Oct. 13, 1893.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



817 



day, and of flies to the season of the year. Few items of 

 interest baTe escaped the enthusiasm of the anglers and 

 the skill of the authoress. 



In the beginning we referred to "Favorite Flies" as a 

 superb work, and such it is in every particular. The 

 number of typographical errors is surprisingly small; the 

 reproductions in black, as well as in color, are in the best 

 style of modeirn art; and the book, as a whole, is delight- 

 ful tolook Upon; We can Confidently lay it before the 

 intending reader with the words of Henley, ''HiJe. habitat 

 fdicitas. Enquire within." 



Mrs. Marbury has fairly earned the thanks of every fly- 

 fisherman of the future, if not of the present, in that she 

 has collected and perpetuated in this book a mass of 

 valuable facts in no little danger of loss beyond recovery. 

 Its judicious reader will hardly know whether the more 

 to commend the originality of its conception or the 

 courage which undertook to embody that conception— a 

 eourage, by the way , only to be duly appreciated by him 

 Who has learned by experience the proneness of man to 

 ansT^er written questions by anything and everything 

 eiqept the matter in point, 



the book opens with a brief but suggestive and excel- 

 lent treatise on entomology. Then follows a history of 

 that pioneer and foundation fly of all artificial flies, the 

 red-hackle. The rest of the book is made up of colored 

 plates of flies, comments thereon, and geographically 

 i3lassified letters from all parts of the country where the 

 artificial fly is employed in regard to their use in the 

 region from which the letter emanates. 



This bald statement does, however, but scant justice to 

 She se?.op6 and Valtie of the work. The colored plates are 

 Executed in the very best style of the lithographic art. 

 BA^ithout other aid than from them, he who ties his own 

 Kies can, if be has the requisite material and skill, repro- 

 muce any fly in ths collection. Each plate is followed by 

 ■■emarks on the origin and merits of each fly depicted 

 ■therein, with an account of the natural insect, if any, 

 nrhich it is supposed to imitate: while the entire range of 

 HQgling literature has been ransacked in the most pains- 

 nMng manner to furnish whatever of fact or fancy may 

 or valtle or interest. When it is added that the 

 Kblored jjlates depict IT hackles, 18 salmon flies, 48 lake 

 Hies, 183 trout flies, and 58 bass fliesj the comprehensive 

 ■ghatacter of the collection, and the value of the detailed 

 tiomments on each of its 291 flies wiU be more apparent. 



It is to this portion of the book the angler of the future 

 will turn with most interest, and which makes it, what 

 •without doubt it is destined to remain for generations to 

 come, a prominent landmark in angling literature. 



Whatever of other reward she may receive for her 

 iaborSjMrs. Marbury may be assured that her contribution 

 will be quoted and her name remembered, long after all 

 of her contemporaries in angling literature are quite for- 

 .gotten except by the book collector. 



The value of this book is, however, by no means lim- 

 ited to that of a book of reference in which the angler of 

 the future may study the growth of his art and its ap- 

 pliances. The fly-fisherman of to-day who does not pos- 

 sess it lives below his privileges. From it he can make, 

 or cause to be made, a range of flies equal to any and 

 every emergency. In it he can probably find and identify 

 any fly which has touched his fancy and which he is un- 

 able to name. However great his knowledge and expe- 

 Mence, he cannot fail to be interested in and to profit at 

 all el^ents by guggestionj if nothing more, by the mass of 

 information scattered through the comments on the vari- 

 ous flies. And lastly, if he proposes a visit to some un- 

 fathiliar region, he need no longer worry as to whether 

 his stock of flies will meet the exigencies of the trip, for 

 in the book he will not only find the information he re- 

 quires geographically arranged for his convenient refer- 

 ence, but can identify the flies recommended from the 

 colored plates should the names be unfamiliar. 



This collection of over 300 letters from every part of 

 this country and Canada where fly-fishing is practiced, 

 answering more or less completely such well conceived 

 questions as the following is simply invaluable both as 

 to the present and the future: 



"Favorite fly or flies among those well known." 



"Testimony regarding the same, in connection with lo- 

 cality, time of day and season." 



"Facts relating to the origin of any fly, either those 

 well known or new creations." 



•'Incidents proving efficacy of above." 



"New flies — origin, time, name, place." 



"Theories regarding shape, size and kind of hooks." 



"Theories regarding snells, whether stained or clear, 

 light or heavy, twisted or single, short loops or long 

 strands." 



The perusal of these letters gave rise to many reflec- 

 tions, the temptation to repeat some of which here it is 

 difficult to withstand, I will, however, confine myself 

 to two. 



