^70 
mission by inheritance of the results of experience of the 
parents, and the claim was, that there was such trans- 
mission "ab ovo," in generation and conception, it is an 
important factor in evolution, and agrees with the Biblical 
maxim that 'the sins of the fathers shall be transmitted 
to the children, even unto the third and fourth genera- 
tion," and this, I look upon to mean inheritance. 
It sometimes skips a generation entirely, to return in 
full force later. My mother had great artistic taste and 
talent, my brother and sisters all inherited it, but I was 
left out in the cold ! My children all draw and paint, and 
my oldest granddaughter gives promise of becoming a 
decided and successful artist. 
In judging humanity, wc do not make half enough al- 
lowance, good or bad, for the unavoidable and irresistible 
qualities which are simply the result of inheritance. 
Von W. 
Boston Anglers. 
Boston^ April i. — To-day marks the legal opening of 
the trout season in Massachusetts, but the weather is 
cold and the season unusually late. Only two days ago 
there was a sharp freeze, and the slow running streams 
were all closed with ice. Indeed the ground is still cov- 
ered with snow-in the western and northern part of the 
State. ^ Yesterday morning there was an inch of new 
snow in Boston, which barely went off that day. Such 
weather is not favorable to whipping the streams, and 
fewer persons than usual have made the attempt to-day. 
Mr. Robinson has gone down to his Falmouth brook, but 
he will stay till better weather before trying the trout. 
The fishermen at Essex, Byfield and other points along 
the north shore will not attempt to lure the trout till the 
weather is better. Two or three gentlemen interested in 
trout preserves in Connecticut told me yesterday that 
their rigging is all ready, but that they should not think 
of going after trout till the weather is better. I have 
heard the opinion expressed several times, within a couple 
of days, that the trout season opens too early m this State. 
In the markets there was to be found the usual showing 
of trout this morning; from the trout hatcheries. 
April 3. — In spite of a very cold day, with a biting wind 
and the ground frozen in the morning, there were more 
enthusiasts who went after trout April i than might have 
been expected. Several members of the Monument Club 
started by first train for its trout waters at Bourne. The 
Tihonet Club was also represented on its brooks at Ware- 
ham. A number of gentlemen started for private brooks 
in Falmouth. Others will wait for warmer days and less 
ice in the brooks. Grover Cleveland and A. II. Wood 
are fitting out their rigging and will try their preserves in 
the vicinity of Buzzard's Bay early this week, if the 
weather is warm enough. It will be noted that the season 
is most remarkably late, compared with a 3'ear ago. The 
ice left Sebago Lake, in Maine, April 6th last vear, but 
reports from that point on Saturday say that the ice is 
doubtless as thick as at any time this winter, with a 
great body of snow on it. Landlocked salmon fishing be- 
gun there last year by the 8th, and good catches were 
made on the yth and loth. Boston members of the Sebago 
Club say that they shall be more pleased than tiie}^ ex- 
pect to be, if the ice is out of Sebago on the TQth. which 
is a legal holiday in this State, and a time when they 
always try to be in camp. BiUy Soule, of the Pleasant Is- 
land Camps, Cupsuptic Lake, Me., was in Boston the 
other day. He says that the snow is very deep in the 
woods in the whole Rangeley region, with the ice 2oiTi. 
thick oji the lakes and at least 3ft. of snow over it. How- 
ever, he thinks that this snow may "rot away" the ice, and 
under favorable weather in April the Rangeleys will clear 
anywhere from the loth to the 15th of May. Prospects 
of early fishing in Maine are not good this year. 
Three beautiful trout in Dame, Stoddard & Kendall's 
window, early Saturday morning, were the first harbingers 
of spring fishing. One of them is being frozen into the 
middle of a solid block of ice, to be on exhibition thi.s 
week. Some of the fishermen are inclined to believe that 
this has been done to represent their condition after fish- 
ing on Saturday in the cold wind, but the exhibition is 
labeled : "How trout winter." Speci.m,. 
Identity of Common and Labrador "Whitefish. 
The common whitefish of the Great Lakes was first 
very imperfectly described by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill. in 
the American Monthly Magazine and Critical Review for 
March, 1818. The description, in fact, is so unsatisfactory 
that his contemporaries and later ichthyologists for more 
than fifty years supposed it to refer to the cisco. or lake 
herring, Argyrosomus artedi. A good account of the 
whitefish was published by Richardson in 1836, under 
LeSueur's name of Coregonus alhus, a name published 
only a few weeks later than that of Mitchill ; but, like 
Mitchill's, unaccompanied by a sufficient description. 
