Sept. o,. i8gg.] 
organs would deteriorate from the normal? the longer the 
fish Avere in the river the more would this be expected. 
Every o'ne is agreed that salmon run up the rivers to 
jpawn, and also it is well known that no river could 
■aupply food to the natural run of fish that would enter a 
river, not even to the limited number that nowadays 
escape the nets. According to the Scotch physicians the 
salmon gets a desperate catarrh of his digestive tract 
before he leaves the ocean. Excepting that it is like the 
gastric catarrh of the glutton, there is no sense in this 
supposition. 
The theory that the salmon goes to sea to feed up and 
recuperate after the spawning is over is almost impossible 
to controvert, and presumably after he has fattened iip 
and regained strength, his or her sexual organs, beginning 
to reform once again, impel the fish to seek the rivers. If 
the stomach is to be diseased, it is much more likely that 
it will become so after a^ long residence in the river 
without food than when living in the open sea on the 
best of food. 
The chance of nature sending the whole salmon tribe 
with acute intestinal catarrh up the rivers to accomplish 
the arduous duties of spawning is so absurd that it is im- 
possible to believe such is the case. If naked eye appear- 
ances had been taken first, and the microscope had been 
left to a later stage in observations, a clearer conception 
might have been arrived at. 
The autumn fish and early river fish examined by me 
were caught by rod and line, and in all cases these fish 
must have been in the rivers several days, if not weeks. 
The amount of mucus fceces in all tliese fish was, of 
course, slight, and the amount of mucus material in all 
parts of the digestive tracts was small but varied. In the 
case of some autumn grilse, which had evidently not beeii 
very long up from the sea, there was manifestly digested 
material in the appendages and ftecal material in the in- 
testines. 
The examination of over 150 fish straight from the 
sea, as caught by nets in the estuaries, reveals quite a 
new light on this supposed acute gastro-enteric catarrh. 
I am quite certain the natural healthy physiological con- 
ditions have been utterly mistaken by the physicians in 
Edinburgh. They state in the most positive manner that 
never have they found traces of any food ift the in- 
terior of any fish, even if taken in sea near estuaries. I 
can state that I have turned out of the enlarged stomach 
of a salmon six herrings of large size in every stage of 
digestion, the one within the gullet having only its outeV 
surface digested, each succeeding fish being more digested, 
till, just before the duodenum is reached, the attenuated 
spinal column of a 6in. herring remained to tell the tale. 
In every salmon that has contained recognizable food, it 
has always been parts of, or the Avhole of, a herring, just 
as in sea trout it is invariably sand eels. The wonderful 
descriptions of pus in the appendage tubes is nothing more 
than the digested meals of the feasts of the sahnon un- 
dergoing absorption. I quite agree that the majority of 
salmon in the estuaries have ceased to feed, but the ap- 
pearances which the Scotch doctors call acute catarrh are 
merely the rich digestive mucus idle from want of work, 
and as alwaj^s happens in nature, quickly beginning to 
waste and degenerate from having no duties to perform. 
The thick juice in the pyloric appendages is merely the 
remains of the last meal, and has nothing whatever in the 
nature of the purulent catarrh in it. In autumn fish this 
juice has diminished much in quantity and consistencyj 
and in fact a caecal appendage often looks like a narrow 
tube of biscuits, the juice having shriveled up. The puru- 
lent appearance of the mucus in the first part of the 
stomach is undoubtedly due to bacterial changes brought 
about by exposure to fresh water and to air after capture. 
Even in these cases the mucus in the pylorus which has 
been kept from water and air by the firm contraction of 
the walls of this part is absolutely free _from_ any bacterial 
contamination, and is a pure hysiological juice. 
The digestive juices of all fish seem pot^t, but that of 
salmon seems very much so. The bones of all the fish 
eaten by them are digested before the small intestine is 
reached, and in well fed fish the f^cal remains are never 
much, showing how active is both digestion and absorp- 
tion. The small size of the intestines will also be an extra 
proof of this. It may be of interest to say that what is 
described by many as the oesophagus of a salmon is really 
its stomach, as digestion begins just within the gullet 
where it arises behind the branchial clefts, and the 
digestion of every part of the fish food down to the spinal 
column takes place in this stomach, where the bend oc- 
curs and several inches of a tubular part commonly called 
the pylorus; here, the bones are finally dissolved so that 
excepting a stray part of a bone, all has been digested 
before the juices pass into the duodenum. The more 
recently that such has taken place, the more are the 
caecal tubes filled with rich digested juices; or, as the 
Scotch scientists would have us believe, of dreadful 
purulent catarrh. 
