I 
Oct. 80, 189^.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
84^ 
and my assistant, Charles F, Bell, whom 1 sketched in 
FoEEST AND STREAM of March (5, and I had just returned 
from a long trip to Des Moines, la., and Milner proposed to 
send us out again that night. In those days we took from 
ten to fifteen cans, according to the length of the trip, in 
baggage cars, and one or both the men were busy all the 
time aerating the water, according to the temperature and 
other conditions, and when a rapid change of roads was to 
be made we took three cans, one between us and one in the 
outside hand and rushed them, often 100yds., to the next 
baggage car. As the cans held ten gallons of water, which, 
with the can, weighed about 801bs., this was vigorous exer- 
cise. Therefore, when I said: "Mr. Milner, I don't want to 
go out to-night and I wish you -would hire a man to go on a 
short trip with Bell, and I'll lay over until he comes back," 
he looked surprised. 
"Please don't thmk that I'm kicking against being taken 
from the hatching work to jackass shad all over the conti- 
nent, because I'm not. The jackassingof shad is part of the 
work of the fishculturist, and with as good an assistant as 
Bell, who is willing to do most of the work, and I am 
willing to accommodate him, we get along finely, but this 
time " 
"See here," said he, "I must interrupt you to object to 
the verb you use to describe the transportation of shad fry. 
Our efforts to make shad grow in waters where none grew 
before entitle us to be ranked with those benefactors of the 
human race who make two blades of grass grow where but 
one grew before, and it seems that you are belittling your 
profession when you speak of the distribution of shad fry to 
distant waters as 'jackassing' them." 
"Professor," said I, "from your point of view you are 
right, but if you will go out with me once and help grab 
three cans and run 500ft. with them at Albany, some more 
feet at Niagara Falls, a dozen rods al Detroit, and several 
more rods, perches and poles at the different stations where 
changes are made, you will begin to feel that you are really 
'jackassing' shad, especially if you have lost a coat in one 
car, a hat in another, not to mention luncheons which went 
away on trains before you could get back to rescue them." 
"That may be so," replied Mr. Milner, "yet I would not 
like to have your name for transporting shad become popu- 
lar with the men." I had partly forgotten this incident 
until I visited the New York Aquarium a few weeks ago, 
and Dr. Bean recalled it, for the men got it. 
1 owe much to Prof. Milner for starting me right when I 
tried to get a knowledge of the first principles of ichthy- 
ology. When I bought a farm to raise trout on, I was an 
angler of more or less knowledge, and knew some fishes by 
sight just as the ordinary angler does, i, e., I could distinguish 
a shad from a herring if adult, or a trout from a salmon, but 
could not tell another person how to do it; and I was stag- 
gered when Dr. Theodore Gill, the ichthyologist of the 
Smithsonian Institute, and of the U. 8. Fish Commission, 
which were then under one head, said to me; "Mr. Mather, 
have you ever noticed any variation in the teeth on the 
vomer of trout?" , 
Just what a vomer mighit be I had not the slightest knowl- 
edge, for I inet the name then' for the first time, and I could, 
with the utmost confidence, assure Dr. Gill that I had never 
noticed any such variation as he had named. He then went 
on talking about the number of rays in the anal tins of the 
Pacific and Atlantic salmons, and I was in a mental fog as 
thick as ever gathered on the Banks of Newfoundland. A 
dictionary told me that a "vomer" was Latin for a plowshare, 
and that in anatomy there is a bone in the roof of the mouth 
which separates the nostrils, and is so called because it re- 
sembles that agricultural implement. I put my tongue in 
the roof of my mouth and felt the bone, opened the mouth 
of a trout and saw the teeth on that bone, not only on the 
vomer, but on the "crest," which crosses it in front. And 
thus ended my first lesson in the anatomy of fishes, I had 
learned enough to prove that I was densely ignorant. I 
would study. I would buy books, and I bought Frank For- 
ester's "Fish and Fishing" and started in to learn all about 
the different black basses. There were half a dozen species 
described, and I fished and compared my fish with the des- 
criptions until I was sure that I had not the mental capacity 
to imderstand and to identify them. 