In 1836 Richardson established a new species of Core- 
gonus upon a dried specimen which he received from 
Musquaw River, that falls into the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
near the Mingan Islands, giving it the name_ Salmo 
{Coregonus^ labradoricus. This has been retained in 
the literature as a distinct species up to the present time, 
although its close relationship to the common whitefish 
has sometimes been observed without recorded com- 
ment. 
Systematic ichthyologists have found it difficult to show 
clearly the differences between the common whitefish and 
the Labrador whitefish, as may be seen by referring to 
the monographs upon the whitefishes by Jordan and Gil- 
bert, Bean and Evermann and Smith. They have been 
forced to rely, finally, upon a single character, the pres- 
ence of several rows of teeth on the tongue to distinguish 
the two forms, and this was supposed to be constant and 
infallible. 
The writer has recently had. occasion, while studying 
the fishes of the State of New York, to examine numerous 
specimens of the common whitefish from the Great Lakes 
and interior lakes of New York and of the so-called La- 
brador whitefish from lakes of New York and New 
Hampshire and from rivers in New Brunswick and La 
brador. As a result of these investigations he is forced 
to the conclusion that Richardson's species, Coregonus 
labradoricus, is identical with the common whitefish. 
Coregonus clupeiformis, thete being no characters by 
which the two can be distiriguished. Every fadlvidua! of 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
the common whitefish, young and old, was found to have 
teeth on the tongue and to possess the other characters by 
which Richardson's species has hitherto been separated. 
This conclusion has an important bearing upon fish- 
cultural operations by the States and the United States, 
as it will tend to simplify the work of artificial propaga- 
tion, and, perhaps, extend its scope. — Tarleton H. Bean 
in Science. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Gum Hunting. 
Chicago, III., April i. — I was short of a story this week, 
but happening into the offices of the Chicago Varnish 
Co. I ran across something which I thought might per- 
haps give me the story, and also afford the readers of 
Forest and Stream a little notion of a new kind of 
hunting. I had often noticed the fine collection of gums 
in the show-cases of this concern, which collection has 
been making for the past twenty-five years and is said to 
be the finest in the world, even much superior to that of 
the Kensington Museum, of London, but I had always 
looked at the specimens carelessly, and had never stopped 
to inquire where this sort of thing came from. To-day 
I began to pry into the matter more curiously, and sOon 
found myself in a field of natural history which had hith- 
erto been unknown to nie at least. 
I suppose we have all read about amber, and have 
heard the stories how flies and other insects are some- 
times found preserved in pieces- of amber. Here I saw 
any number of pieces of gums, clear as amber and con- 
taining insects sometimes in hundreds or thousands. I 
saw some giant beetles, as long as one's finger, embalmed 
in lumps of gum, weighing perhaps a pound or so each, 
the preserving substance being so clear that all the luster 
of the beetle's mail was given out as clearly as upon the 
day when his legs first stuck fast on the side of some big 
tree in New Zealand 2,000 years ago. For all this "auri 
gum" is at least 2,000 years of age, and perhaps much 
older. The lighter gums are perhaps not so old. The 
Kauri gum is more apt to be dark and smooth, though 
some of the lighter colored gums are rather higher priced. 
I saw one piece of Zanzibar copal weighing about i2lbs. 
which was thought to be worth fully $500, so large a piece 
of that gum being very rare. This sort of gum always 
has a surface covered with minute dots, or what is caUed 
a "goose skin" surface. It is very rare to see a piece of 
this gum weighing the half of I2lbs. The largest pieces 
of gum are of the Kauri, of which blocks as large as 
35lbs. could be seen in this collection. I saw one 5olb. 
lump of Kauri gum, cut and polished until it looked like 
agate or petrified wood. Again, I saw a piece of iet 
black gum highly polished, which against the light showed 
blood red. Again, there was a long section showing the 
grain of a piece of bark, about which the gum had flowed. 
There was a big fungus-like piece of gum, as clear as 
water, and some pieces like oyster shell, which I was tokl 
came from a part of the Congo country whose deposits 
are now altogether exhausted. 
There are a lot of curious and interesting things con- 
nected with the trades and applied arts which arc con- 
tinually passed over by the public because tliey are out of 
the ordinary run of life. Thus, perhaps not everybody 
knows that the common commercial product, varnish, is 
all made out of gums such as I have been describing, and 
that all these gums are not taken from the surface of 
standing trees, as is the spruce gum of the Northern pine 
woods, but on the contrary must all be diig up from be- 
neath the ground, as though they were minerals and not 
vegetable proxlucts. All these varnish gums are fossil 
resins, the imperishable residue of forests which have per- 
ished and have been swallowed up by the earth. We dig 
up these immortal spirits of the bygone giant trees, we 
treat them in certain ways, and then we spread them over 
our manufactured woods in order that they may be made 
proof against time. 
