Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Tkrms, 94 a Year. 10 Crs. a Copt. 
Sex Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 18, 1896 
i 
VOL. XLVL— No. 16 
No. 846 Broadway, Nkw York. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page viii. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press 
on Tuesdays. Correspondence intended for 
publication should reach us by Mondays and 
as much earlier as may be practicable. 
LIFE HISTORY OF THE SALMON, 
Next to the capture of the salmon the investigation of 
its life history claims the deepest interest of the angler- 
naturalist. There is no royal road to learning the habits 
of thiB king of the rivers. The little that we know has 
been laboriously collated from the observations of many 
students in various lands. 
The sea-going habit of the fish takes it early beyond 
our reach and no one follows it or sees it under satisfac- 
tory conditions again until the near approach of the 
spawning season and the rapid ascent of the fresh-water 
streams. 
On the rivers no observing stations exist except those of 
a special and temporary character, established in the in- 
terest of some statistical bureau or fishcultural organiza- 
tion. This seems remarkable when we consider the wide 
distribution of the salmon family, the size and enormous 
number of individuals, their intense interest to the angler, 
and the surpassing value of the industries to which they 
give rise. 
We know that the Atlantic salmon "roams along the 
coasts of Great Britain in summer in search of food, and 
may be found close inshore many miles from where any 
fresh water enters the sea, loitering in estuaries and also 
at the mouths of rivers up which it purposes ascending." 
It is also well known that the same species enters rivers 
of the United States during spring and summer, passes on 
to its spawning grounds, and returns to the sea after the 
reproductive mission has been fulfilled. 
The temporary residence of the young in fresh water 
and their assumption of a silver livery preparatory to 
their departure to marine feeding grounds is also fully 
spread upon the records. 
There is on the Pacific coast a group of salmon which is 
no less interesting than the salmon of the Rhine, the Tay, 
the Restigouche and the Penobscot. Five members form 
the group, and we speak of them as the quinnat, dog 
salmon, silver salmon, red salmon and little humpback. 
These live in the North Pacific, from whence they 
ascend rivers of Asia and northwestern America for the 
purpose of reproducing their kind. Some of them travel 
only a short distance from the sea to deposit their eggs; 
others make journeys exceeding 1,000 miles, and after the 
fatigues, injuries and privations incident to spawning, 
none are left alive to return to the ocean. 
It has been pretty generally supposed that the Pacific 
salmon becomes sexually mature in four years from its 
birth, and that when the young fish enter the sea they 
remain away from the rivers until ready to spawn. This 
is certainly not true in all cases, as will appear from what 
follows. 
Mr. H. J. Barling, who manages a salmon fishery at 
Karluk, Alaska, noticed small salmon during many sea- 
sons returning from sea with the adults. To quote his 
own language: 
"For many seasons past I have noticed the small fry in 
surprising numbers standing inshore with the adults, and 
while I was satisfied that they were small salmon, I could 
not so positively state ere this on account of not being 
able to catch them before they escaped through the larger 
meshes. I was enabled to furnish you the few which I 
sent by backing up the nets with the small mesh seine at 
the time we caught over 1,000 small salmon and only 900 
adults. 
"Some of my friends on the (Karluk) river always 
maintained that these small fish were trout, and even 
now some aie hardly satisfied. I will state, however, 
that these small fry salmon are not to be seen in numer- 
ous quantities after August 10. 
"I have always maintained ever since I have been in 
Karluk that all the fish we catch are not Karluk bred 
fish, being merely attracted inshore by the fresh waters 
from the Karluk River. This year (1895) was not as much 
so as in many years past, but that was caused by the ex- 
treme lengths of the nets driving the salmon outside the 
range of the inner buoys." 
The young fish proved upon examination to be red sal- 
mon, but there is no reason to believe the habit is con- 
fined to that species; in fact, other kinds have been ob- 
served to come along the shores and enter the Karluk 
beyond the influence of the tides. We may be justified 
in believing that young salmon return with the adults at 
will, and if observations were continuously made at suit- 
able localities on salmon rivers this truth would be easily 
established. 