I was surprised to find how little progress that cardinal 

 tenet of the new school of fly-fisMng — a dark fly on a 

 dark day and a bright fly on a bright day — ^had made in 

 this country. I was also surprised as well as pleased to 

 find how much more general the use of eyed hooks for 

 flies, in place of those with a gut loop or strand, had 

 become than I supposed. While as to the former I am, 

 after some years of experiment, something of a "mug- 

 wump," with perhaps a slight bias in its favor, the eyed 

 hook has long seemed to me so very decided an improve- 

 ment that I have wondered at its tardy acceptance. 

 Still, as in the case of the split-bamboo rod, the law of the 

 survival of the fittest will doubtless in time work its per- 

 fpct work, and the snelled fly take its place with the 

 12Et. single-handed fly-rods of "our forefathers. 



"Favorite Flies" is justly entitled to the most hearty 

 commendation. HENB,r P. Wells. 



2^EW YoiiK, Oct. 10. ^^^^^ 



Maine Iiandlocked Salmon Waters. 



MoNSOJf, Me., Oct. 6. — The season just closed has been 

 a most successful one for trout and landlocked salmon 

 fishing in the lakes and ponds in this vicinity. Eepeci- 

 is this true of Lake Onoway, Long Pond and all of 

 ponds in that region where landlocked salmon abound. 

 A. T. Sanden, of 819 Broadway, New York city, who 

 an ardent sportsman, and who has a summer cottage 

 Lake Onaway, has spent the summer here and at that 

 lake, and has been rewarded by some of the finest catches 

 ; known hereabouts, I advise any who are desirous 

 rarning of new fishing territory in Maine to confer 



him, as he can give accurate informa^igo. 



. . .. ^ -p^ 



HERR MAX VON DEM BORNE. 



Almost from the date of the creation of the United 

 States Fish Commission, the literature of the Commission 

 and the columns of American journals that devote space 

 to the subjects of fish, fishing and fishculture, have made 

 frequent and honorable mention of Herr Max von dem 

 Borne, a distinguished German fishculturist who has 

 taken such an interest in, and so identified himself with, 

 what pertains to fish and fishculture in the United States 

 as well as in his own country, that his name has become 

 nearly as familiar to oUr eyes and ears as the names of 

 our own fishery experts. Translations of his papers, ex- 

 tracts from his books, records of his experiments and 

 observations have been freely printed, but never a sketch 

 of his life. 



His family began at Brunswick (Liineburg). A docu- 

 ment in the Archives of Wolfenbiittel, near the Hartz 

 Mountains, dated 1140, shows that the family belongs to 

 the oldest of the German nobility. They came with 

 Albrecht the Bear to the Mark Brandenburg, and then to 

 Pomeranla, where they have since remained as nobles, 

 fetidal warriors and landed proprietors, from the time of 

 the Crusaders to the present;. Herr von dem Borne was 

 born on the Knight Estate BemeuChen (which has been 

 in possession of the family since 1653, the year that 

 "Walton's Compleat Angler" was published) on Dec. 20, 

 1836. The knight estate consists of about 5,000 acres, 

 which contains several large lakes and through which the 

 river Mietzel runs, a considerable stream, according to a 

 map of Berneuchen, with tributary lakes and streams in 

 the irregular half circle of its course through the village 

 and adjoining estates. Upon arriving at a suitable age he 

 was sent to the Gymnasium (high school), at Berlin, and 

 later was a student at the Unil^ersities of Berlin and 

 Bonn. 



After he was graduated he became a minine engineer, 

 in which profession he served from 1847 to 1859, when he 

 became a landed proprietor on his ancestral estate and 

 engaged in the art of fishculture, hatching eggs, rearing 

 fry and breeding fish in ponds, rivers and lakes on an 

 extensive scalp, and the fish from Berneuchen are now 

 sent all over Europe. 



Herr von dem Borne has imported from America the 

 large and the small-mouth black bass, the rock bass, 

 calico bass, common sunfish, long-eared sunfish, dogfish, 

 common bullhead or bullpout, channel catfish, the com- 

 mon minnow and the crayfish. lie was a pioneer in in- 

 troducing the black bass into European waters, and his 

 success with both species of this fish has been marked, so 

 much so that he is recognized as the father of the black 

 bass in Germany. A brief mention of the initial importa- 

 tion of the black bass wiU be of interest. In February, 

 1883, under the care of Mr. George Eckerdt 75 small-mouth 

 and 7 large-mouth base were sent to Berneuchen, All but 

 10 of the former and 3 of the latter died. The small-mouth 

 bass were from 7 to 13 centimetres long, that is, roughly, 

 from 2f to 5in. in length. The large-mouth bass were 

 from 25 to 31 centimetres long, or from 10 to 12in. 