The general name for these fossil gums is "copal," 
which is a generic name in Mexico for all sorts of gums. 
The chief varieties of these resins are amber, "animi" and 
"kauri." We all know about amber, or think we know 
about it. It is found in Eastern Germany, along the 
Baltic Sea, and in some parts of upper Burmah. Usually 
it is washed out by the waves from the cracks in rocks 
along the seashore. Men do not hunt for amber as they 
do for the other gums. You do not hunt for amber, but fish 
for it, and fish with nets. After heavy storms the amber 
is washed out of the crevices in the rocks and rolled about 
in the surf. The fishermen hold their nets against the 
waves, and thus catch the precious gum. Yet amber is 
sometimes mined, being found along with lignite in cre- 
taceous blue clay. Sometimes, also, it is found in brown 
coal deposits attached to bits of bituminous wood. Of 
course, whether found on the seashore or under ground, 
amber is only the surviving spirit of the departed pine 
tree, which may have rotted quite away thousands of 
years before the 'bit of gum was found. 
The "animi" gum is found in Zanzibar and Madagascar, 
usually in a red, sandy soil and about 4ft. under ground. 
Sometimes it comes also from Deraerara, though not :n 
so valuable forms. Thus we may see that these gums 
come from widely diverse portions of the earth, East and 
West Africa, New Zealand, and even South Americi. 
The latter country has not yet been much worked. The 
so-called Brazilian gum is of a pale yellow color. Thus 
far no one has found any copal deposits in North Amer- 
ica, I believe. New Zealand is the great gum producing 
country, but shipments also come from Java and Sumatra. 
There is a little district about 200 miles across, known as 
the Sierra Leone district of West Africa, which sends out 
some valuable gums, and here one ought to qualify the 
sweeping statement as to the subterranean nature of all 
copals by saying that there are certain Sierra Leone for- 
ests where the gum is collected like our spruce gums, 
its deposits being sometimes hastened by slashing the 
bark of the trees. From Sierra Leone also comes the 
"shot gum," small, round particles, verv rare and very 
expensive. Yet other bits of gums come from this region, 
known as "pebble copal," right valuable, too. These 
round little lumps are found in river beds, washed down 
out of the mountains by the floods. Then there are other 
African West Coast gums, such as the Congo, Gaboon 
and Loango copals, though these do not cut much figure 
in !r;ido, T :im to''*. Not mariy parts of Asia oroduce 
[April 8, 1899. 
copals, yet it may be of popular interest to knoAV that 
sorne shipments come from Manila, in ollt neW calight 
Philippine coUntfy. These supplies are not native to 
those islands, but are gathered from the Malay Islands 
roundabout. ^" 
I recollect that at the World's Fair, in the Prussian ex- 
hibit, there was shown what was thought to be a fine col- 
lection of amber, the specimens all being those which 
showed imprisoned insects. Yet in the Colleetion tb 
which I have above refeti-ed 1 s.aw, hefe iii Chicago, 
tnany gpeeiffleiis which kf sbf passed anything in the Prus- 
sian fexhiblt. There was one piece of Bombay "animi," 
about IS inches long, which was literally full of insects. 
There is a certain fascination in studying these strangely 
perpetuated forms of animal life. Here they were, all 
sorts of flying and creeping things, fragile and perishable 
themselves, but kept faultlessly preserved, with even the 
sheen of wing and the luster of scale untouched, mocking 
at the mummy-making of most skilled ancient Egypt. It 
was enough to give one creeps up his back, 
This study of the fossil gtims has the most liitetest ro 
me as applied to the faf-Off Gotlntfy Of NeW Sealant!, the 
home Of those spltndid savages, the Madfis, This i§ the 
country whieh supplies the hillk of the deitiand of the tSXm 
market, it§ exports rUnning about $3,000,000 each year. 
Auckland being the great shipping point. From this 
country, I take it, come the black gums, which make the 
most lasting varnishes. There still stand in these far-off 
regions forests of the giant conifers known as the Kauri 
trees. Gum can be taken from these living trees, but this 
"tree gum" is not used for making varnishes. It needs 
first to 'sleep a few centuries under the ea,rth. I saw a 
piece of Kauri bark Avhich was perhaps more than 4ft. 
long, sawed out of the covering of some old tree which 
was about 8ft. in diameter and probably at least t.oOo 
years of age, This piece of bark was all shot full t)f ej?- 
uded gum, which made the whole neatly as heaw as lead. 