After Milner and I had reached the confidential stage of 
friendliness, I related all this, and he lifted a load from a 
befogged mind and restored confidence in its workings when 
he said: "Frank Forester was an Euglishmaa of great liter- 
ary abihty, who was an up-to-date man in all that related to 
dogs and shooting. He may have known much of English 
fishes, but his American book on fishing was a mere literary 
rehash of English fishing books. He was a sportsman, pure 
and simple; but, after the fashion of his day, he thought it 
necessary to inject some fish lore in his book, and he took 
De Kay's 'Fishes of New York,' which was printed by the 
State in 184a, and followed it. De Kay's work was a grand 
one in its d iy, when little attention was paid to the study of 
fishes and reptiles by people who were not enthusiastic natur- 
alists, and in your case the bhnd has been led by the blind. 
Get Gill's monograph on the black basses, where he reduces 
all the species to two, and you will have no trouble in iden- 
tifying any black bass which comes to your hook." I di 
so, and all was clear; there was no more trying to decide 
which one of six was caught; it was only one of two plainly 
marked and easily- defined species. Then it was plain that 
the lack of capacity was not in the scholar, but wholly in 
the teacher. Gill's question showed me how ignorant I was, 
and Milner put me in the way of learning. 
Once Milner said to me: "You are beginning at the wrong 
end to study. Drop all books on fishes, and buy Owen's 
'Anatomy of Vertebrates,' Huxley's 'Anatomy of Verte- 
brated Animals,' and get a smattering of the principles on 
which all vertebrates are constructed and how the different 
classes have their skeletons modified to suit their environ- 
ment." 
"Are they all built on one general plan V" 
"Yes, the skeleton of a frog differs little from yours, but 
there are so-called higher animals, mammals, like the whale, 
porpoise and seal, which differ much more; they have the 
same single bone in the upper arm, the two in the lower 
arm, the wrist and finger bones modified into fins, or in the 
sea turtle into flippers." 
Thus was my study of fishes begun when I was forty 
years old, too old to ever more than catch up with the rear 
guard; but it was worth the study to know what the skir- 
mishers were firing atjTind a new world with new pleasures 
was opened. 
Once a young reporter calne to our shad hatching camp. 
Mr. Milner was absent and he interviewed me. A week 
passed and I had forgotten the incident when Mr. Milner 
produced a newspaper and said: "That is evidently your 
work, but while 1 appreciate the fun in it I don't think it re 
fleets credit on the Fish Commission, and I vdsh you would 
not do it again." 
I had only to read one paragraph to see that the editor had 
not vised the young man's notes. It said: "Shad fry are to 
be sent from the Connecticut to Brazil to stock the waters' 
there; Gen. Cantharides, who made the Spanish fly from 
Brazil, came on the Peruvian bark CalLsaya to take a ship- 
ment of fry on the return voyage. The bark had a deck- 
load of oil in bulk which shifted in a heavy sea and bent the 
hawse-pipes, and the vessel was disabled. Com. Belay, of 
the Swiss man-of-war Alpenstock, is to sail for Rio de 
Janeiro to-morrow, and has kindly offered to take the fish in 
order to help on the good work. The commodore's interest 
in the transportation of these young fish is so great that he 
has ordered fifty tons of ballast taken out lest the vessel 
should be top heavy. A Holyoke firm wUl also send the first 
consignment of artesian wells to BrazU by the Alpenstock, 
and no doubt further orders will follow." 
"Now, I ask you in all seriousness if you think it proper to 
stuff a reporter like that?" 
