Mav 7, 1898.] 
FOREST ANt) STREAM. 
371 
kiiowni do take hold of men in a masterful way. Set me 
down with my rod and box of flies on a fail* day, by 
the side of a crystal, clear, slow-flowing stream contain- 
ing big and wary trout, and I know well tliat I shall find 
Lhat day all too short, even though not a solitary trout 
be landed. On a May or June day by the sweet water, 
which winds through the nreadows and commons of an 
English South Country shire, I think too that I shall 
always be able to see the world as it appeal-e'd-. Jn the 
wild woodland rambles of childhood, when 
"The earth and eVery conlnion sight 
To me did seehi 
Apparell'd in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream." 
1 
ANGLING NOTES. 
**0a a Sunshine Holiday." 
This is the title of a new book by The Amateur 
Angler, otherwise Mr. Edward Marston, father of the 
editor of the English Fishing Gazette, and the volume 
is just as dainty and just as charming as those which 
have preceded it from the same pen, namely: "Days in 
Dove Dale," "Days in Clover," etc., etc. 
Mr. Marston's style is singularly captivating, for he 
has a way of taking his readers into his confidence, as 
it were, and talking to them instead of writing at them 
or for theju. As he strolls along on his holiday outing, 
he has sharp eyes, and is a close observer of all things 
in nature, and when he tells you of what he observes the 
reader feels that the outing is taken for his especial bene- 
fit, and he experiences a keen pleasure that he has been 
invited to become the companion of the author on his 
walks afield. He says of his little book: "The chapters 
are not all about fishing, for I had but few fishing ex- 
cursions to record; the chief comiection between them is 
that all have reference, more or less, to sunshine holi- 
days." 
That the author is a philosopher and does not believe 
that all of fishing is to catch fish is evidenced by his 
chapter on "The Prose of Fly- Fishing," from which the 
following is extracted: "When the wind fell a little 
another torrent came on, and we were driven to seek 
shelter imder our favorite wide-spreading ash, which the 
Professor long since christened 'The Pub,' a name which 
it will retain forever. The rain, coming down straighter 
and heavier than ever, soon found its way through the 
thick foliage, and we had to move. We made a dash 
through the pitiless storm for a quarter of a mile, helter- 
skelter, to our never so pleasant old hut, dripping and 
draggled like barn-door fowls who couldn't or wouldn't 
go in when it rained. Monday was worse than Saturday 
■ — we fished all day in the rain without ever seeing a rise, 
for really there was nothing to rise at, and food was 
plentiful down below." And after all this was a sunshine 
holiday. It is the ability and adaptability to make the 
best of everything that comes that drives the wrinkles 
away, keeps a 3'^oung heart in an old body, and in tlie 
case of an angler, as Sir Henry Wotton tells us, is "a 
calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions and 
a procurer of contentedness." 
That is slightly paraphrased, but it is true, and there 
are kindred qualities that Walton laid stress upon in the 
make-up of the contemplative angler the author of "Sun- 
shine Holidays" seems to possess in an eminent degree, 
and he imparts something of these feelings to his readers, 
and they read his little volume with profit as well as 
pleasure. 
The Triton's Dinner* 
The Triton Club, of Canada, has so many members in 
and near Syracuse, N. Y., where the president, Mr. G. F. 
Gregory, resides, that they have organized themselves 
into the Syracuse Tritons, and annually they give a din- 
ner to which all the Tritons are invited, and if you are 
a Triton it is worth going a good many miles to attend 
the dinner, where good fellowship, good stories, and 
good things to eat abound. The dinner this year was 
on March 14, and about forty Tritons gathered at the 
Yates upon the invitation of the Syracuse Tritons — Mr. 
L. C. Smith, president; Mr. M. C. Pierce, vice-president, 
and Dr. U. S. Brown, secretary. Mr. Seaton, the sec- 
retary of the Triton Club, came down from Quebec, and 
Mr. B. Frank Hall, the vice-president, came- up 
from Pennsylvania, and other members came from other 
places, until there was a crowd of good fishermen at 
the Yates, each man filled with the fishing fever as 
stories were told, such as are told when fishermen con- 
gregate, of fishing past and fishing hoped for. Of the 
dinner itself, I would better say nothing, for it is eaten 
and done for, and it would only be an aggravation to 
print the menu after the dishes composing it were eaten. 