This Kauri wood is something like the CalifoVnia ted 
wood, but it is much liarder. It might be used for" fut-ni- 
ture making Wete, It not foi" One singular quality, not 
known, I believe, in any other wood. You may take a 
plank of Kauri wood, dry it in the sun for years, and 
season it in a kiln for weeks. It will shrink until appar- 
ently it is perfectly seasoned. Now, you saw this plank 
in two, and each half will at once proceed to shrink at 
least a quarter of an inch more! Saw each piece in two 
again, and each remaining new piece will again shrink in 
the same way. Cut the Kauri, and it will shrink from the 
cut, and you cannot dry the shrink out of this wood in 
any way known to man. I imagine this fact is something 
not generally known. 
In the war which man Is waging with nature it is hard 
to predict all the outcomes. Man prevails for a while, 
until nature calmly swipes a whole people oft the faee of 
the earth with one wipe of her hand; . As T looked at all 
these strange And beautiful pieCes of singular products 
from faf-off quarters of the world I naturally asked about 
the extent of the supply. The answer is what might be 
expected. From j^ear to year the gum districts are 
worked out, and from year to year the 'pieces that come 
into market grow smaller and smaller, iand will some day 
be onh"^ chips and flakes and Hust. It is no wonder, for 
these gums have been dug for over 100 years, and we 
know that centuries ago amber was used in the varnish 
making of Europe. 
But I must not run on about things which may be 
more interesting to me than to others, nor forget the im- 
plied promise to tell how the gum hunters frnd their gum. 
In the cases holding the specimens that I saw I noted 
also, among the boomerangs, spears, wands, etc., from 
the far-away Maori country, a little hump-backed, long- 
billed bird, with hairs instead of feathers, looking like a 
giant woodcock, or perhaps more nearly like a big wood- 
chuck, with a bill a foot or so in length, standing on his 
hind legs and resting on his nose. This was a "Kiwi'' 
bird, and I think that from him the natives must have 
taken a lesson. The Kiwi bird runs along the san<!y 
reaches and sticks his long probe down into the sand iu 
search of tilings to eat. He digs his things desired out 
from beneath the earth. Near to the Kiwi bird in the 
case I saw a long, steel probe, arranged with a shovel 
handle at the top. the blade being perhaps 4ft. in length, 
drawn to a point and much worn from contact with the 
sand and pebbles. Mr. Maori had evidently made himself 
a Kiwi bill, in order to see what he eould find beneath 
the sand! 
In the open bush land of the province of Auckland 
there are districts of soil altogether barren of any forest 
growth. This soil is loose enough for probing. Some 
Kiwi bird of an old Maori once upon a time discovered 
that under this soil, some 3 or 4ft., there lay rotted out 
forests of the giant Kauri pines. Thus it was that thh; 
great gum districts became located, one after another. 
They are exploited to-day as regularly as the goldmines. 
When the gold-mining is flush the laborers flock to the 
mines, and when the mines are dull they go back to the 
gum fields.. Once the Maoris mined the gum almost 'ex- 
clusively, but now the whites take a hand. Armed with a 
sack and his long steel Kiwi probe-, the laborer govs 
slowly over the loose surface \\^hich (^vers the forgotten 
forest. He thrusts down the slender steel time after time. 
His trained touch tells him whether he has struck a rock 
or piece of gum. On and on he goes, tapping and dig- 
ging, now and then finding lumps or flakes of the Kauri 
gum washed up into the sand near the surface, and some- 
times having to dig the full length of his probe to unearth 
what he knows is there. Weird and grotesque are some 
of the shapes which he unearths, and it is no wonder that 
now and then he adds a touch which makes one into a 
fish or another into a grotesque squatting god. Now and 
then he finds a bit of bark run full of the preserving copal, 
and again he may unearth a lump holding the lizard f^r 
the beetle which centuries ago crawled up the giant trop 
trunk in search of something to eat. and which was itself 
eaten by the tree, and handed down to us in the slow, 
grim sport of the ages. 
Odd hunting enough must "be this search for the buried 
gum, which comes on man-back to the little outlying sta- 
tions, and thence ultimately to the seacoasts by horse- 
back, and thence by water and rail to all the civilizei 
portions of the world- There is something of a story in 
these flakes and lumps of pale, translucent material, .1 
story which runs back to the boomerang days, the times 
before gunpowder ^rid steam ^nd newspaper.Si when the 
