Jan. 2, 1897.] 
11 
year of even more destructive and larger nets than have 
ever disfigrured tbe sands of New Jersey. They cannot 
now plead the injustice of a tax on property suppoaed to 
be exempt, for if the Legislature should enact a law for 
the proper regulation of pound-net fishing, that law will 
have been on our statute oooks long before the first stake 
is driven or the first mesh woven. It is high time that 
something be done to protect the fishermen along our 
coast and the dweller at the seaside, and no time can 
possibly be more propitious than the present, rendered so 
by the action of the elements, nor more urgent, made so 
by the rapacity of the trust in the past season. 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Justice In England. 
In Whitehaven County Court, England, a convicted 
poacher sued a justice of the peace for the value of a net 
and for damages for its retention. The plaintiff had been 
convicted of illegal netting before the defendant, and 
aft*>r cnnviction the latter had retained the net captured 
with the prisoner. It seems that by an old act of Parlia- 
ment, which had never been repealed, there was no clause 
forfeiting the tools of a convicted poacher, although sub- 
sequent acts relating both to fish and game contained 
provisions by which net'' could be retained or destroyed 
by the legal authorities when their owner was convicted 
of using them illegally. Judge Steavens m, who pre- 
sided, said that to give back a net to a convicted poacher 
was like handing back poison or a dagger to a convicted 
assassin, but tbe law being as it was he would have to find 
for tbe plaintiff, and his dpcision was that the defendant 
must return to the plaintiff the net or its value; and as 
the law was silent as to the value of such property and 
a lso as to when it must be returned to its owner, he would 
fix the value at 1 penny and give the defendant six years 
in which to return the net or pay the penny. A man 
who dispenses law as Judge Steavenson did in this case, 
impartially and with an eye to the eternal fitness of 
things, should be Lord Chief Justice of England, and 
every sportsman In the realm should support him. I 
should not bp surprised if brother Marston should make 
Judge Steavenson a guest of honor at the next dinner of 
the Fly- Fishers' Club in London. 
Walton's Angler. 
FORKST AND Stream informed its readers only last week 
that at Sotheby's, in London, a copy of tbe first edition 
of Walton's "Compleat Angler" sold at auction for £415, 
or $2,075. and was knocked down to Mr. Pickering. 
An enterprising daily newspaper in New York State 
must have seen a notice of the sale and judged it to be 
worthy of a leaded editorial notice, for it contained such a 
notice, giving the price for which the book sold as $525, 
and concludes: "It must be remembered, however, that 
the book contains the champion fish stories." 
Great Scott I Izaak Walton's Angler contains the 
champion fish stories, in the sense that this writer inti- 
mates; it is enough to make one weep and gnash his 
teeth. 
The paper from which I have quoted gives some atten- 
tion to field sports, and in its news items was an account 
of a wild deer invading a small village in southern New 
York. It describes the passage of the deer through the 
town and how it finally disappeared by jumping over a 
fence, "leaving some of its silky hair on the top rail." 
The writer could not have meant that a deer really has 
silky hair; he was probably thinking of a dear mermaid 
jumping a fence and leaving her silky hair on the top 
rail, for mermaids do have silky hair, and they do jump 
fences, although Izaak Walton does not mention the fact 
in his Angler. 
Newfound Lake and Its Trout. 
The people about Newfound Lake, New Hampshire, are 
not — at least, some of them are not — entirely pleased at 
the manner in which the New Hampshire Fish Commis- 
sioners are conducting fishcultural oi)erations at the lake, 
as I learn from letters and editorials in tbe Bristol Enter- 
prise, The paper vouches for one Mr. E. T. Pike, who 
says of the lake trout in Newfound Lake: "There is no 
doubt in my mind that there would be to-day many more 
trout in our lake had the Commissioners not interfered 
with the natural order of things at all. Every fall previ- 
ous to twelve years ago vast numbers of these fish were 
speared. Why, thirteen years ago this fall over 300 large 
trout were speared, to my positive knowledge. I saw one 
boat that contained seventy- two, another sixty, and 
there were several other boats that had ten or more 
each. Farmers and others used to salt down these fish 
by the barrel, and yet even such slaughter did not dimin- 
ish the number sepn each year on the spawning beds." 
If I should write a statement of that sort for Forest 
AMD Stream over my own name the editor not only would 
not print it, but he would go posthaste to the nearest 
court to make a motion to have me confined in an institu- 
tion for the feeble-minded, and my twenty years' connec- 
tion with this journal would come to an inglorious end at 
the drop of the hat; but there is nothing in the Boston 
papers to indicate that Mr. Pike has been confined in any 
sort of an institution since he informed a curious world that 
his head was of a peculiar shape, with unique trimmings. 