Concerning the age at which the quinnat or Columbia 
River salmon breeds, the most satisfactory conclusions 
have been reached by Dr. Jousset de Bellesme, director 
of the Trocadero aquarium, Paris, from materials obtained 
in the United States. Eggs of the quinnat were forward- 
ed, and there is now a steady yield of eggs from acclima- 
tized salmon. 
Even in the four small basins devoted to California sal- 
mon in Paris 50,000 to 60,000 eggs are produced annually 
and 30,000 fry are reared. The fish after five generations 
in fresh water spawn as freely as in the first generation, 
and they mature at the age of 3 years, when they are 
31in. long and weigh from 13 to lolbs. 
A MAN UP A TREE. 
There is published in Port Jervis, N. Y., a farmers' 
journal, which is engaged in an incessant and all-the- 
year-round campaign against game protection. Its edi- 
torial platform calls for the free coinage of silver, the 
immediate abolition of all fish and game laws, and the 
contribution to its own treasury of one dollar and a half 
from every farmer who shares its sentiments, and for 
whose life, liberty and pursuit of happiness it is so val- 
iantly waging warfare. The game laws it denounces as 
enacted at the behest of hired attorneys of sporting mil 
lionaires; the operations of the laws, it points out, afford 
constant examples of tyranny and outrage on the hard- 
working farmer. Game wardens, as viewed through its 
spectacles, are all sneaks and cowardly minions who 
should incontinently be dumped into the creek. The 
Port Jervis eaitor is buoyed up by the proud conscious- 
ness that he is pounding the Legislature for the abolition 
of these obnoxious laws, although we are bound to say 
that the Legislature most shamelessly has not yet come to 
a realizing sense that it is being pounded; for the mill at 
Albany goes gayly on year after year grinding out its new 
grist, and new burdens are laid upon the already stagger- 
ing Port Jervis farmer. 
We have never been able to understand the reason for 
this intense game law opposition in the particular vicinity 
where this farmers' journal is published; but in the news 
dispatches of last week there was an item which may 
give some clue to the solution of the puzzle. In the New 
York Sun of April 10 was a report from Port Jervis of 
what happened to Jacob Flint, an aged farmer of Sulli- 
van county, when he was pruning an apple tree on the 
morning of April 9. As told in the Sun (wherein if you 
see it it is so) farmer Flint was perched up on a ladder 
12ft. from the ground, cutting the suckers from an apple 
tree, when he suddenly found himself in the midst of 
hundreds of wild geese, which were making their flight 
northward. They swept through the branches on each side, 
and threw farmer Flint to the ground below. At this point 
the narrative ends. Whether the old man was killed or 
escaped with the fracture of a half-dozen ribs is not re- 
corded. 
This omission of further particulars is in itself full of 
significance. We are to understand that there was no 
need to tell the rest; that every Port Jervis farmer would 
supply the sequel for himself. So many farmers there 
have been knocked out of apple trees by wild geese that 
all the other farmers — the survivors, so to speak — know 
perfectly well what happens to each new victim. The 
story, then, iB a plain and simple account of an every-day 
occurrence, told in the fewest possible words and with no 
ornamentation or embroidery by the reporter. This is 
something that has perhaps happened to hundreds of 
Port Jervis farmers who possess apple orchards which 
they prune. Nothing is more common, they can tell us 
from experience, than for wild geese to sweep by hun- 
dreds through the branches of apple trees while making 
their flight northward, and if a farmer happens to be 
standing on a ladder among those branches at the precise 
moment when the geese pass through them, nothing is 
more certain than that he will be thrown to the ground 
below. Any old goose shooter will tell you that it is 
almost impossible to resist the impact of one hundred wild 
geese, let alone several hundreds. Wild geese are popu- 
larly believed to fly at a rate of 90 miles an hour, or H 
miles per minute, or, roughly, 131ft. per second. A goose 
will average 81bs. in weight, and 100 geese would weigh 
8001bs. Imagine then the shock experienced by a man 
weighing say 1501bs., balanced uncertainly on a teetery 
ladder, very likely an old one, among the branches of an 
apple tree, when struck by a loose mass weighing 8001bs., 
moving at a rate of 131ft. per second. Obviously the 
whole weight would not strike the man at once, but it 
may be questioned whether the rapid succession of blows 
would not be harder to resist than the single heavier 
one. 