Filet of caribou a la Seaton still lingers in memory as 
the best caribou I ever ate, and even at this midnight 
hour I would like some fresh mushrooms on toast, but 
it only makes me hungry to recall the menu. The din- 
ner was down for 8 o'clock, and it was 2:30 or 3 or 3:30 
A. M. when the Tritons dispersed. On the wall in the 
dining room facing me was the stufl^ed gibs, trout taken 
at the club last year by ex-Mayor Kirk, and during the 
little sleep I got after I retired that trout seemed to 
haunt mj' dreams. As Mr. Kirk said at the dinner, the 
mounted fish is good in its way, but the real thing is a 
live fish on the reel. 
The speeches made at the dinner were not recorded, 
although they were good enough to be preserved in 
the archives of the club; but I must rescue the verses on 
the menu from the pen of a Syracuse poet, written for 
the occasion: 
Hail to the might that brings us here 
Fraternal ties to tighten, ^ 
And to each friend and comrade dear 
That knows the land of Triton! 
Recalling many a famous day 
We'll tell what we remember, 
And what we're going to do ill May, 
Or else in cool September. 
Then here's to hill and stream and fen, 
And every iorest rover; 
And when we meet with Triton men 
We'll pledge them three times over! 
A Fishing Dogi 
EveryGfue who has rea4 the tDitl;tiing story of "Fish 
in' Jimmy," by Mrs. Annie Trumbnll Slosson, will re- 
member that Jimmy lost his life in trying to rescue a 
dog: "On'y a dog? But he wa'n't jest a coimnon dog, 
sir; he was a fishin' dog. I never seed a man love .fishin' 
more'n Dash." 
J met a fishing dog last vear, and met him at the Triton 
Club, and as Mr. "Hall, "Mr. Walter Witherbee and 1 
journeyed to Syracuse to attend the Triton dinner, Mr. 
Hall reminded me of the dog, for we were together when 
we saw him fishing. Old Jimmy's dog was one that 
simply took an interest in the fishing practiced by men: 
"Sitting in the boat beside his master, watching with 
eager eye, and whole body trembling with excitement, 
the line as it was cast, the flies as they touched the sur- 
face; his fierce excitement at rise of trout, the efforts 
at self-restraint, the disappointment if the prey escaped, 
the wild exultation if it was captured." 
My dog was not that kind of a dog, for he fished for 
himself, and took not the slightest interest in the fish- 
ing by men. He was a spaniel, and looked like a well- 
bred dog, and when I first saw him he was fishing in 
Lac des Passes near the guardian's camp, and he be- 
longed to the guardian. I regret to say that my dog was 
a lawless dog in his fishery desires, and apparently he 
did not aspire to trout, for he was fishing for frogs 
when I first noticed him, and he was fishing for frogs not 
from any sentimental or aesthetic reason, .but simply 
to fill his empty stomach. He was a good fisherman too; 
in fact he had to be, for it was a ground hog case with 
him. When he captured a frog he waded ashore and 
ate it and returned to his fishing. Occasionally he would 
catch a small chub, and he caught chitbs as deftly as he 
caught frogs and for the same reason, that if he did not 
catch them he would go himgry. No cat watched its 
prey more closely than that dog, and his movements in 
the water reminded me of the movements of a cat, they 
were so stealthy. He made scarcely any noise as he 
slowly waded in the shallow water, looking for food, and 
when he discovered it within rekcli he rarely missed seiz- 
ing it in his mouth, showing that he had practiced the 
art of fishing, as he understood it, for a considerable 
time. It was interesting to watch him, but I could not 
help but feel sorr3r for the poor beggar that he should be 
reduced to .such straits as frog and minnow fishing to 
keep him from starving, and I wondered what he would 
do for food when ice covered the lake, but perhaps the 
guardian is not above killing a caribou to keep the wolf 
from the door of the cabin, and that the dog in such a 
case would come in for a dividend in the form of scraps 
of meat. To tell the simple, unadorned truth, I was more 
concerned about how the dog would pass the winter than 
I w-as about the guardian. 
Trout, Mink and Owl. 