Of the fish examined, the majority have come from the 
Scotch estuaries, a few from Ballyshannon, and several 
from Norway. There are many further points bear- 
ing on this subject, which have been noticed; but suffi- 
cient, for the time being, to protest against physiological 
health appearances being mistaken for disease. — ^J. King- 
oton Barton, M. R. C. P., in London Field. 
Xtoui of Lac a I'Eau Claire. 
AtoNTREAL, July 13. — Editor Forest and Stream: I send 
j'ou a photograph of a portion of a catch of speckled trout 
made in Lac a I'Eau Claire, St. Maurice county, by the 
Hon. Geo. W. Stephens, Mr. Albert E. Brown and my- 
self, all of Montreal, in May, 1899. 
This lake and the territory around it is the property 
of the Hon. Mr. Stephens, and has been protected, to a 
certain extent, by him, for over twenty years, and it is 
doubtful if its equal for producing the largest speckled 
trout can be found within the Province of Quebec. The 
largest fish shown in the photo weighed Syilhs., and this 
is the fourth fish of over 81bs. weight that has been caught 
in this lake since it came into Mr. Stephens' possession. 
The twenty-two fish shown in the photo weighed I04lbs. 
This score will stand "some beating," I think. 
Robert B. Ross. 
The FoEEST AND STREAM is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended for publication should reacb us at toe 
latest by Monday and as much earlier M pr*ctic«fel«, 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The! Cass Lake Country* 
Ffoiii the Report of Fire Warden Andrews, of Minnesota. 
The Itasfca Stale Park. 
In August I spent a day looking over the Itasca State 
Park in company with the superintendent, and walked 
several miles through thick primeval woods. I saw some 
handsome exclusively pine forest, also considerable forest 
of large-leaved trees mixed with pine, balsam and spruce. 
Though not as rich in forest as some other localities in 
the State, it is yet well enough wooden to make a desirable 
park, aside from the interest attaching to it as contain- 
ing the source of the Mississippi River. Evidently there 
is much wild game in its limits. 
The only means of travel through the park at presejit 
is by boat. Its benefit to visitors would be very greatly 
promoted by the construction of paths and roads; and 
as soon as practicable the State should employ a land- 
scape engineer to lay out and construct a system of roads 
and paths. Such improvements would add immensely to 
the attractiveness and value of the park. Toward this 
park Congress contributed as a gift 7,000 acres on con- 
dition that the State would protect the timber; and the 
only means for its protection from fire provided thus far, 
besides what the superintendent can do individually, is 
through the fire warden law. Another portion of the 
211 
over an east and west extent of about two miles. (.1 am 
speaking now of the south shore, the only part I visited, 
but other parts of the shore are very fine.) The trees on 
the sontli shore have been growing about a hundred years, 
are tall and hansorae, average a foot and a half in diam- 
ineter breast high, and stand so thickly that a horse and 
buggy could not be driven through them. The soil is a 
sandy loam, the surface is free from underbrush and 
carpeted with pine needles. The clean, beautiful forest 
extends to within a step or two of the beach, which is 
of clean sand and jnst wide enough to be pleasant. There 
is not a weed or rush anywhere in sight. The water, 
which is remarkably pure, is shallow for a few hundred 
yards, making it an ideal place for bathing. The lake is 
ten miles long by eight miles wide, and contains two 
handsomely wooded islands, the larger of which is two 
miles across, and itself has a lake remarkable for its 
abundance of black bass. I have seen the most of the 
principal lakes in Minnesota, but have never yet seen 
any bordered with pine forest that could in any way match 
Cass Lake for availability as a health and pleasure resort. 
Fir forest is especially healthy. Scientific men have as- 
certained that the air of such woods is richer in ozone 
than that of open country. Twenty-five per cent, of the 
patients with incipient consumption who visit the Ad- 
irondack forests return cured. ' The State Medical So- 
ciety should send a committee to visit Cass Lake to re 
A SHOW OF LAC L'EAU CLAIRE TROUT. 
Fiist row-6^, 6X, 5?<, b%, 4%, 6U, 9Ji, ^H, 8J^, T, 4-641b5. 
