292 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[kn.it is, i8C)9- 
In the Pound-Net, 
BY FRED MATHER. 
There are said to be as good fish in the sea as ever 
were caught, and it's only a question of bait. That salv- 
ing originated when angling was the principal mode of 
taking fish, and before the invention of the all-devouring 
pound-net, with its long leader to turn fish into the 
"heart" and then into the "bowl," over which might well 
be inscribed: . "Who enters here leaves hope behind." 
But that is the market pound-net which takes unwilling 
fish, this one only captures .such as come to it voluntarily, 
and there is a great dif?erence, still my net is getting a 
fair share of business and the character of the takes con- 
tinues to be as varied as when it was first set. 
Crappics in a Rapid Stream. 
"Wheeling. W.Va., March 22,— Col. Fred Mather: After 
persistent solicitation by a number of anglers here, the 
United States Fish Commission was induced to send us a 
car of fish for distribution in Wheeling Creek. This stream 
has its source in Green County, Pa., and empties into tnc 
Ohio RiVer at this point. It is a very crooked, narrow, 
rocky and fairly rapid stream, not very deep, excepting in 
one or two places, at least for ten or twelve miles from its 
mouth up. beyond that I am not familiar with it. We 
received word on November 3 that the fish car was due 
to arrive the next A. M., the 4*, and it did. The car 
was taken and sidetracked at a small station about five 
miles east of here right on the creek. It had aboard ap- 
proximately 2,000 crappies, both large and small moutii, 
and 900 black bass, large mouth, all yearlings, with ex- 
ception of about 75 of the bass, which run from one tu 
three and one-half pounds. All the fish were lively and 
in good condition, and we transported them in tubs ana 
cans by teams, distributing at various points along tlie 
stream within a distance of perhaps five or six miles from 
the station. 
"It was reported here that a week or so ago some 
parties seining about the mouth of Fish Creek, which 
empties into the Ohio River about thirty miles belov^' 
here, had caught some of our crappies. As the crappve 
is a new fish for us here, not being found in streams in 
this vicinity, and being unacquainted with its habits, it 
would appear that our crappies were getting away from 
us It seems hardly possible to me that they would 
come down at this season of the year, although there are 
no dams in the creek between its mouth and where they 
were liberated. The creek, after the thaw following the 
severe storm and freeze of last month, was veiy high an<l 
exceedingly rapid, and it was reported that in a number 
of places it was frozen solid to the bottom. Could it be 
possible that in the thaw and wash out the crappies were 
forced down? I am not familiar with the crappie only i■^ 
the extent of such information as you write in your arti- 
cles in Forest and Stream, Vol. L., No. 26, and Vol. L! .. 
No. i; also what I find in Goode's American Fishes, and 
in both of the above I do not find much definite informa- 
tion as to winter quarters. I expect, however, to become 
better acquainted with them the coming season. You 
understand, that it is only by hearsay, that the statement 
is made of the capture below. Perhaps you may be able 
to give us something definite on the subject, or, perhaps, 
some of the readers of Forest and Stream may be able 
to throw some light on the subject." Crappie. 
Never having known the crappie to inhabit swiit 
.streams in winter there is a doubt if they would stay 
there. The character of Wheeling Creek, as described by 
"Crappie," does not appear suited for this quiet fish. 
They love ponds and sluggish streams and are not at 
home in brawling mountain brooks. Such a "crooked, 
narrow, rocky and fairly rapid stream, not deep, excepting; 
one or two places," is not the home that, in my opinion, 
the crappies would chose. Although the plant has gone 
down the river it is not lost. Tt will find a home m the 
Ohio River, or farther down in the Mississippi, whe-e 
they are plentiful, therefore, any loss to the people of 
Wheeling is a gain in some other place. .A. dollar 
dropped in Broadway is not lost, except to the dropper, 
some other fellow picks it up and counts it as gain. 
While Wheeling Creek may not be a good stream lor 
the crappies it is certain that it will sustain some sort of 
fish. If the temperature in summer does not get abovs 
75 degrees Fahrenheit, it would be an ideal stream for 
brook trout, but. having no knowledge of tcmpcratiuTS 
it is not possible tq say that it would make a troiit 
stream. For this purpose the "temperatures should be 
taken in July and August at 2 P. M., when the water is 
v/armest. Perhaps the crappies may come back, it was 
worth trying. 
How Ycmng Wood Ducks Leave the Nest. 
