Aug. 27, 1898.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
169 
in turn gets it from the air. The surface of your 
globe could not absorb oxygen enough for such large 
fish. It is common to see an overstocked globe with 
the fishes poking their noses into the air in order to 
take some into their gills with the water. They are 
suffering when they do this and may be relieved by 
pouring part of the water into a basin and putting it 
back; the fish will then settle down and breathe naturally 
for a while, until they exhaust the supply of oxygen 
again. The trouble will always exist as long as tine 
globe or tank is overstocked, until some weaken and 
die. and so leave less fish to use up the oxygen. 
Careless changing of the water is a fruitful cause of 
shock, especially in winter. When you reflect that 
bodies of water are slower to change their temperature 
than the air is, you will realize that fishes are not ac- 
customed to as sudden changes as are animals, which 
live in air, and when the water in your globe, has acquired 
the temperature of your room, and that is thrown out 
and water twenty or more degrees colder is given them 
there is a shock to the fish; it may not kill, but tends 
to weaken them, and continued shocks may kill. It is 
better to use the old water, pouring it back and forth 
in the air, and then it is fresh water, because it has 
absorbed all the oxygen that it can hold. This is a 
principle not generally understood. We fishculturists 
seldom use new water when traveling with fish. We 
aerate the water in the cans at regular periods, either 
by drawing a bucket full off with a syphon, and shaking 
it up well before putting it back, or by filling a garden 
syringe- with water and then holding it high, force it 
down among the fish. 
In a "balanced" aquarium the water is never changed, 
only enough to supply the evaporation is added. But 
water plants which grow with submerged leaves are 
planted or allowed to float if that is the nature of the 
plant, and they throw off oxygen sufficient for a limited 
number of fish. The balancing of animal and plant life 
is the object. 
Try some small fishes, get some plants from - the 
ponds or of a dealer, put a little coarse gravel in the 
bottom as an anchorage for the plants and to absorb all 
dirt; then you need not clean the tank or globe more 
than three times in the summer, mainly to remove the 
green growth on the glass, which is beneficial, but un- 
sightly. 
Now for the "don'ts." Never take the -fish in your 
hand; use a small net.' Don't feed them more than 
they will eat, because the refuse fouls the water. There 
is a prepared food for goldfish made from rice, which 
is very good, but see that you stop feeding before they 
stop eating. 
If your fish die it is due to one of these causes: over- 
crowding, bad water, starvation, handling, or shock by 
sudden change of temperature. Try it- again with small 
fish, you will like them best, and with the above rules 
in mind there is no trouble in keeping goldfish healthy. 
Hybrid Fishes. 
H. F. asks: "1. How far can hybrids be produced 
among fishes? 2. To what degree are they fertile, either 
with one of the parent stocks or with each other? 
3. Do hybrid fishes occur in a state of nature?" 
A postal card to this gentleman in reply said: "Your 
questions received. Full and complete answers Avould 
fill a volume. Watch the columns of Forest and 
Stream for the next month or two, for I will attempt 
a reply through that medium." His questions involve 
answers that may interest many, and so they will be 
considered. I like to get letters which open up ques- 
tions of general interest; the}' have a value, and if I 
can't answer them satisfactorily they will provoke pro- 
fitable discussion. 
Now to the questions: 1. No man knows how far 
hybrids can be produced among fishes, because com- 
paratively few fishes have been bred artificially, and of 
these the experiments in hybridizing have been mainly 
confined to the salmon family. I say "mainly," because 
the only attempt to hybridize fishes outside this family, 
known to me, was made by the late Seth Green, who 
claimed to have successfully crossed the striped bass 
and the shad. We know that animals must be closely 
rented to hybridize, and that few hybrids are fertile. 
The dogs will not interbreed with the cats, including the 
wolves and tigers. The dog and the wolf will cross, 
but the dog and the fox will not. The wild "Canada" 
goose will breed with our tame, geese, but the progeny 
is infertile with either parent or among themselves. The 
same is true of the horse and the ass, which can produce 
the useful mule without which our armies would be 
impotent, and who "without pride of ancestry, or hope of 
posterity," threw his weight into his collar and pulled 
the artillery out of the mud. Horses would have fretted 
to death at this time, but the mules chewed a splinter 
from the neck yoke, received a lash that cut in deep, 
heard the objurgations of the driver, and the battery 
went on. 
f Animals so near together either refuse to breed or 
produce infertile progeny, called "mules," for the term 
is applied to all infertile hybrids, such as crosses be- 
tween the goldfinch and canary birds, and is not re- 
stricted to the hybrid animal which serves our armies as 
neither of its parents could 'do. The hybrid geese re- 
ferred to are "mules," that term simply means an in- 
fertile hybrid. 