Second ww-oH,li%, 1^. ^'A^ 'ii 8, 8, 3, 4?<-401bs. 
park, comprising 2,452 acres, was bought by the State 
of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company at 50 cents 
per acre. . , c . , 
The State is to be congratulated on the wise and fairly 
liberal action of the last Legislature in appropriating 
$20,000 to purchase timbered tracts within the boundaries 
of the park which still belong to private individuals and 
which, through lumbering, were liable soon to become de- 
nuded of forest cover and in a way to expose the rest of 
the park to serious danger from fires. 
Chapter 303, of the General Laws of 1899, making the 
above-mentioned $20,000 appropriation, further provides 
that in case said appropriation shall become exhausted, 
and it shall transpire that timber is liable to be cut from 
any land within the limits of the park, the attorney- 
general shall endeavor to secure from the owner of such 
land an option to purchase the same, for a term not ex- 
ceeding two years, which shall contain an agreement that 
the timber thereon shall remain undisturbed. He may 
pay for said option, if secured, a sum not exceeding 4 
per cent, per annum of such term, upon the .value of 
said land as the same may be estimated by him. An 
appropriation of $1,000 was made to enable him to 
secure such option. 
Cass Lake. 
In my tour of inspection August last I took special 
pains to visit Cass Lake, situated about 200 miles north^ 
west of Duluth, and found it to exceed my highest ex- 
pectations in the beauty of its forest shores and avail- 
ability for a health and pleasure resort. What attracted 
me particularly to Cass Lake was hearing that the new 
Fosston extension railroad, running west from Duluth, 
as a part of the Great Northern system, passed through 
a very fine body of white pine near the lake, being the 
only considerable body of pure white pine adjacent to 
any railroad now left in the State except one in the eastern 
part of Carlton county, on the same road. I felt that it was 
desirable for the State to procure and hold as a park such a 
forest of white pine, near a railroad, while it was possible 
to do so. This body of white pine extends about two 
miles east and west by about a mile in breadth along 
the railroad near the south shore of Cass Lake. Going 
straight north to Cass Lake from the railroad the dis- 
tance is not over a mile. Half a mile from the lake the 
forest changes from white to red (generally called Nor- 
way) pine in o-ure stand; that is, without mixture with 
any other sort of trees. The surface then begins and 
continues to slope very gently half a mile to the lake 
port on its advantages and help mold public opinion 
so the Legislature will make provision for the State buy- 
ing a few thousand acres on the shore of the lake*. It 
all now belongs to the Chippewa Indians, and the Gov- 
ernment estimators of timber now have their camps there 
in the midst of this beautiful south shore forest. They 
had dug a well, and I drank some of the water, which 
was cold and pure. These estimators were enthusiastic 
on the wonderful beauties of the place, and declared that 
it would be a shame to have the timber cut off. However, 
unless the State or the railroad company buys it to hold 
as a park, the timber land is liable to be sold in course 
of a year to lumbermen and the timber removed as soon 
thereafter as it suits the owner to cut it. Under the 
treaty it can only be sold in forty-acre tracts and to the 
highest bidder. 
The president of Dartmouth College estimates that 
30,000 people visit New Hampshire every year, attracted 
by its scenery, who leave in the State about $6,000,000 a 
year. Minnesota has no White Mountains, but this Cass 
Lake, with its thickly standing, clean and magnificent 
border of pine, is one of nature's gems, which probably, 
take it all in all, cannot be matched anywhere in our 
whole country- To cut the timber would simply ruin it 
for scenery and health. The State should buy it and 
manage it as a place of resort and rest for teachers and 
others who need the recreation it affords. What is 
everybody's business is nobody's business; and I fear 
this will not be done, unless people with influence wake 
■up to the importance of very prompt and energetic action. 
I repeat — and I cannot emphasize the matter too much — > 
that it would be simply wicked for the people of Minne- 
sota to allow the south shore of Cass Lake to be denuded 
of its forest. He would be a true benefactor who would 
buy the tract and donate it to the State for park pur- 
poses. 
* This was written in August last. A committee of the State 
medical societies visited Cass and Leech lakes during the fol- 
lowing autumn. _ _ 
Boy Killed by Alligfatot. 
Jacksonville, Fla., Aug. 16.— Delano Wood, a lad of 
fifteen, was caught by an alligator at Trout Creek, Panama 
Park, six miles from here, while in bathing the other 
evening, and so badly mutilated and bitten that he died 
soon after being rescued by an older brother. The latter 
fought the 'gator with a club and finally blinded it, after 
being knocked down himself by the 'gator's tail. — New 
York Sun. 
