Jan. 16, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Fisheries, Game and Forest Report. 
A FEW advance copies of the ISTew York Fisheries, Game 
and Forest Commissioner's report for 1895 have been issued 
to tlie press, and the newspaper notices have Ibeen tlie means 
of causing an unprecedented demand for the reports. The 
applications have been sent to the ofBce of the Commisdon 
in Albany, to the Commissioners and others at their homes 
and elsewhere, and already the Bumber of applications for 
copies of the report exceed' the number of copies printed for 
distribution. Up to Jan. 6 the Commission had not received 
from the printer the reports to i)e distributed from its office ; 
nor has the Legislature received the copies assigned to its 
members. When all the books are bound and delivered to 
the departments it will require a little time to make the dis- 
tribution, and when it is made I imagine that many people 
will be disappointed at not obtaining the copies they have 
asked for, unless the Legislature should order another edi- 
tion printed to supply the demand, Mr. Taylor, the secre- 
tary of the Commission, told me on Jan. 6 rhat he had re- 
ceived nearly 200 applications for copies of the report tbat 
morning, and that number is but a small part of the grand 
total on file, I judge that it will be practically impossible 
to even reply to the applications until after the distribu- 
tion of the reports has been made and it is known what the 
shortage really is, so the applicants will not know for some 
little lime to come what the fate of their applications may 
be. The Commissioners are powerless to remedy the exist- 
ing condition of affairs, much as they regret it, and if it 
shall be in their power eventually they will furnisb a copy 
of their report to each person applying for it, otherwise they 
will have to furnish copies until all are gone in the order in 
which the applications are filed. The newspapers have 
given notice that copies of the report can be obtained for the 
asking, overlooking the fact that the edition is limited by 
law, while there is no limit to the applications. 
Frost Fish. 
A considerable of my time is spent away from my home, 
and during my absence newspapers (and I am sorry to add 
letters) accumulate in formidable numbers. Always upon 
my return I try, so far as I can, to reply to the letters, but 
am generally so far behind in my replies that if by any 
chance the pile of unanswered letters should be reduced to 
reasonable limits I imagine it would be cause for rejoicing 
in the household, for 1 cannot be very companionable when 
spending days and nights in letter writing. Newspapers I 
do not ever pretend to read, but a member of my family reads 
them for me by proxy and blue-pencils everything relating 
to fish and fishing which they may contain. If an item is 
not marked with pencil the papers may be ever so carefully 
arranged in consecutive order and conveniently placed, and 
yet I miss it. Very recently I was told that there was an 
article about frost fish in one of the papers, and it had not 
been marked, but I could easily find it in a certain papsr of 
such a date, as the caption was "Frost Fish" in large letters. 
It was something past midnight when I got to the frost fish 
business, and I then searched the file of the particular paptr 
and searched it again without avail. The house was still 
and I finally gave up the search and retired. The next 
morning at breakfast 1 remarked that I had searched for 
the frost fish, but could not find it, and in the future if 
articles were not marked I could not undertake to look for 
them, and the only time to mark an article was when the 
paper was in hand. My wife said she could find the item 
at once, as she knew exactly where to look for it This she 
did, and handed me a paper containing about two sticks of 
matter headed "Fish— Frost." It proved to be a marriage 
notice of Arthur Fish and Mary A. Frost, with a list of the 
persons present at the ceremony. 
Lone-Distance Fly-Casting. 
The English sportsmen's papers have had quite a bit to say 
of late about Mr. Alexander Grant and his patented vibrating 
fishing rod, whi-h seems to exceed in power, any other fly- 
casting rod made. Mr. Grant made a public exhibition of 
bis rods. With a salmon rod of 20ft. he made a cast on Dec 
10 of 168ft. With a rod of 18ft. oin. he cast 162ft. With a 
rod of 10ft. he cast 111ft. The caster stood 15in. above the 
water level. Silver Grey, of Lmid and Water, then tried 
the salmon rods, and with the longer one made a cast of 
l48ft and with the shorter one 13oft 
The next day, with a rod of 19ft., Mr. Grant cast laQft. 