Last year, while fishing at Moise Lake, on the Triton 
Club tract, I came into caiup one evening about sun- 
down, and the guides having gone up the path to the 
tents I stood alone by the canoes fixing my rod, fly-book, 
etc., to put them away for the night in the tent, for a rod 
left outside may be gnawed by hedgehogs, or get wet by 
a rainstorm, and wet ilies should be cared for and not be 
put away soaking wet, as the}' are taken hastily from the 
leader, when a change is made. As I was unjointing my 
rod, a mink came from somewhere and took a trout 
almost at my feet, and ran ofl: with it. It was only one 
trout, to be sure, but we were living on trout and we 
killed only what we could eat from one meal to another, 
and we figured pretty closely as to the capacity of our 
guides and ourselves, and to prevent a recurrence of 
such a raid on our larder we set a trap for the mink 
and caught him two nights later. The trap was just at 
the head of our tent, and when the deadfall came down on 
the mink's neck there was a noise_ from the mink that 
could have been heard across the" lake, and was con- 
tinued until the mink was killed with a club. Speaking 
of this to Mr. Seaton, who sat next me at the Triton din- 
ner, I said a small mink could make a very large noise 
when caught in a trap, and this reminded him of an ex- 
perience on another Triton Club lake. He was just at 
the opening of his tent one nightfall after coming in 
from fishing, and his trout were just in front of his tent, 
when a mink came from somewhere, as mine did, and 
seizing a trout in its mouth made ot¥ with it, but before 
the mink was out of his sight a big owl swooped down 
and grasped the mink and made up into the air with it, 
and the last he heard of the mink it was screaming- piti- 
fully up toward the zenith. 
Sounds in the Night. 
This story reminded me to ask Mr. Seaton about an- 
other night occurrence. Mr. Rathbone and I returned 
to the Triton Club House from Moise Lake one after- 
noon and prepared for our return to our homes on the 
sleeper from Lake St. John to Quebec, which passes 
the club house station soon after midnight. Early in 
the evening after dinner we were both in the big parlor 
of the club, Mr. Rathbone reading in the middle of the 
room, and I was writing at a table by the windows look- 
ing out on the lake. It was moonlight outside, and 
after dinner we had walked around the club house and 
down to the dock, and had talked with our guides and 
the steward at the steps of the front veranda, and had 
been inside the house but a short time when we 
heard the yelps of a puppy in pain from the rear of the 
club house in the direction of the kitchen in the wing, 
back of which the guides' house is situated. There were 
two puppies about the place, cross-bred spaniels, fat and 
lumbering and perhaps 25lbs. in weight. The noise from 
the one in agony seemed to travel from the rear of the 
house around the east end and in front, and ceased in 
a faint whine about opposite tlie windows facing the 
writing table where I sat. The candles burning on the 
writing table blinded me as I tried to look out of the 
window into the moonlit night, and I ran to the front 
entrance at my left as Rathbone ran to a western door 
opening out on a veranda which faced a ravine well 
wooded. I went around the front of the house and met 
Rathbone at the side piazza, but there was no sign of 
a puppy. Two of the guides came from the rear, and 
we asked what had hurt the puppy, and they said some 
animal had carried it off, and they had heafd the last of 
its cries over in the ravine growing fainter and fainter 
with distance. Asked what kind of an animal, they said 
a bear, which to me seemed absurd. The puppy must 
have been seized almost in front of the open kitchen door, 
where there were several club servants and one or two 
guides. Only a few feet away was the guides' house, 
forming with the kitchen wing and the front of the house 
three sides of a square. The bear must have come up 
out of the ravine on the west, and passed between the 
guides' house and the end of the kitchen wing, taken the 
pup very near to the open door and carried it out of 
the open square around the east end of the house and 
along the front to the ravine, passing the well hghted 
room where Rathbone and I were. I had two candles 
on the table close to the window and Rathbone had at 
least two reading lamps on the table where he sat. We 
got lights and looked for tracts, but could find none of. 
bear or anything else, and as we left for the station be- 
Fore midnight that night the matter was a mystery toi 
me and I assumed that the pup had hurt himself in 
some way and had run oi¥ into the woods and woulrl 
show up next day, but Mr. Seaton told me that the pup 
was never seen after that night, and that it was itt all 
probability a bear that carried it away, for a female and 
two cubs had been seen around the club house and an- 
other family of bears had been known to freqtient the 
point in front of the house. It being true that a bear car- 
ried off the pup, for pure cheek I would back that par- 
ticular bear. The pictures of the club house in Forest 
AND Strkam of' Feb. 26 do not indicate that it is a good 
place for bears, but the fact remains that the pup did not 
come back. 