On June 15, 1884, a little more than a year after they 

 were received, the large-mouth bass spawned in Herr von 

 dem Borne's ponds, and 2,000 of the fry were caught and 

 placed in a pond by themselves. Jime 32, 1885, the small- 

 mouth bass spawned and 22,000 of the fry were taken, and 

 from that time the black bass have been propagated at 

 Berneuchen with unvarying success. I mention the date 

 of spawning to show that transportation made no change 

 in the time of reproduction, and to again call attention to 

 outrageous laws that permit bass to be caught in June. 

 The rainbow trout is also propagated in the ponds at 

 Berneuchen, and they have prospered from the first. The 

 following orders and honorary distinctions have been 

 conferred upon Herr von dem Borne: Knights Compan- 

 ion of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem; Prussian Crown 

 Order, Third Class; Brunswick Knights Cross, First Class 

 (Order of Henry the Lion): Chamberlain to the German 

 Emperor, which office he now holds. He has been a 

 member of the Deutscher Fischerei Verein since its 

 organization in 1870, and is an honorary member of the 

 American Fisheries Society (one of three living members): 

 of the London Fly-Fishers' Club: of the Piscatorial Soci- 

 ety, London; the Bavarian Fishery Association, Munich: 

 the Austrian Fishery Association, Vienna; Societe Cen- 

 trale pour la Protection de la Peche Fluviale, Brussels, and 

 Societe Centrale dAgriculture de France, Paris. He is 

 in possession of several gold and silver medals and 

 diplomas from the International Fisheries Exhibitions in 

 Berlin in 1880 and London in 1883. and many others: but 

 the prize he values most is the second valuable prize in 

 the Berlin Fisheries Exhibition of 1880 (the first being 

 awarded to Prof. Spencer F. Baird), and presented by the 

 German Emperor, a large and beautifully carved book 

 case. 



His literary works comprise An Illustrated Pocketbook 

 on Angling, 1875 (third edition 1892); Guide for Anglers 

 through Germanv, Austria-Hungary and Switzerland, 

 1877: A Book on Fishculture, now in third edition; Hand 

 Book on Fishing and Fishculture, with Professors Ben- 

 ecke and Dalmer; An Ichthyological Map of Germany, 

 Austria- Hungary and Switzerland, and numerous smaller 

 books and treatises, including pamphlets upon the Amer- 

 ican SalmonidcB in Europp; the American Large and 

 Small-Mouth Black Bass in Germany; The American Cat- 

 fish in Germany; Tke American Calico Bass in Germany, 

 and the American Rock Base in Germany, These books 

 are illustrated with excellent figures of the fish, tackle, 

 etc., and the author evinced such a thorough knowledge 

 of their habits and peculiarities as to give evidence of his 

 keen and indefatigable study and observation as fishcul- 

 turist and ichthyologist. 



Perhaps I may be pardoned if I refer to one matter in 

 connection with black bass in both the United States and 

 Germany with some personal satisfaction. When the 

 bass in the ponds at Berneuchen reached a size to afford 

 sport, Herr von dem Borne experimented with various 

 flies of his own design and construction to find what they 

 would take best without reference to the flies of this 

 country. These experiments resulted in a fly which has 

 been named "Von dem Borne" in America, and which 

 the designer considered the most killing bass fly of all 

 that he' tried in German waters. The predominant 

 colors in this fly are the same that I found best for 

 black bass over here and which were embodied in a fly 

 called the "Cheney." In fact the colors and their ar- 

 rangement in head, body, hackle and tail were almost 

 identical in the two fiies, but one had wings, the other 

 did not, It is fitting thi,t m closing a brief Bketch of 



Herr von dem Borne I should refer to his friend and col- 

 league, the late Dr. von Behr, who was the president of 

 the Deutscher Fischerei Verein. In a recent letter from 

 Miss von Behr she says: "All my father's books relating 

 to fisheries (and the greater part of them was American), 

 and the large correspondence he has been leading on the 

 subject for seventeen years, have gone to Herr von dem 

 Borne according to my father's expressed wish, and so 

 has the great picture of Prof. Spencer Baird, which 

 always bung in my father's room and was so much cher- 

 ished by him. Herr von dem Borne has now presented 

 the books to the Bureau of the Deutsche Fischerei Verein, 

 thereby to lay the foundation of a library." 



These three great fishculturists held one another in 

 highest esteem, and the bonds between them only exem- 

 plified the Baying that the whole, world is kin. 



A. N. Cheney. 



THE KEKOSKEE FISH STORY. 



Boston, Oct. 6. — I have been reading the Kekoskee 

 fish story and enjoying it as I have enjoyed nothing 

 since "Antwine's" pigeon story appeared in F orest and 

 Stream. You remember how "Antwine" loaded up his 

 old musket to the muzzle and fired up through the dense 

 flight of pigeons going over and shutting: out the day- 

 light, and how the pigeons began to rain down till they 

 buried the astonished himter up to his neck, and as ho 

 with difficulty climbed out of the mass he saw thespqt of 

 sunlight, let through the hole created by his shot, moving 

 off across the country. 