5in., and with a rod of 16ft. lOin. made a cabt of 148ft. The 
correspondent of Land and Water made a cast with the 
shorter of these two rods of 132 t 9in. 
On the 12th Mr. Grant cast again, standing 1.3in. above the 
water level, and with the rod 18ft. 5in. long made a cast of 
164fc. 6in. Mr. Marston, writing of the 'casting, says the 
days were unfavorable. On the 12th "it was a very wet, 
cold afternoon, with a strong down-stream wind, coming 
every now and then in gusts from all quarters," 
The casts were measured from the point where the caster 
stood to the point where the fly fell on the water. All the 
above casts were made with a trout fly on a trout leader, and 
the fly dropped so lightly on the water that it was like'dew 
falling. With a salmon fly Mr. Grant made a cast of 150ft. 
6in. with the rod 18ft. Sin. long. Mr. John Earight, the 
Irish world's ehampi.n fly-caster, was present and pro- 
nounced the casting most astonishing. 
What is a vibrating rod? Silver Grey says: "It was in 
March, 1893, that Mr. Grant's ideas on the scientific man- 
ufacture of fly-rods were first placed before the public. 
Since then Mr. Grant has continued to pursue his studv of 
the laws of gravitation and of nature, with the result thai his 
now perfected fly-rod surpasses in every respect any rod that 
has hitherto been made. 
"This I say w ith all respect to the many good rod makers 
which we have; but it is an incontrovertible fact, and by 
unbiased minds must be admitted as such. Mr. Grant, who 
is far from being robust, and weighs barely 1401bs., lays no 
claim to being a champipn fly easier, and his object in visit- 
ing the Thames was not to cut records, but to show what 
could be done with his rods, even with the moderate 
strength Which he possesses. His principle is the graduation 
and unity of force from butt to tip of the rod, and this prin- 
ciple is supplemented by the gradation of the running and 
casting line and the vibrating rings; but while there is a 
secret in the making of these rods which I cannot even hint 
at, Mr. Grant's patent lies in the splice I cannot better ex- 
plain the nature of this splice than by giving the substance 
of a conversation between myself and a very well known 
expert, which occurred while the trials were in progress at 
Kingston on Saturday : 
" 'The bestrod that can possibly be made is of one piece of 
perfect wood.'" 
"I assented. 
" 'Then how is it that these splices are thicker, and have, 
80 to speak, a shoulder on them? They would represent a 
swelling in certain places if the rod was solid.' 
"Yes,' I replied, 'but as soon as you cut wood the weakest 
point in it afterward is the splice, and these splices are so 
shaped and ctrengthened that the vibration and power of the 
wood is maintained as if it were one piece.' 
"Another peculiarity of these splices is that they are self- 
tightening, and can be put together- almost as qu ckly as or- 
dinary joints." 
All tlie casts that I have mentioned as having been made 
by Mr, Grant were Spey or Welsh casts, or what we call in 
this country switch casts. Mr. H. W. Hawes has a record 
of 102ft. at switch casting with a trout rod, made at Central 
Park in 1887. Mr. Marston speaks of the English casting as 
"an elaboration of the Bpey cast," or "I should be inclined 
to call it rather a simplification of it, for anything more 
easy than Mr. Grant's style I never saw. I tried the rod and 
the cast, and found that I could very soon get the knack of 
it, and so did Mr. David Wilson, of the Fly-Fishers' CJub. 
I like the feel of Mr. Grant's rods very much, and I like the 
patent splice; but when he tells me he has got some secret 
power which he imparts to his rods, which he discovered by 
accident almost when studying the effects of sound, or per- 
haps I should say the laws of sound — well, T confess I can- 
not credit it. That Mr. Grant believes he has discovered this 
mysterious power, or at auy rate the application of it to 
rods, I am sure, for that he is an honest man I am certain." 