I have never believed that the shad, with its soft fins 
and other differences of structure, produced a hybrid with 
the hard-finned striped bass, two fishes as much unlike 
in structure as the goat and the rabbit. I am aware 
that the late U. S. Fish Commissioner, Col. McDonald, 
thought this might be possible, but where is the hybrid? 
Mr. Green no doubt put the bass milt on the shad 
eggs, and may have hatched fish from the eggs, but 
the water was full of the milt of shad, all about his 
boat, and his dipper may have taken some in when water 
was put on the eggs and so a few were impregnated, 
but he did not preserve samples of the fry, and there is 
no proof that the shad eggs were impregnated by the 
bass milt. 
All who knew the late Seth Green, personally, knew 
that he trusted all detail of his work to his employees. 
To question No. 2, I can only say that most of the 
salmon family appear to produce fertile hybrids, as far 
as the trouts and salmons are concerned, but no ex- 
periments have been made to my knowledge with the 
different whitefishes, smelts, etc., which "belong" to the 
family by reason of some such slight affinity, such as 
having the second dorsal fin composed of fat instead of 
rays. 
I never practiced hybridizing of the salmonidce, because 
I saw no use in it further than to experiment to know 
if it could be done, and as this had been demonstrated 
by others I was satisfied in my work for the State, on 
Long Island, to breed only straight pure stock, and 
when I left the place there was not a hybrid in the ponds. 
I have read in the papers an assertion from the pres- 
ent State Superintendent of Hatcheries that at Caledonia 
Station the trout were so mixed as to be of little use for 
breeding purposes. 
I have produced hybrids, in great numbers, between 
the shad and the alewife or "herring," as it is called up 
the Hudson, but there was a reason for it, We could 
not keep shad alive after capture; they seemed to die 
fiom fright, and when, at a haul of the seine, we found 
one or more spawning shad and no males, we took the 
eggs and milted a "herring" over them. This on the 
principle that some kind of a fish was better than no 
fish. These eggs hatched freely, and we turned the fry 
loose at the proper time, but I never saw an adult fish 
in the Hudson that seemed to be a hybrid. Green also 
did this, and the fishermen learned of it and began to 
look for the "bastard shad," as they termed them, and 
in their ignorance of species they picked out the hickory 
shad, or mattowacca, Clufiea mediocris, as the degenerate. 
The press along the river, then inspired by local fisher- 
men to be hostile to fishculture, took up the cry and 
abused Green for debasing their shad, which they termed 
"rebel shad," the first of this species having been noticed 
bv them about fifteen years after the Civil War. 
The fact is that this last named species is indigenous, 
not only to the Hudson River, but to all rivers from 
Cape Cod to Florida, but in their ignorance the fisher- 
men had not noticed the fish, or had forgotten it, and 
as it was an inferior fish they blamed Green for it, assum- 
ing that it would interbreed with the true shad and so 
tend to debase that fish in the river. On several occa- 
sions, while in the employ of the State, I talked with 
the fishermen, and tried to show them their error, but 
they had "fished all their lives," and how could any man 
know more about fishes than they? 
This "hickory shad," "tailor shad," or "tailor herring," 
for it bears all names, has the same number of rays in 
its dorsal and anal fins as the shad, but its scales are 
larger than that of the true shad, having only fifty in the 
lateral line, while the shad has ten more. This, how- 
ever, has no weight with a shad fisherman; he thinks he 
knows fishes by sight, and as for fin-rays and scales in 
the lateral line, bless you, a man who undertakes to tell 
him what a fish is by such trifles is wasting his time. He 
is a fisherman, and "he knows a fish when he sees it, and 
all the professors, who know fish from book larnin',' 
can't teach him a thing." 