In Forest and Stream of March j8, i8gp,' I gave my 
observations on this subject, and, after nnotiiig Dr. 
James Skillen, of the Harvard University Medical 
School, will comment on it. 
"Col. Fred Mather, your article on 'domesticating- 
Wild Fowl,' in Forest and Stream of March 18 has 
c'eared up one thing to me that I never have been able to 
find out before, that is, how the young of the beautiful 
wood duck leave the nest. I must say that I have de- 
r'xved more information from j^our articles in the Forest 
.^ND Stream in the last few years than I ever did before 
in the course of my whole existence, and I am getting 
pretty near the three-score limit. 
"What a world of information there were in those 
articles, 'In the Louisiana Lowlands.' I assure you I ao- 
prciated those very m.uch. I was pleased to see (last week, 
i think.) that vou described the coot, as so many persist 
in calling all the so called sea ducks, coots. I believe in 
calling a spade a spade." 
If Dr. Skillen takes my limited observations as being 
positive on this point he may fall into error. I said that 
the mother duck came from the nest and called her brood 
to come to her; they had sharp toe-nails, clambered out 
and tumbled down. But my mother-duck was a pinioned 
bird, who knew that she could not fly, therefore she was 
hampered as no wild bird is. If men have seen the 
wood-duck bring her young from a hollow tree, either on 
her back or in her bill, I can not dispute them, but it re- 
quires a rare combination of circumstances to enable a 
man to see the act. He must be on the ground at day- 
break on the morning that she is due to hatch, or the 
morning after, and must arrive so noiselessly as not 10 
betray his presence. 
In the two instances observed by me the nest was 
within fifty feet of my back piazza, and I knew the day 
when the bird began to set and she was due to hatch 28 
days later, with one day more to mother them on the nesr. 
Wagons rattled along the road and there was many 
kinds of noise. T had only to crawl out carefully and 
watch ; there Was no chance about it. As I never saw a 
wild wood-duck get her young from the ne-st, 1 can't 
say how they do it, but I believe that the young climb 
out with their needle-like claws, as mine did. 
More about the Berries. 
Letters still come about the service berry, the "cedar 
berry" of boyhood, and others. Comrade Frank Rob- 
inson, of Philadelphia, sends some twigs of Taxiis cana- 
densis, or American yew, whose berries we boys of long 
ago used to eat and call "cedar berries," although they 
did not grow on cedar. Mr. Robinson saj^s: "The 
specimens enclosed came from a bush growing along the 
Perkiomen Creek, about 25 miles above Philadelphia, 
which is evidence that it still exists. The twigs at th'S 
time, March 16, have some embryo and undeveloped 
buds on them, indicating where the berries will be later 
on. I will try and keep track of it and in the proper 
season will try to send you some with berries matured 
Probably Dr. Hammond, or some other correspondent 
who writes of the service berry, will send it to you in the 
pi^oper season." 
The branches of this plant were like spruce in ap- 
pearance, but not in taste nor odor; the buds were scat- 
tered along the under side of the stems in an irregular 
manner, sometimes single, by twos and occasionally on 
opposite sides :oi the stem. 
What a Boy will Eat. 
There is a sentence in the letter of Mr. Robinson that 
stops the wheels of time and sets the hands back half a 
century. He says: "I fear that Dr. Hammond, and 
others who were so enthusiastic over the service berry in 
their youth, will find that the tastes of boyhood have 
not survived. When we were boys we used to eat wilh 
great relish green apples sour enough to make a pi,g 
squeal, but could not be tempted to put a tooth into one 
to-day.'' 
O, those happy days of long ago, when we boys 
tramped miles to pick and eat the tasteless "pinkster 
apples," irregular green juicy things from the size of 
peas to that of a hen's egg, probably galls, which grev 
on a shrub which we called "wild honeysuckle," proh- 
ably Amlea nudiHora, as the flowers came before the 
leaves. The name "pinkster" being Dutch and an equiv- 
alent of Whitsunday, the seventh Sunday after Eastev. 
The Dutch about Albany called the flower "pinkster 
bloomies." 
In summer we hunted the woods lor "wild lemons" or 
"May apples." These grew on an annual plant in dense 
woods: the plant being about ift. high, with two gre.it 
leaves, and bearing a yellow fruit at their junction, which, 
when ripe, was an inch long and less than that in diam- 
eter. Perhajis this is the mandrake, Podophyllum, but I 
am very w^eak on botany. Our names were appropriate; 
"wild lemon," because it was a cloying, sickish sweet, 
and filled with seeds, like a tomato, and "May apple," 
because it ripened in July. Yet the trailing arbutus is 
called 'May pink" on Long Island, where it comes and 
goes before May; yet this was the "Mayflower" of txhe 
English, from which the famous vessel was named. 