I have read the Kekoskee fish story over and over 

 again, as I gained strength to do it after the first reading, 

 just to sort of fix the details of it in my mind and help 

 my imagination center on the great event. I have laughed 

 over it till the tears come and I am weak and faint, but 

 not in derision or unbelief — for I belive every word of it. 

 That story must be true. Bat I have laughed in sheer 

 happiness at once more reading a fish story that is 

 adequate, comprehensive and soul-satisfying, not only in 

 general plan and outline but in every feature and smallest 

 detail. 



It is a story which, marvelous as it is, will, I am con- 

 vinced, bear every test. It is only when you come to 

 work it out in various ways — for example mathematically 

 — that you begin to appreciate its true grandeur. 



The run of buD heads lasted two weeks and the geyser of 

 fish at the hole below the dam spouted all that time, day 

 and night — as we must assume — and all on account of the 

 terrible vis a tergo of the body of struggling fish confined 

 by the ice, which, with the banks and bed of the river, 

 formed a gigantic sausage filler six miles long. 



With just a thought of the deplorable and utter waste 

 of, not water power, but fish power, whict if proi)erly 

 stored and applied might have been sufficient to run all 

 the machinery of Kekoskee from that time to this, and 

 perhaps by this means to have averted the sad decadence 

 of the town — let us try by cold figures to get some idea of 

 the mass of fish which that geyser yielded during the 

 period of eruption. 



The widow Sneider counted 900 loads of bullheads going 

 past her place in one morning, and the road she lived on 

 was "only one of several leading out into the country." 

 Suppose we allow five roads. There were probably more, 

 but we will say five, for like Mr. Hough, we wish to treat 

 this matter "in a careful and temperate manner." It is 

 expressly stated that the widow only counted a part of 

 the loads which passed. Probably she got tired of count- 

 ing and gave it up in the afternoon, but that the proces- 

 sion went right on just the same, all hands doing at least 

 a fair day's work, not knowing when the geyser might 

 peter out. 



We will, however, take no account of the afternoon 

 haul, and we wUl assume that the news didn't get fairly- 

 over the county till the middle of the first week. This 

 would give, not counting Sundays, say nine working 

 forenoons, and 8,100 loads for one road and for five roads 

 40,500 loads of bullheads. Certainly a very big haul. 

 But now the simplicity of truth begins to affect us, and 

 we see how it was possible for the soil of the county and 

 the quality of the pork product of the region to be affected 

 as they were. 



With all this mass of bullheads to feed to the stock and 

 spread over the surrounding country, it would be a bull- 

 headed idiot who wouldn't believe the statement as to the 

 result. 



Moreover, if, as I am convinced many statisticians 

 would do, we allow for afternoon work also, we should 

 have a grand total of 81,000 loads of bullheads. 



I claim that even this would be a conservative estimate, 

 as we have not counted in the haul of the first three days 

 or Sundays, nor said anything of the layers of black bass 

 and pickerel that were discovered after the lava flow of 

 bullheads ceased. 



We must remember that the geyser was "50ft. across 

 and about 12ft. high," and kept "erupting" all the time. 

 The rate of flow is not stated, but could doubtless be ap- 

 proximately determined by calculation from the time 

 involved and the estimated mass of the erupted material. 



The saddest thing about the whole aft'air was the ruin 

 of the reputation of the town and hence of its commercial 

 prosperity because of the simple and truthful nature of 

 the people who, knowing the facts in their remarkable 

 history, could not tell a lie. There is, however, left to 

 them and to us the one consolation that this noble asser- 

 tion of the truth of their great fish story would be taken 

 at its true value by St. Peter when they come to knock 

 at his gate, for he was once a fisherman and "knows how 

 it was himself." 



I hope this consolation will also be of value to Mr. 

 Hough who has so often in the boldest and most fearless 

 way in the columns of Foeest and Stbeam — and evidently 

 sustained by the same high principles — taken the same 

 risk that was incurred by the inhabitants of Kekoskee. 



C. H. Ames. 



Purifying the Neversink. 



The Neversink River has been liberally stocked with 

 trout by the New York Fish CnmmiBsion; and it has been 

 cursed with fish pirates who have taken quantities of fish 

 illegally. Dr. Willett Kidd, the State Game Protector of 

 the Second District, has secured evidence against two of the 

 worst offenders. He has brought suits against Thos. Cud.- 

 deback, of Deer Park, Orange county, for maintaining 

 an eel rack in the Neversink, and against J. Johnson, of 

 Gilman'B, SulUyan fjounty, for catching tfout in a trap. 