"My dear Mr. Milner," said I, "there was no stutfing 
about it. He took it as he would have taken in a straw- 
berry short-cake. His innocence invited it and put tempta- 
tion in my way. I'm not going through this world to keep 
up a struggle aa;ainst temptation when it is so much easier 
to yield to it. That young man was a tempter, as much so 
as the original serpent was, and he led me astray." 
Once I returned to Holyoke after a long trip to Des 
Moines, which I started to tell about and then ran off the 
track, "What do you want to stop over here for?" asked 
Mr. Milner. 
"I'll answer by asking you a question. You've seen 'em 
taking shad with a fly every night from boats and even from 
the bridge, haven't you?" 
"Yes, and you want to stop over to try and take a shad on 
a fly?" 
"Not hard to guess, but that's the case. I've watched 
when I've been at work taking eggs, and although stories of 
fly-fishing for shad floated around our camp on the Hudson, 
they were not believed. Here we see it done every evening, 
and I want to try it." He wanted to do the same, and we 
sent out Bell in my place, with a green assistant. 
There were shad in the Connecticut in those days, and 
they ascended the river in great numbers as far as the great 
dam of the Holyoke Water Power Co. Massachusetts and 
Connecticut quarreled about the taking of all the fish by the 
fishermen near the mouth of the river; the hatching was 
stopped, and the once famed Connecticut River shad have 
almost reached the point of scarcity accorded to angels' visits 
and hens' teeth. But that's another story. 
Thomas Chalmers lived at South Hadley Falls, and was 
not only an expert shad angler but devised and made fiies 
for the express purpose of alluring the succulent shad from 
the clear water of the river to the cle ar coal fire beneath the 
grill, where it was afterward made acquainted with cream- 
ery butter and the juice of the lemon. I had talked with 
Chalmers, at odd times, and had intimated that one shad 
taken by hand would be worth hundreds from the net. I 
could stop over and so despatched a boy with a note to 
Chalmers; and, to insure a prompt reply, showed him a half 
dollar which might become a portion of his assets if he re- 
turned with an answer within an hour. He won the coin, 
and Mr. Chalmers would have boat, rods, reels, flies, land- 
ing-net and all complete to entice the shad from its fluvial 
haunts. 
From our place of observation, on a low point something 
like 200yds. below the bridge, we could see the shad angling 
going on wMle the fishermen were hauling the seine for us 
to get spawning fish. While they were hauling we were 
busy in getting the hatching boxes in place, washing spawn- 
ing pans, etc., and there was not much to be seen. But 
when we were "on the road" we could watch the fishing 
while the shad fry were put up in cans for us and we had 
nothing to do until the wagons delivered the cans at the 
railroad, after 10 P. M. At such times we would watch 
the men and boys who fished from the bridge. As I re- 
member it the bridge was about 30ft. high. Long hand- 
lines would be let down the river, and when a fish was 
hooked it would be landed on the debi-is at I he foot of a pier 
and left to flop until dead, and then it was cautiously hauled 
up, for the dead fish was not apt to tear loose. It was inter- 
esting, but was not just the thing for us who were not 
suffering for shad on tne table, but did hope to fight one on 
rod and reel. Just what the men in the boats were doing 
we could not see, but I have seen as high as fifty shad taken 
on the artificial fly in one evening from the bridge between 
Holyoke and South Hadley Falls. This statement is de- 
hberately made because there has been so much skeplicism 
about taking shad with the fly. Why it can't be done at 
other places is a question. 
As we settled ourselves in the boat Milner said: "Mr. 
Chalmers, what is your theory about shad taking the fly here 
in such numbers, when they not only refuse it but decline all 
lures in other places? We know that they sometimes take a 
bait in other rivers, but it seems to be accidental. Many 
have been taken with worm bait from the long bridge across 
the Potomac at Washington, but not enough to induce men 
to angle for them as they do here." 
"Well," said Chalmers, "I don't know. There are men 
who think that the shad try to surmount the dam until they 
get discouraged and then drop back below the rapids, where 
they gather in such numbers that in the act of breathing 
they take in the fly and are hooked." " 
"That theory is plausible," I remarked, "for the shad, 
like the salmon and other anadromous fishes, takes no food 
in fresh water, and we usually find their stomachs empty. 