Mr. Marston looks at the rods from a practical, common- 
sense standpoint, and appears to approve of them, at least 
he admits that with them the longest casts in the world have 
been made, and yet he says he would like to see a fair test 
made with the rods against other i;ods of same length and 
weight, and probably we will hear more about the vibrating 
rods later. A, JST. Che.net. ' 
NETTING IN LAKE ONTARIO. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
A special dispatch to the New York Evenitig Post reads as 
follows : "The Fisheries Department at Ottawa has received 
information that the Lake Huron fisheries are in a critical 
cbndition, A number of Canadian fishermen propose to 
leave these waters and fish in the lakes of the Rainy Eiver 
and Lake of the Woods districts, as they cannot make the 
Lake Huron fisheries pay. This serious depletion has arisen 
from overfishing." 
From ihis we see that the just retribution, which has long 
ago been meted out to the netters of the other Great Lakes, 
has at last descended on the netters of the most fruitful and 
apparently inexhaustible lake of all. It is the last of our 
geese which the netters are ripping open to find the source 
of the golden eggs, for such certainly have been in the past 
the great lake fisheries. 
The history of food fishing in our Great Lakes is a pitiable 
recital of brutish ignorance and reckless greed; a slaughter 
of spawning fish which has resulted in the complete extinc- 
tion of some species and the decimation of all. 
Other causes besides netting may have conspired to drive 
the Atlantic salmon from Ontario, but the damming and 
drying up of tributary streams does not account for the 
enormous decrease in other food fish. 
In the golden age of netting it was a notorious f^-ct that 
the bulk of the fish were caught just before or during the 
spawning season, for it was then only that trout, wall-eyed 
pike, whitefish and ciscoes visited shoal waters, and it 
naturally followed that those waters most resorted to for 
spawning purposes fairly bristled with man's engines of de- 
struction. 
First were used seines and gill nets, and if market-fishing 
had been limited to these devices Lake Ontario would still 
swarm with food fish. The profits of the business, however, 
begot a resistless greed, and brought the deadly salt-water 
pound net, which, by its wholesale, indiscriminate slaughter 
of spawn-bearing fish, in a very few years killed an indus- 
try employing hundreds of men and thousands of capital. 
As fishing got poorer, the pound net was gradually aban- 
doned, as aside from the initial cost of the net, which was 
great, it was expensive work setting and fishing them. They 
were abandoned too late to save the fish, however, for the 
former myriads of trout, pike, whitefish and ciscoes had 
been caught out oi driven away. 
As the food fish became scarce netters turned their atten- 
tion to fish heretofore despised: bass, perch, etc. 
Then came the trap net, undoubtedly the invention of the 
devil, incomparably worse than the pound net, for this rea- 
son : the latter can be set only on a mud bottom, which 
means generally water from 18 to 30ft, deep; while the trap 
net, not depending on stakes, can be set anywhere, even on 
the very rocky shoals where bass spawn and feed, and on 
the shelving shores along which they travel. 
It thus transpires that the mantle of the old pound netters 
has fallen on the trap netters, who, the food fish being gone, 
are waging the same war of extermination against game fish 
and vermin. 
In extenuation of their (I grieve to say it) lawful but 
destructive netting of bass, these market fishermen say that, 
being unable to sell or possess bass before May 30, they do 
not catch spawn-hearing, spawning or spawn-tending 'fish. 