Now that the hickory shad exists in the Hudson, and 
the fisherman do not seem to know it, let me say that 
this fish has faint longitudinal streaks upon its sides, 
which. McDonald thinks, may have caused it to be 
named from a sort of cotton goods that is striped. It 
is more abundant in Southern rivers. 
It is a fact that all infertile hybrids, "mules," if they 
live and thrive, excel one or both parents in some 
quality. Many hybrid geese— the product of Canada and 
the tame goose— come to New York from Pennsylvania, 
and are larger and better than either parent; as much 
so as a capon exceeds an ordinary fowl in size, tender- 
ness an d flavor. The same rule holds good in many 
other forms of life which the limits of this article for- 
bids mention. 
With that as statement leading up to a fact, let me cite 
the fact that Mr. E. G. Blackford ha* reported that he 
has seen i81b. shad taken on the Pacific coast. Green 
sent the first shad there, but there is no proof that any 
of his fry were hybrids; yet it is possible that there 
might have been hybrids among that first planting. 
Within the last few years shad of 8 and iolbs. have not 
been uncommon in the Hudson, while twenty years ago 
a 6-pounder was thought large and very rarely was one 
of 81bs. taken. 
To the third question I will say that I never knew 
hybrid fishes to occur in nature. All animals prefer to 
mate with their own kind. Nature abhors a mule, and 
limits it to one life, with no progeny. I have known a 
wild mallard to mate with a black duck and raise a 
brood, but the birds were wounded and could not fly, and 
they had no choice. This was on the Pamunky River, 
Va.~ Some men regard every animal which they are not 
acquainted with as a hybrid. When the grayling was 
first brought to notice in America, a man wrote to a 
sportsman's paper giving it as his opinion that the 
grayling was a cross between a trout and a sucker, and 
that man was a fish commissioner of Illinois at the 
time. He was known as Dr. Pratt, but he dropped out 
of sight soon, yet, by virtue of his office, his words had 
the weight of authority. I doubt if fish ever hybridize 
when wild. Lake and brook trout are prevented from 
doing it by accident, the lakers spawning at night, any 
milt that might reach a brook trout egg would be dead 
before morning, when the latter lays its eggs. 
New Jersey Surf Fishing* 
Asbury Park, N. J., Aug. 20. — Much the same con- 
ditions prevail as in my last note in relation to surf 
fishing. Weakfish and kingfish are fairly abundant along 
shore, and are being taken every day by those who con- 
sult proper times and baits. 
One fact in relation to the kingfish is that they have 
stayed with us steadily from the time of their first arrival, 
with the exception of one period of only a few days in 
extent. This is quite contrary to their usual custom, as 
it formerly has suited their fancy to quit biting about 
July 25, and remain inactive, so far as the angler was 
concerned, entirely during the month of August. 
That they are eonsorting with the weakfish and feed- 
ing on the same tides is demonstrated by the fact that 
of two catches recently made by Judge Guild and my- 
self, of forty-seven and thirty-one fish, of the former 
thirteen were kingfish, thirty-four weakfish, the latter 
eight kingfish, twenty-three weakfish. These were taken 
in the surf, casting from the beach. 
Bluefish are very abundant off shore, but only occa- 
sionally one is taken from the beach. The first salt- 
water catfish ever taken in these parts so far as can 
be learned was caught by Druggist A. A. White, a few 
mornings since. It is a great rarity in these waters. 
Leonard Hulit. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST, 
The Men of Beaver Islands. 
Deputy Warden C. E. Brewster, of Michigan, has been 
acting warden for a few weeks, and has made a long 
trip over certain parts of the State. Among other re- 
gions he visited the Beaver Islands, a group of little 
kuown but peculiar communities which are well worth 
the attention of inquiring novelists in search of new 
country to exploit. The Beaver Islands are a world by 
themselves, and hold one of the most clannish popula- 
tions to be found in America. It is only once in a 
while that one hears from this far-off part of the world, 
for the upper part of the Great Lakes is not much 
quoted in traffic schedules, and is best known to the 
fisher folk who ply those waters. Deputy Brewster found 
that the sturdy islanders are in open defiance of the law, 
saying that they intend to make their own laws. They 
probably never heard of the State of Michigan, and are 
only dimly conscious that there is a Government for the 
whole country, though they prefer that to any jaw 
located nearer home. The Press, of Grand Rapids, prints 
a very interesting article about these curious people and 
their opinions regarding fish laws. 