Then we would clinib oak trees for the green or newly 
formed galls, which would give the least bit of a sweet 
juice. Other things beside green apples which we 
searched for to eat, but which would not tempt us to- 
day, were the little puckcry wild grape of northern New 
York, choke-cherries and cider berries. Of course, we ate 
both kinds of sorrel, and. by the way, these are good 
stewed, like rhubarb, and we dug bumble-bee honey out 
of the ground in large, felt-likc sacks, and took an occa- 
sional sting to eiupliasizc our enjoyment. 
In those days an immoderate indulgence in green ap- 
ples might cause some intestinal cramps and pains be- 
tween the abdominal cavity, reaching down to the trans- 
verse colon, which the doctor would term colic, but was 
loiown to us by the simpler term of '•belly-ache," and then 
"the anxiety of the good mother, who watched the boy 
in his agony all night and dosed him regularly and kept 
hot applications on his bowels. O, T tell you: a boy 
brought up in the city never knows wdiat real fun is. 
Comrade Robinson m:ist have been a boy once. I say 
this because I've seen thousands of men who never by 
any possibility could have been boys. They were born 
"young men" and broken to live by rule. If mother 
said: "Johnny, you musf not eat that apple, it h riot 
ripe." or, "Willie, if ynii climb trees yon will tear you'- 
clothes and look like a beggar boy," or, "Now. Reginald, 
if you go off the road you'll get into the swamp and 
ruin your shoes," they would ohev orders. T pity such 
boys; they get a wrong start in life by being taught that 
they must be ever on the watch for their stomachs, and 
also must be at all times fit for presentation in the draw- 
ing-rnnm. That kind of training will kill the spirit of 
a full-blooded, enthusiastic boy, 
A Word afeoot Mothers. 
In most cases a mother exercises more influence in the 
training of a boy than any other person, for she has. or 
should have, him completely under her control for the 
first ten years, and can mould his character, if she will. 
Most of our professional criminals come from mothers 
who have lied to th^m in order to smooth over some 
question; the child soon learns that his mother is a liar, 
and then he believes no one; and from lying comes 
other crimes. Some sixty years ago a bov was tempted 
to cut into a hot cake, and then lied about it to his 
mother. There was circumstantial evidence against him. 
and a thin-soled maternal slipper was prescribed as an 
outward application to prevent internal complications 
from a too generous diet. After the counter-irritant had 
produced the desired flow of blond to the ,skin, it was 
explained to the boy that what he had received was 
merely due him for a violation of oiders concerning the 
drawing of extra rations without the formality of first 
applying to the chief commissary in regular form and 
having the requisition honored. But that was the least 
part of the punishment. "Now," said this model mother, 
"because you told me a lie you are not to have pie, pud- 
ding nor cake for two weeks." That was the wor%t 
part of it; but it was enforced, and that boj' once played 
hookey from school for three days and came home with 
water-soaked shoes and torn clothing, bearing a peace 
offering of a string of small pan-fish, and owned iip 
squarely to his mother, received a lecture on playin.g 
hookey, and the father never heard of it. She realized 
the fact that the .spirit of a vigorous, ambitious bov 
should not be broken on the treadmill of propriety. 
This mother realized that her boy had a taste fo'- 
fishing and for the woods, and on Saturdays and holi- 
days, as he grew older, enjoined him not to throw away 
the small fishes, because she liked them best, and when 
between the fishing and shooting seasons she encouraged 
him to pick berries and gather nuts, even if he did soil 
his shoes and clothing, and he grew up healthy and 
strong. This is a true storj', for I knew both mother and 
son in the long ago, and the boy never lied to her after- 
ward. He grew up to be fond of athletic and field sporty;, 
served his country as a soldier, and I believe he is alivt; 
to-day. Some mothers might have made a "Miss 
Nancy" out of that boy; one who wouldn't soil his shoes 
by getting too near a creek ta fish, or too far off the 
road in a swamp for woodcock, but — perhaps she couldn't 
in the case of this boy if she had tried. Much can be 
done in training, but the bent of a boy's mind has been 
fixed before his birth, and the best that a mother can 
do is to discover that bent and encourage it, with the 
inculcation of truthfulness and honesty as indispensab^^ 
starters on the way of life. If the boy has no taste fov 
mathematics, music nor theology, it is a wrong to force 
him to study these things. I have known men who have 
failed by being forced from their natural tastes. 
