hours come up with cod 

 and haddock weighing from ten to fifteen pounds, having 

 their intestines wholly eaten out by slime eels. Some- 

 times when the trawls have been down from one to three 

 days certain fish will have all then: flesh eaten under the 

 skin; this applies to fish hooked in the gills that die very 

 soon after hooking. 



The pug nose eel (Simenchelysjxxrasiticus) burrows into 

 the flesh of halibut and sometimes eats its way along the 

 whole length of the vertebra?. 



Lampreys attach themselves to anything they can reach, 

 but they are found in mid depths or at the surface and 

 not on the bottom. Capt. Collins knows of one that came 

 up on a patent log that was towing at the rate of eight 

 or ten knots an hour. 



A species of Ophichthys has been taken out of cod, but 

 was probably swallosved and, perforating the abdominal 

 wall in its effort to escape, became encysted and hard- 

 ened in the flesh, just as frequently happens in the case 

 of the lant (Ammodytes americamis). The latter even 

 gets into the liver of its captor occasionally, but, strangely 

 enough, does not interfere with the health of the 

 swallower. 



THE TROUT OF STERLING LAKE. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I have just perused the article in your last issue on the 

 trout in Sterling Lake. For many years in the past I 

 was very familiar with that beautiful sheet of water and 

 spent a number of summers camped on its shores, when 

 its surroundings were wild and primitive, and almost 

 unknown to the outer world. It was a grand pond, with 

 waters as clear as crystal, cold and of great depth. 

 During the summer of 1865 I put in most of the season 

 there and made a special effort to captme some of the 

 salmon trout, which an old friend long resident in that 

 section had many years before assured me were denizens 

 of its waters. I tried deep trolling and every method I 

 could think of, but with a single exception without suc- 

 cess. One morning when I had about given up, I found 

 a trout of 21 bs. weight on a line which had been set in 

 water 150ft. deep. In many respects it resembled the 

 fish described in the article just read. It bore little 

 resemblance to a brook trout— head and tail as noted in 

 your article and a few small black and red spots on its 

 sides. The flesh was of a deep salmon color. I learned 

 from old Hirani Garrison, who was in the employ of the 

 Sterling Iron Co. and had charge of the outlet of the 

 lake, that some years before he had picked up a dead fitm 

 of the same kind in the outlet, which he found to weigh 

 151 bs. He also informed me that he had several times 

 observed pairs of these fish lying off the rocks, on the 

 edge of very deep water. 



Garrison had lived there for many years, and although 

 not a sportsman, had made the lake a" special study. He 

 knew of but one man who succeeded in capturing these 

 fish and he visited the lake alone during November, and 

 permitted no one to witness his methods. 



But there are other trout in the lake, which differ from 

 brook trout, although not so greatly as the fish I caught 

 in 1865. 



Several friends, during the winter of 1878-79, went 

 with me to Munroe, Orange county, to relieve the care 

 and worry of city toil, by having a tramx> with guns and 

 dogs through the woods. Birds being scarce one day I 