"The fishermen up there," says the story — "and they 
are nearly all fishermen — seem quite fixed in their deter- 
mination to ignore the closed season laws this year as 
they did last year. 'Bowery' Gallagher, a leading fisher- 
man, and one of the supervisors of the county, stated to 
Mr. Brewster that he proposed to fish through the closed 
season in spite of the law, and so did the others. He 
held that the period from Oct. 30 to Dec. 15 was about 
the most profitable fishing season, and also maintained 
that the State has no jurisdiction over the Great Lakes — 
that it lies with the general Government. Mr. Brewster 
and Gallagher had some warm arguments. Mr. Brew- 
ster said that if he fished during the closed season and 
there happened to be a special session of the Board of 
Supervisors, there would be one supervisor absent. The 
deputy game warden discovered some time ago that last 
season after he had left the islands the game laws were 
totally ignored. 
"The people of Beaver Islands constitute a class all by 
themselves. They live by fishing and they find it impos- 
sible to see why other people do not view things as they 
view them. They argue that God made the little fishes 
and put them in the water for subsistence, and that the 
State has no right to interfere. Manitou county, under 
the government of these sturdy sons of toil, was a 
queer place. Last year the Legislature consolidated the 
county with Charlevoix county. But still they do not see 
the use of fish and game laws, and they believe that the 
State is trying to discriminate against them in favor of 
Canadian fishermen. 
"Another odd thing is that the islanders themselves 
make laws to govern their fishing that are stricter than 
the State laws. The fish laws permit the use of nets of 
4^in. mesh for general fishing and 2j4in. mesh for her- 
ring and 'long jaws.' The islanders have agreed among 
themselves to use no nets of smaller mesh than sin., and 
to allow no one else to come in there and use smaller 
nets, and as a result the fish that are shipped from 
Beaver Islands are larger, better and worth more than 
those caught elsewhere with nets of smaller mesh. 
"The Game and Fish Department will have a man on 
the grounds all during the closed season. The laws will 
be enforced to the letter this season, and the folks 
on Beaver Islands will have to make the best of it." 
Carp not Fit to Eat. 
To-day I was talking with Mr. Wm. Werner, or "Bill" 
Werner, as we call him here. Mr. Werner is one of 
the best known chefs and caterers in Chicago, and he 
knows what is good to eat, and he can cook anything 
so you will think it is good to eat. I bethought me to 
ask him, as an expert, to answer the often disputed 
question: "Are carp -good to eat?" Mr. Werner said: 
"No, the carp is not fit to eat. It is the muddiest and 
meanest of all fishes. Of course, it can be cooked so 
that it can be eaten, and so it will appear to taste good, 
but that is only by reason of the spices and sauces with 
which it must be covered. Much is said about the carp 
being a cheap food fish. Upon the other hand it is a 
dear food fish, for the sauces needful to make it fit for 
food cost more than the fish itself. A food fish is one 
which can be eaten for itself, and without killing the 
natural taste with artificial and stimulating dressings." 
I think our fish commission would do very well to ask 
Mr. Werner or some other competent authority for a 
recipe for a sauce which shall make the carp fit to eat. 
and suggest that, having determined upon such sub- 
stance, they issue same to the populace with each edition 
of the' leathery abomination which they put out. This 
is only fair, though it may take a good deal of Wor- 
cestershire, tabasco, allspice, cloves, and other fine 
herbs. Thus we should be encouraging many new manu- 
facturing industries, which would be a good thing for 
the country. On that basis I should think the carp 
might also'be a good thing. As it is, I see no reason 
why it should be encouraged, so long as we have that 
sturdy American, the dogfish, which is just as good to 
eat and can. moreover, show a bit of sport if you want 
to fish for him. If Mr. Cohen and Dr. Bartlett cannot 
make drawn butter and rich, condimental gmvies in large 
quantities for free popular distribution, I can see no 
moral right that they have to place the carp over the 
dogfish. 
The Fifield Lakes. 
Chicago, III., Aug. 20.— The muscallonge have been 
rising fairly well in the Fifield Lake chain of Wisconsin 
for the past week or so. A number of good fish have 
been taken, of 10, 12 and ulbs., the largest weighing 
23lbs. 