Mr. Milner will remember that I called him from his tent 
very early one morning to examine the stomach of a, shad 
which the men were cleaning for breakfast, and which was 
stuffed full. He put the contents of that stomach under the 
microscope in a hundred or more small lots and found noth- 
ing but rotten wood, and his theory was that this gravid 
fish, for it was a female, had an abnormal appetite, and had 
filled up on what was most convenient." 
"Tell me how you come to fish for shad with a fly," said 
Mr. Milner, 
"I opened a lot of stomachs of shad," said Chalmers, ''and 
found m them a kind of miller which is only seen here about 
sundown, and 1 made a fly after it, and in 1871 I took ovtr 
1,000 shad with it. Of course, the marketing of so many 
shad by a man who had no nets attracted attention and they 
soon found me out, and that's the whole story." 
"Chalmers," said 1, "this fly-fishing for shad is unique. 
Seethe duffers on the bridge using hand lines 200ft. long 
with a fly on the end of it. It beats all my goin' a-fishin', 
and knocks out all my notions of fly-fishing. I've been used 
to casting a fly and watching it drop on the water some- 
where in the vicinity of a trout's residence; but to lower a 
hand-line from a bridge and let a fly drift down among the 
fish — the seine seems to offer as much sport." 
'■That's all right," he replied, "but wait until you get a 
shad on a rod, maybe you'll find the difference." 
There was no use in casting the fly, so we let it drift 
down and waited. Chalmers got a strike, and the fish went 
away gently as compared to the rush of a trout, and it was 
as gently checked, -but the fight seemed tame as he reeled in 
and landed a 41b. fish. Chalmers said, "They fight harder 
than you think they do." Tben I had a strike, and with 
trouting instinct I struck and tore the hook loose. As I 
reeled in to see if the fly was still there, Chalmers said : 
"Fred tore the hook out of that shad's mouth. If you get 
a strike. Professor, just — " and Milner's rod bent and his 
reel sang as t he morning stars may have done, although I 
don't remember hearing them. He checked the fish easily, 
reeled it in carefully and landed it. "There," said he, 
"that's the way to doit." 
I was moved to ask: "Did either of you gentlemen ever 
use a fly for trout?" 
"Never," said Milner, "I've used all kinds of bait for 
fresh-water fishes, but this is the first time that I ever fished 
with a fly or with a reel." 
"I've taken trout with a fly," said Chalmers, who was a 
Scotchman, "but 1 had to learn not to strike when I found 
out that thp shad, with its tender mouth, could be taken 
with the fly." 
Soon I felt something like a nibble, such as bait-fishers get 
from minnows and other small fish ; if. thought I, a fish will 
nibble and taste twice of a compound of hook, feathers and 
wool, all right. Then came a rush which made the reel 
sing, and I followed precedent and checked the fish slowly 
until it was safe to reel in, and by careful attention to its 
rushes and by yielding to them, I boated a 61b. shad. We 
took several shad that night, and it was an experience that 
is not likely to be repeated by anglers of to-day. We were 
too busy in hatching and rushing out shad fry to repeat the 
fishing. A few shad were taken by men in the daytime, but 
about sundown seemed to be the favorite time. 
Prof. Milner was born in Kingston, Ont., in January. 
1841, and his parents moved to Chicago five years later. At 
the breaking out of the war he was in the university at 
Evanston and enlisted as a private in Battery A, 1st Illinois 
Light Artillery, and was never absent from his company dur- 
ing his three years of service. While a boy his intense study 
brought on nervous spasms, and these returned when he 
again began to study and work in the Chicago Post Office, 
and bis father bought a farm near Waukegan, 111., on his 
account. His work in natural history attracted the attention 
of Prof. Baird, who called him to Washington to help in the 
work of fishculture. He mapped the currents of Lake Mich- 
igan and studied the food and habits of the whitefish. Ex- 
posure to wet and cold in his enthusiasm sapped his vitality, 
and in 1879 he sought Colorado; but too late. In October he 
was taken back to Waukegan, where he died on Jan. 6, 1880, 
leaving a wife and two children. 