Mr. Pike should have lived before Jacobi, before Garlick, 
before the days of fish commissions and fishcultural asso- 
ciations, and if he could have convinced the fathers of 
fishculture that the surest way to keep up the supply of 
food fish was to slaughter them when they came onto 
these spawning beds to reproduce their kind, there would 
have been no experiments in artificial fish propagation. 
There would have been no need of costly fish commis- 
sions if Mr. Pike's theory could be proved to be correct; 
for instead of a fiah commission turning hundreds of thou- 
sands of young fish, artificially hatched, into a lake when 
the stock ran low, it would be a far better way, and a 
cheaper, to furnish the people with spears to kill the fish 
on their spawning beds before they deposit their eggs. 
Mr. Pike and his statements would not be worth one 
dip of a pen into ink to reply to if he were not supported 
by Capt. W. A. Beckford, and Capt. Beckford's cotifirma- 
tion would not be worth the second dip of the pen }.i both 
were not supported by the editor of the paper in V^ich 
their views are printed. 
Read what Capt. Backford says under the heading, "It 
is a Rjbberyi" ' There is no doubt in my mind that the 
poUgy jpureu^d by the Fish CQiiaitniggigBers during the las$ 
nine years has been of vast injury to the fishing interests 
of Newfound Lake. There used to be a vast number 
of fish speared every season on the spawning beds, but yet 
the natural hatching of the eggs in the lake kept the sup- 
ply good. * * * Nine years ago the Fish Commissioners 
were attracted by the immense number of fish that could 
be taken from the spawning beds of this lake. They built 
a hatching house capable of holding at the most only 800,- 
000 eggs. They captured the trout by the hundreds, took 
bushels of eggs from them and carried them all off to dif- 
ferent parts of the State, except enough to fill the trays in 
our hatching house." 
This is where the robbery comes in, that after the trays 
in the hatching house were full the balance of the eggs 
were taken elsewhere to be hatched. I imagine Capt. 
Beckford uses figurative expressions when he speaks of 
hundreds of trout and bushels of eggs, for one of the 
New Hampshire Fish Commissioners told me years ago 
that Newfound Lake had been speared almost^ to death, 
and it would require a long time to get the lake back to 
normal condition, so far as its trout were concerned, after 
the years of spearing, poaching and other outrages the 
lake had been subjected to. Are all the people so blind 
that they cannot see that they are now paying the penalty 
for the years of spearing that nearly destroyed the trout; 
that the best efforts of the Fish Commission cannot re- 
store in half a dozen years what tbe people have been 100 
years in exterminating? Seemingly there was no protest 
from the people when the robbery of the spawning beds 
of the fish was carried on year after year, but the moment 
intelligent fishculture comes to their aid to restock the 
despoiled waters with trout it is robbery to take any of 
the eggs or fry from the lake. The views of the two cor- 
respondents and of the editor regarding fishcultural 
methods show such an ignorance of the subject that they 
are not worth quoting at length, and one sample will 
do. The Commissioners are advised to keep the fry until 
they are large enough to take care of themselves, "be- 
cause the cost of the tanks for this purpose would be but 
a trifle." 
A good many years ago I spent some time in the West. 
It was during the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. 
Col. Harry Brownson, the general freight agent of the 
road, was visiting me in my tent in Wyoming Territory, 
and wished my striker to do some mending for him. The 
Colonel went into a tent store in Bryan to buy a paper 
of needles. The merchant recognized him as the man 
who was chief of the freight department of the road and 
charged him $1 for the paper of needles. The Colonel 
protested at the exorbitant charge, but when the man 
explained that it was not the cost of the needles, but the 
freight on the needles that made them so high, the 
Colonel paid the dollar without further murmur. 
So with the matter of rearing fish; it is not the trifling 
cost of the tanks, but it is the cost of feeding and attend- 
ance that make yearling trout come so high; and in a 
State like New Hampshire, where the appropriations for 
fishculture are not as robust as elsewhere, the food ques- 
tion has to be considered ; for, as I have remarked on 
several occasions, fish do not long thrive on a diet of pure 
air, even the pure air of New Hampshire, 
This part of an editorial will probably appear to the un- 
informed like a true bill against the Commissioners, and 
it is really the only part of this indictment worth consid- 
ering seriously after the admission that spearing of fish 
on the spawning beds has been a common practice for 
many years: "Many of our local fishermen are becom- 
ing aroused at what they call the bad management of 
the Fish Commissioners in regard to Newfound Lake. 