Please don't interpret these remarks to mean that 
when a man has failed to bring out the best that is in 
him that he is a failure in a financial sense. The com- 
mercial in.stinct leads a few men on to fortune and thou- 
sands to suicide. My idea of a successful man is one 
who makes a comfortable living in an honest way and 
is content: he has no aspirations to be a billionaire, be- 
cause he knows that when he dies he cannot take his 
gold with him. ' 
First of all, a boy, or a girl for that matter, should be 
a healthy animal, and only outdoor exercise can make 
him. so. He may not care for field sports, but he will 
be sure to like boyish sports of some kind, and most ' 
boys aspire to be athletes, even if they never get be- 
yond the aspiration. Thev admire the soldier, the sailor, 
the acrobat, the rou.gh rider and the vvrestler, and even 
the prize-fighter. Courage di,splaved in anv manner ap- 
peals to him. and a wise parent will try to direct this sort 
of hero-worship in a proper cliannel awav fr<ini that per- 
nicious li'erafire so plintifully provided for boys, whicii 
pictures bandits and desperadoes as heroes. The bov 
does not discriminate betAveen the soldier and the crim- 
inal, because he is absorbed in contemplating T^favefy, 
no matter in what cau-Se. And there you are! 
More Berries. 
Besides the wild berries which have been written up by 
various correspondents. Avho rushed to rescue me from 
ignorance concerning berries I haA'e lunched on, there 
are questions about some other berries of the woods. ^ 
Mr. Mark E. Noble writes that the mountain ash is 
sometimes called "service berry"; this is new in these 
discussions, and I did not know that the showy berries 
of this tree were eaten, even by birds; yet, as it is not an 
ash, but one of the rose family, its fruit might be edible 
by birds. Neither is the prickly-ash a true ash. 
This drifted into the net: "Are poke-berries and the 
seeds of the poison ivy poisonous?" 
It has been recorded that I have no claim to botanical 
knowledge; the net is set mainly for fish, but of cour-;e 
Aveeds will drift in. The ciuestion raises another, as to 
what a poison may be. In my unprofessional way it 
seems that the question resolves itself into a question of 
quantitv\ Opium and alcohol are poisons if enough be 
taken, and luen become so used to them as to be nearly 
immune. Taking up the beautiful pokeberiy, which is 
well worth a place among decorative plants, but is neg- 
lected because it is wild and common, we boys tasted 
them, but a ta.ste sufficed, for the luscious-looking 
.t'-rape-likc fruit was not palatable: yet our robins eat 
them so freely that it colors their flesh in the fall, and 
when I owned a mocking bird I gathered quantities of 
pokeberries and dried them for a winter treat, yet the ber- 
ries are poisonous to man if taken in sufficient quantity. 
This is the Phytolacca of the materia medica. also known 
as "garget root." In the spring the young shoots are 
cooked like asparagus, and eaten in parts of Massachu- 
setts and New York, and are sometimes known as 
"skoke." 
The effect of eating seeds of poison ivy are unknown 
to me, except in the case of the crow and the bluejay; 
botli birds eat them and pass the seeds without injuring 
their power of germination, and they have so lined the 
roads of the north side of Long Island with this plant 
that there is a mat of it between the traveled part of the 
road and the fence, and it climbs every fence and tree 
on the way. Its bright autumn colors on every tree trunk 
are the only good thing about this pest. He would be 
a bold man who would eat the seeds, and there is noth- 
ing on them to tempt a man. This is the ''Rhus" of the 
medicos, and it may be that it is only an -irritant to the 
skin. Ich wise nicht. I only know that this vine may be 
distinguished from its harmless relative, the "Virginia 
creeper," bv having a triple I-^af. while the equally beau- 
tiful, but harmless one has "five fingers." 
These things show that what may poison a man will 
not necessarily poison a bird: wdiy not: since the adage 
runs, "What's one man's meat is another man's poison.'' 
No saying is truer; some men cannot digest cabbage, 
radishes, cucumbers and nthcr vegetation, although mo.'^t 
men find meats easy of difrestion, and therefore it is not 
strange that birds, whose blood is many degrees warmer 