In this assertion they ignorantly or willfully attempt to mis- 
lead. In more southern waters bass do spawn in May, 
sometimes early in May. In Kensico Lake (twenty miles 
from New YorK city) lhave seen female bass tending broods 
of young fuUy fin. long late in May, bat in more northern 
and colder waters the spawning season is delayed, and I 
venture to assert that unprejudiced investigation will show 
that more bass spawn in Ontario after than before Decora- 
tion Day. I have caught female bass in Chaumont Bay late 
in August still spent and thin from spawning. How could 
that be if they had reared their brood in May? Pish do not 
spawn on a fixed day any more than buds open or birds nest 
at the same time in all latitudes. When all climatic condi- 
tions are fulfilled, especially when tne temperature of the 
water becomes fitting, then and then only do bass spawu, 
it may be May 1 or July 1, 
For all practical purposes it matters little whether bass are 
caught before or just after spawning, the result is tqually 
destructive. Bass not only protect their nesi, but also their 
young, for some weeks after hatching, and the nest is soon 
emptied or the callow brood quickly gobbled -up if deprived 
of the protector. Unless neiting is quickly stopped in 
spawning waters the story of the bass will be that of the 
food fish. 
The puerility or iniquity of our fish legislation has no 
counterpart in history. When compelled by popular clamor 
to legislate for the protection of fish in Ontario, our legisla- 
tors passed a law prohibiting netting, etc., within one mUe 
of shore throughout the lake except in Mexico Bay, Guflfla 
Bay, Chaumont Bay and Three Mile Bay; in other words* 
netting was stopped where it would do least harm and has 
been perpetuated where it would do most harm, for these 
bays are the natural spawning grounds of the whole lake. 
Gufiin. Chaumont and Three Mile bays are shallow and 
landlocked, have shelving, rocky shores, and are full Of 
rocky reefs and shoals where fish may spawn and feed, and 
yet this is the only part of the lake open to shore netting. 
I make no charges of corruption, but I know that when 
this law was framed our legislators must have been deceived, 
and I think willfully deceived. Why should Henderson 
Bay, Black River Bay and the St. Lawrence River (Thou- 
sand Islands) be protected and Chaumont Bay left open to 
netters? I'll tell you. In Henderson Harbor, Sackett's 
Harbor, Dexter and down the river there are hotel interests 
and associations of guides and boatmen, which, to preserve 
the custom and patronage of anglers, have compromised 
with netters by telling them if they will relinquish their 
waters they may devastate Chaumont Bay unmolested. All 
interested know that it is better fishing ten times over in 
Chaumont Bay than in either of these other places, and they 
also know that, if we had the protection they have, hotel 
men and boatmen would come there and make the resort 
famous. It is for their interest to keep Chaumont unknown 
or even to ruin its fishing, and they are accomplishing their 
aim. 
While this sharp practice may be all right from a business 
point of view, it is unworthy of sportsmen, and ye', it is as 
the latter that these men go to Albany and get netters driven 
from their shores. I am not logrolling for hotel men nor 
for oarsmen, but speak for a large class of sportsmen who, 
like me. would like to be able to go out and catch a half 
dozen bass without losing tackle on a trap net, and who, like 
me, when sailing, don't like to be always on the lookout for 
submerged pound-net stakes. 
The present law is an example of class legislation. Let it 
be renu died. Either prohibit netting, etc. , within a mile of 
land all over the lake, or throw the whole lake open to net- 
ters. The first course is best, and is possible if united action 
be taken and petty jealousies thrown aside. The latter 
course would be an iniiprovement on the present state of af- 
fairs, because some of the netters now sterilizing the lake by 
netting its spawning beds would go elsewhere and do less 
harm. Last summer scores of trap and hoop nets lined the 
shores and cov- red the shoals of Three Mile, Chaumont and 
Gufiin bays Eight or ten men did the work. It was no 
uncommon thing for each one to bag 500 large bass at one 
lifting of the nets. This, going on from May 30 until ba.S8 
left the bays, means a good many bass^ Besides this, about 
2,000 small bass were taken alive from one water to stock 
other waters in the State, In the year 1890, according to 
the United States Fish Commissioner's report, over five and 
one-half tons of bass were netted in the waters of Jefferson 
county alone. How long can any water, however prolific, 
stand such a drain? 