They claim that the policy which has prevailed for many 
years of stripping the fish of this lake of their eggs and 
carrying a large proportion of them to other lakes is ruin- 
ing the fishing. That not only are vast quantities of the 
eggs carried away, but a too large proportion of the fry 
hatched at our hatching house is treated in the same 
way." I do not know what proportion of the eggs are 
returned to the lake in the shape of fry, but it is safe to 
say that the Commissioners return several hundred per 
cent, more than would result from the "natural order of 
things" mentioned by Mr. Pike. What per cent, of eggs 
result in fry from the natural order of things? Five per 
cent, would, in all probability, be a very large estimate. 
We do know that by count only two per cent, of salmon 
eggs were impregnated in one case of the natural order 
of things, and allowing for all casualties and fatalities 
between impregnation and the date of hatching, which 
may be 150 days, five per cent, is a liberal estimate. In 
the hatching house something over ninety per cent, of the 
eggs taken artificially produce healthy fry, and if the 
Commissioners return one-quarter of the fry to the lake it 
is a vast improvement on the natural order of things. 
The Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission of New 
York has contracts with the owners of five private lakes. 
Three are in the Adirondacks, one is in the Catskills and 
one is on Long Island. Understand that these are abso- 
lutely private waters, where the fish can breed under the 
natural order of things and all the increase will be- 
long to the owners of the lakes. In spite of this 
fact the owners enter into an agreement with 
the Commission by which it can send its men 
to these private waters and take the spawn from 
the trout. For this privilege the State in return 
agrees to hatch the eggs and restore a proportion 
of the fry to the lakes. In four instances the 
Commission must return to the lake one-fifth, or 20 
per cent, of the fry; and in the fifth case the Commission 
must return one-sixth of the fry, keeping four-fifths and 
five-sixths respectively to be planted in the public waters 
of the State. The owners of the lakeB are successful busi- 
ness men, so successful that they are able to own valuable 
trout lakes as private preserves, and it is not at all prob- 
able that they would voluntarily enter into an agreement 
with the State by which they would get the hot end of the 
deal. Being in a position to make their own terms, it is 
safe to assume that they consider 16f per cent, and 20 per 
cent, respectively of the eggs returned as fry to their lakes 
a better arrangement for them than the natural order of 
things. 
It is true that none of the gentlemen referred to 
permit their trout to be speared on the spawning beds, 
as they probably have not heard of this method of keep- 
ing up the stock. A gentleman in New Hampshire, not 
connected with the Fish Commission, writes me: "Have 
you read the ridiculous stptement in a Bristol paper re- 
garding Newfound Like? The truth of the matter is that 
aJl the trout were speared out of the lake when the Com- 
MiMlo;^ topk bold Qt It to TGBtQGk it, and the Qoi|aplai|^ti! 
read to 'me like the wail of disappointed poachers who 
would like to return to their vomit again." 
I wish to assure the gentleman that I have read the 
statement be refers to, as he will discover if he reads this 
note in Forest and Stream. 
New Book by Mr. Halford. 
There will soon be ipisued a new book by Mr. F. M Hal- 
ford upon "Dry FJy Entomology," giving brief descrip- 
tions of leading tvpes of nfttural insects serving as food 
for trout, with 100 best flifs and manner of dressing 
them. There will be ten plates of flies, hand colored, 
and plates of insects. A, N. Cheney. 
NEW YORK FISH COMMISSION REPORT. 
We have received the first annual report of the New 
York Commissioners of Fisheries, Game and Forests for 
the period from April 25, 1895, to the close of the fiscal 
year, Sept, 30, 1895, In the elaborate character of its 
preparation and the fairly sumptuous style in which it 
has been produced by engravers and printers, the volume 
differs from all other fishery reports we have had in this 
country. That which will attract most attention is the 
series! of colored lithograph plates of fishes. . Of these the 
report says: 
"It would be worse than useless to attempt to portray 
any fish in colors, unless it were done with absolute fidel- 
ity in every detail. Mr. Sherman F, Denton, the artist 
of the United States Fish Commission, was engaged to 
make sixteen color drawings of fishes and game, and this 
he did so faithfully that they will serve to identify the 
originals of tho drawings, for fin rays and snale formation 
are as faithfully represented as the external colors of the 
subjects. These color drawings have been reproduced so 
exactly that no colored figures of fishes in existence ex- 
ceed them for truthfulness or beauty of execution. They 
are absolutely faithful rf productions, which can be said 
of no other work of this kind." 