Scrod. 
When I sat at my desk writing "Angling Notes" about 
a vveek ago to-night, I believe I said something abottt 
broiled scrod. Well, I have had some since then, and it 
was just as good as it used to be over in Boston. The 
night I reached Boston and when the veteran artist 
and salmon fisherman Walter Brackett and I were or- 
dering our dinner at Young's we spoke of scrod, but 
as Mr. Burdick had not arrived I did not think it quite 
fair to take advantage of him and anticipate the break- 
fast we had agreed upon, so we ordered another kind of 
fish. Mr. Brackett said shad for the fish, and I accepted 
with a mild protest, but he knows Boston fish better than 
I do, for it was good, good as you can get anywhere 
unless you select your fish in the net and have it cooked 
as soon after as possible to get to a broiling fire. But 
the next morning we had the scrod all right enough, and 
that night for dinner when Mr. Brackett, Mr. Burdick 
and I sat down we tried rock cod for variety, and re- 
turned to scrod the following morning. The best fish 
I saw in Boston was on a canvas in Mr. Brackett's; 
studio, and although he has painted many salmon sa 
.good that no other man can equal him in this respect, 
I think his very best was then on his easel, Mr. Burdick 
remarked that it was fresh-run enough to have sea lice 
on it, and certainly it had the sheen and coppery tint 
of a fish just from the water in absolute perfection of 
form and coloring, and it is wonderful that this man can 
transfer the king of fishes with such fidelity to canvas 
with brush and paint. 
At the sportsmen's show a very charrfiing Boston 
woman was good enough to take an interest in my fond- 
ness for broiled scrod and enlighten me upon the sub- 
ject from her personal experience. She said perfect 
broiled scrod was not young codfish, but young haddock, 
and she said it in such a way that I know it is so without 
trying it; and hereafter in deference to her, if for no 
other reason, my broiled scrod shall be haddock. More- 
over, this charming woman said to me confidentially 
that but few people who broiled fish knew how to add 
the butter to fish after they were broiled, and when she 
told me I asked that I might tell all the anglers through 
Forest and Stream, and she gave her consent, and I 
shall always hold her in highest esteem, for I have tried 
her recipe, and it is as good as it sounded in the tell- 
ing. Do not melt the butter on the hot fish, but melt it 
in hot water — boil it if you like, and when the water has 
cooled sufficiently for the butter to gather at the surface, 
partly solidified, skim it ofif and pour it over the fish, 
and there is no rank taste even if the butter is a little 
inclined to be that way itself. 
Cod and Tomcod. 
Every little while the daily newspapers print valuable 
misinformation about fish or fishing. They do not mean 
it for misinformation, quite the contrary, but they do mix 
things terribly at times. A correspondent sends me a 
clipping which tells of the capture of a tomcod with a tag. 
There is a picture of the fish with a tag like an ex- 
press tag, or larger, fastened to its dorsal fin and bear- 
ing the number 360. The fins show that it is not a cod 
of any kind known to ichthyology, but the text informs 
us that it is a tomcod, captured and tagged by the U. S. 
Fish Commission, and when recaptured weighed 7j^lbs., 
which is a right smart weight for a fish that rarely 
grows to exceed I2in. in length. 
The text says that the tag was of copper, and a tag of 
that metal of the size represented in the picture wouldl 
drown a poor little tomcod. The tagged fish was un- 
doubtedly a codfish, for the Government does make as. 
practice of tagging codfish, the same as salmon are 
tagged, to find how rapidly they grow^, but no one 
thinks of tagging a little tomcod or frost fish, for it is. 
known how large they grow, and how rapidly they grow- 
ls of no particular interest. It is doubtful if the U. S., 
Fish Commission hatches tomcods. The State of New 
York does, and last year nearly 45,000,000 were hatchedt 
at the Cold Spring Harbor Station of the Fisheries^ 
Game and Forest Commission. 
And that reminds me: A reporter on a Sjaacuse news- 
paper asked me how many fish of all kinds were hatched 
and planted in the State of New York last year. I toM 
him in round numbers 213,000,000, at the same time 1 
cautioned him that if he printed the statement to please 
see that the intelligent compositor used the necessary 
ciphers to indicate millions, for I had found on several 
occasions that similar figures were shy several important 
ciphers absolutely necessary to convey tfit truth as t© 