Netters are not fools, and when they see a gang of so-called 
sportsmen bring home bass to rot on the beach they com- 
plain, and justly, that such practices are worse than theirs. 
They lose no opportunity to throw such acts in real anglers' 
faces, and it behooves real sportsmen to disclaim all consan- 
guinity or sympathy with fish hogs. Therefore, with a law 
prohibiting netting I would also favor a clause restraining 
the angler. Make it illegal for any man to retain more than 
a dozen bass a day, and make their minimum length lOin. 
This will put a damper on "count" fishermen, who bring 
home bass to rot and who do more to discredit real sports- 
men than anything else, K. W. Amidgn, 
New York, Jan. 7, 
Labgbst trout preserves and hatcheries in Canada. Eight ponds, 
nioe mile stream teeming with trout. Will lease to a club on easy 
terras. Apply J. C. Cockburn, 25 Elgin avenue, Toronto, Canada.— 
Adv. 
FIXTURES. 
BENCH SHOWS. 
Feb. 2 to 5.— New England Kennel Club's annual show, Boston 
Feb. to 25.— Westminster Kennel Club's twenty-first anniial show, 
New York. James Mortimer, Supt., Hempstead, L. I. 
March 2 to 6.— St. Louis Kennel Club's show, St. Louis. W. Hutch- 
inson, Sec'y. 
March 10 to 13.— Mascoutah Kennel Club's eighth annual show, 
Chicago. John L. Liacoln, See'y. 
March 17 to 20.— Kentucky Kennel Club's show, Louisville, Ky J 
A. Reaves, Sec'y, 
March 17 to iC— Milwaukee Kenael and Pet Stock Association's 
bench show. Louis Stefflo, Sec'y, Milwaukee. 
March 33 to ie.-Baitimore Kennel Association's second annual 
show. Dr. Gr. W. Massamore, Sec'y. 
FIELD TRIALS. 
Jan. 18.— West Point, Miss — U, S. F. T. C. winter trials. W B 
Stafford, Sec'y, Trenton, Tenn. 
Sept. tj.-Morris, Man. -Manitoba Field Trials Club's eleventh an- 
nual trials. John Wootton, Sec'y, Manitou. Man. 
Nov. 8.— CarUsle. Ind.- Union Field Trials Club second annual trials. 
P. T. MadisoQ, Sec'y, Indianapolis, Ind. 
Nov. 15 -Newton, N. C— Eastern Field Trials Club annual trials 
S. 0. Bradley, Sec'y, Greenfield Hill, Conn. 
THE BACILLUS OF DISTEMPER IN DOGS. 
This bacillus was first discovered by Dr. Bruno Galli- 
Valerio in March, 1895 (1), and since that time has been iso- 
lated and studied by several observers, so that its identity 
and pathogenic properties may be considered as fairly well 
established. Dr. Valeric has obtained the bacillus in pure 
culture in a number of cases from the lungs, brain, spinal 
cord, pus from the sinus frontalis and from the discharges 
in conjunctival catarrh; never from the blood or other 
organs. (2) This bacdlus grows in the ordinary culture 
media of the laboratory (nutrient gelatin, agar-agar, bouillon, 
potato, etc ), and such cultures when injected into young 
dogs produce a typical distemper whicu is usually fatal. 
Old dogs are not susceptible. Dr. Valerio gives an instance 
which seems to prove conclusively the infectious nature of 
the disease. Two pups, born in a cage in which four 
months before a dog inoculated with a culture of the distem- 
per had died, promptly contracted the disease and died m a 
few days From the brain, spinal cord and lungs the baciUus 
was recovered in pure cultures. 
The bacillus is not pathogenic for guinea pigs, rabbits or 
white mice. In one case only a rabbit had an abscess at the 
seat of the infection, from which the bacillus in small num- 
bers was obtained. 
A, short description of this organism may be of interest. 