Last March I wrote sketches of Mr. Almy and Pete, down 
on the Tangipahoa River, in Louisiana, where I was collect- 
ing the fishes of that region for Prof. Baird. There were 
two ten-gallon kegs and a box of them, and Mr. Milner was 
anxious to see the fish; so we went down into the basement of 
the Smiihsonian Institution to give them a preliminary sort- 
ing, picking out those which we could readily classify and 
separating them. The South has many members of the sun- 
fish tribe and the half-grown ones are often hard to place. 
He held a fish in his left hand and was talking about it, when 
one of the workmen said: "Mr. Milner, there's a snake for 
} 0U in that box/^ 
"Is there? What kind of a snake is it?" and he pushed 
the cover from the box and took hold of the snake, all the 
time looking at the fish and saying: "I think we'll have to 
lay this one aside for closer examination." 
My heart was in my throat, for I saw what was in his 
other hand and I dared not speak. The snake coiled about 
his warm bare arm and seemed to like it. Finally, it seemed 
a very long time, he laid the fish down, and turned to look 
at his other prize. His eyes opened wide, he moved his hand 
slowly into the box, and as slowly let go the snake, removed 
his hand and replaced the cover. "Pnew! Copperhead 1" ho 
said, ' but what's the matter, you are pale as a ghost?" 
'■Yes, and I was pale long before you saw what you had 
in your hand. I held my breath until I was faint. I knew 
that if I alarmed you there was danger. I've often heard that 
no one ever recovered from the bite of a copperhead, or cot- 
ton mouth, as they call them down South.' 
'"Yes they have, but they are the most dangerous of our 
snakes because they s.ive no warning, and it doesn't do to 
fool with them; but I dil not alarm tlie fellow, and it liked 
my warm arm. A sudden move would have invited at- 
tack." 
"Well," said I, "it's more than doubtful if I could have 
been so cool under the same circumstances." 
"Oh, yes, you would, that's nothing." 
"Just like him," said a man of his Battery, to whom I told 
the_story some years ago, '"he was as nervy a little man a,i 
you ever saw. Before Atlanta he stood al his post uniil 
there were hardly enough men in his battery to work a sin- 
gle gun. After tlie disastrous charge of the forjorn hopd at 
Vicksburg, he was one of the volunteers to undertake the 
rescue of the wounded, a work of great faiigue and peril. 
He was offered a commission several limes but declined it, 
saying he could serve just as well as a private. Oh, I tell 
you, it would take more than one snake to scare James 
W. Milner." And I believe he was right. 
Fred JVIather. 
The Albino Bullhead. 
KeeSeville, N. Y., Oct. 31. — I noticed in your valuable 
paper of Oct. 26 about an albino bullhead hieing caught and 
on exhibition at Port Henry, N. Y. Allow me to correct 
the mistake. The albino bullhead was caught in Lake 
Champlain, near the mouth of the Au Sable River, about 
three miles from Keeseville. Mr. D. Burton and myself 
were fishing out of a boat with hook and line. Burton 
caught the albino fisb, and I have it now on exhibition in the 
doming store window of J. N. Aiwood, Keeseville. There 
are a great many old fishermen here, and they all say they 
never saw anythiog of the kind before. 
The fish is very pretty, which is saying a great deal for a 
bullhead ; it is a golden white in color all over, and is as 
healthy and lively as a fish can be. Edw. McAloon. 
The Forest and Stream is put to preas each week on 
Tuesday. Correspondence intended for puhlication 
should reaih us at the latett by Monday, and as mvck 
earlier aa prwUcable. - 