This, however, is but idle speculation. The solemn fact 
remains that in the aerial and unequal conflict of man 
and nature— man up an apple tree and nature in the form 
of feathered cannon balls whizzing through the air — man 
must "come off his perch." Here is found full and 
sufficient ground for the journalistic stand taken by the 
Port Jervis agricultural editor in opposition to the game 
laws. The issue for which he is contending is a simple 
one — down with the game or down with the farmer. One 
or the other must go to the ground. Let it be the game. 
Every one is entitled to prune his apple trees in peace, to 
climb ladders in security, to hold his ancestral acres un- 
assailed by the flying battalions of the air. How crimi- 
nally foolish is it then to enact tyrannous game laws and 
to turn loose an army of sneaking game wardens to pro- 
tect the deadly geese. Repeal the laws. Dismiss the 
wardens. Exterminate the game. Let the honest agri- 
culturist live out his life unvexed and unafraid. The 
Port Jervis journalist is engaged in a just cause. We 
trust that the dollars and the half dollars may flow into 
his coffers and that his subscription list may wax bigger 
and bigger until not a game statute shall remain, nor a 
wild goose be left to imperil the life of an honest man up 
his own apple tree. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
It is said that President Cleveland was actuated in his 
nomination of the new Fish Commissioner by a determina- 
tion to eliminate from the affairs of the Commission any 
undue preponderance of scientific influence; it was his 
desire to put the Commission on a practical basis. Those 
who viewed with apprehension the accession of Commis- 
sioner Brice, believing that in the new incumbent there 
would be found one who was neither scientific nor prac- 
tical, will find little reassurance in the interview with the 
Commissioner which we copy from the Washington 
Star. Mr. Brice talks blithesomely of locating his salmon 
hatcheries near the spawning beds, where he says he 
proposes to take the eggs from the beds and to put in 
their places the fry after hatching. This is to outline a 
programme of absolute impracticability. One can no 
more take salmon eggs from the spawning bed than they 
can take up water from the sand of the desert into which 
it has sunk. The new Commissioner has begun the 
wrecking of the Commission by discharging chief clerk 
Gill, and it is rumored that other employees of the Com- 
mission, who know their work thoroughly and upon 
whom as upon Mr. Gill the efficiency of the service de- 
pended, will in their turn be dispensed with also. 
The Brackett-Husted bill in the New York Legislature, 
which ostensibly is for the improvement of the naviga- 
tion of the Hudson River, but really is to authorize the 
devastation of vast areas of the Adirondacks by the pulp 
millers, is one of the most impudent jobs ever proposed 
at Albany. It gives into the hands of a commission of 
lumbermen and pulp manufacturers the watershed of the 
Hudson in eight Adirondack counties; authorizes them to 
dam anew any stream which has ever been dammed, 
which practically means all streams in the territory, and 
grants license to flood forest lands by the square mile. 
The measure has already advanced far toward final pass- 
age, but it will not be too late to defeat it if the Legisla- 
ture is made to understand how the public regards this 
barefaced attempt to despoil the North Woods for indi- 
vidual greed. 
The Forest and Stream is now domiciled in a hand- 
some suite of offices in the New York Life Building, No. 
346 Broadway, corner of Leonard street, two blocks north 
of the former location. The present entrance is on 
Leonard street. The offices are on the eighth floor, 
rooms 809 to 813. 