We need not add that because of these plates the vol- 
ume is one which will be treasured by those who are so 
fortunate as to secure a copy, and we can do no better 
service to the reader than to hint thaf one will do well to 
make sure of his individual copy, provided he shall have 
the requisite influence to secure "it. The time will belong 
before another opportunity will offer itself to secure such 
pictures of fishes without money and without price. 
The subject matter of the report has to do with the cus- 
tomary business of the Commission. There are special 
reports relative to the purchase of lands, an account of 
fines and penalties, of net licenses, of the oyster fran- 
chises; with reports of the shellfish commissioners and 
of the superintendent of hatcheries. There are special 
papers on Food for Fishes, by A. N. Cheney; Masoa- 
longe, Pike, Pickerel and Pike Pjroh, by Mr. 
Cheney; and on the Shad of the Hudson River, 
from the same pen. The Rainbow Trout is deawibed by 
Dr. Tarleton H, Bean, the Brown Trout bv Mr. R B. Mars- 
ton, editor of the English Fishing Gazette, and the 
Ouananiche by Mr, E T. D Chambers. Judge S H. 
Greene writes of the Chinese Pheasant, and Mr. Granville 
Hills has a paper on Summer Woodcock Shooting, to ac- 
company reproductions of his photographs of a nesting 
woodcock which have already been noticed in our 
columns. One paper which is likely to have very marked 
interest at this juncture is an exhaustive Report on the 
Adirondack Deer by Superintendent of Forests William 
F. Fox. 
New York Convention. 
The annual convention of tbe New York State Associ- 
ation for the Protection of Fish and Game will be held 
in Syracuse, Thursday, Jan. 14. All clubs and associa- 
tions are ur^ed to send delegates, and to communicate at 
once with President Frank J. Amsden, Rochester. 
Menml 
FIXTURES. 
BENCH SHOWS. 
Feb. 3 to 5.— New EnKlatid Kenuel Club's annual Show, Boston. 
Feb. as to 25.— Westminster Eennel Club's twenty-first annual slaow, 
New York. James Mortimer, Supt., Heixipstead, L. I. 
FIELD TRIALS. 
.Tan. 11.— Tupelo, Miss.— Continental Field Trial Club's quail trials. 
P. T. Madison, Sec'y. 
Jan. 18.- West Point, Mi'ss.— U. S. P. T, C. winter trials. W. B. 
Stafford, Sec'y, Trenton, Tenn. 
Sept. 6,— Morris, Man. Manitoba Field Trials Club's eleventh an- 
nual trials. John Wootton, Sec'y, Manitou. Man. 
Nov. 8.— Carlisle, Ind. -Union Field Trials Club second annual trials. 
P. T. Madisou, Sec'y, Indianapolis, InJ. 
Nov. 15 -Newton, N. C. -Eastern Field Trials Club annual trials. 
S. U. Bradley, Sec'y, Greenfield Hill, Conn. 
A REVIEW OF 1896. 
Theke has been something of a depressed condition in 
the kennel world during the past year,' though matters in 
a general way have been mending of late, and some 
special branches seemed to have suffered but little, if any, 
from dull times. The commercial features of the ken- 
nel world are in direct sympathy with general commer- 
cial prosperity or adversity. Dogs in a way are a luxury, 
a popular and wholesome luxury, one that appeals to the 
hearts of all whether they are rich or poor, haughty or 
humble, whatever maybe their nation or clime; but when 
revenues are cut down economy is a necessity, and while 
people love dogs then none the less, a certain percentage 
is forced to forego the fancy for them. 
Active sales at long prices are far less frequent now than 
they were a few years ago, though there is a healthy gen- 
eral interest, the tendency of prices being to a basis of 
real, values, especially in respect to those given for point- 
ers and setters whose ability and service for field work 
are considered. 
For shooting dogs there has been a fairly good demand 
at fair prices, though much less than the excessively large 
prices of a few years ago, which no doubt did much to 
injure setter and pointer interests, since those inflated 
prices were within the reach of but relatively few sports- 
men, and therefore they made ownership more exclusive. 
Such prices could have no healthy, permanent basis. They 
were of the boom order, sure to collapse. The big sums 
of money won a few years since at field trials by 
eertsw dogs did much to increase their value, for jf a dog 
