Jan. iif, T0OO.) 
short of a certain length may not be taken, even with a 
hook and line, unless the fisherman eats them all him- 
self. For instance, black bass must be ii inches; white 
bass, 8; rock bass, 8; croppie, 8; perch, 8; wall-eyed pike, 
IS; pickerel, i8; carp, 13; sunfish, 6; catfish, 13; buffalo, 
15. This is taken right from the act of 1897, and is cor- 
rect. Then the fish must be measured. There is no way 
around it. How is this to be done? Perhaps the com- 
pany will provide Baggageman Weit with a diving suit 
and a ribbon steel tape measure. He could be lowered 
into and raised out of the standpipe with a derrick, 
Djmamiting fish is also forbidden, under pain of heavy 
penalties. Besides, the dynamite would blow the tank to 
Ballyhack. 
The fish have to be got out or a new tank built. 
Then the new one would gradually fill up. In the course 
of centuries the whole depot district would be a town of 
tanks. 
It is enufT to drive a fish inseine. 
In the Pound-Net. 
BY FRED MATHER, 
Some time ago Mr, Charles Hallock told the readers 
of Forest and Stream that I had left New York and was 
now in Wisconsin. As usual, Hallock was correct. I 
have not written a word for publication in so long that 
now what the walrus said to the carpenter seems partly 
appropriate: 
" 'The time has come,' the walrus said, 
'To talk of many things; 
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax 
And cabbages and kings. 
And why the sea is boiling hot. 
And whether pigs have wings,' " 
The old net has been left so long and is so full that it 
5s hard to tell just where to begin assorting its contents. 
The last notice of its work was in Forest and Stream 
of March 11 — many moons ago, and before I left New 
York city for the forest. Since then I have written noth- 
ing. Now that the nights are lengthening and outdoor 
work must stop early, there is time for lifting a mass of 
letters that are piled among the "unanswered," in order 
to select a few. Here is one which at first glance appeared 
to be from an older person, but after deliberation and in- 
spection it appears genuine: 
A Boy's Query. 
"Uncle Fred: Dear Sir. — I am young. I want to go to 
the mountain to fish for trout. I don't know much about 
it, and I'm going to ask you to tell me a little of what you 
know. What is the best make and size, or number, of a 
hook for use in the mountam streams? Is it best to use 
a gut leader in the same streams? Why is it that the reel 
on a troitt rod is alwaj's placed behind the grip." and the 
reel on a bass rod is placed before it? These questions 
refer to bait fishing. Amateur." 
The best size and make of hook for bait fishing for trout 
m mountain streams, where trout do not gro-w large, av- 
eraging perhaps 3 to 4 otmces, is a sproat, No. 7 to to, or 
the side-bent Carlisle, No. 5 to 9. Years ago, when 1 was 
a bait fisher, I used to prefer a slim, long-shanked bail 
hook called "New York Trout," and it tnay be on the 
market yet, for I have only used bait for salt water fish 
for some years back, and may be a little rusty on bait 
hooks for trout. The "New York" hook had this advan- 
tage, in my opinion: The wire was very small, and did 
not split a worm, as larger hooks do, and then, the long 
shank allowed more worm surface. If you will ask your 
tackle dealer about these hooks and see samples of them 
you will judge of their qualities. I am not at all sure that 
the side bend of some hooks is an advantage. Fish have 
been taken on all forms of hooks that are in the market. 
If your local dealer has not the hooks named, write to 
some one who advertises in Forest and Stre.\m. 
Use a gut leader by all tneans. For bait fishing a leader 
5 feet long is plenty. If the stream is swaft you may need 
a split shot on the leader to take it down; this is for you 
to judge. The gut does not show up so plainly as the 
line, and as it is nearly transparent does not alarm the 
trout like a clumsy snelf knotted to the line and hook. 
The reel on a trout fly rod is put below the hand to 
balance the rod in casting, and has a click to check its too 
free running. In a bass bait rod it is put before the hand 
in order that when the bait is cast from the tip of the 
rod, and the reel is on top, the line may be kept from 
overrunning, or "back-lashing," by the angler's thumb. 
'The casting of a fly or a worm frotn a click reel is very 
diflPerent from casting a frog or a heavy bait from a free 
running, multiplying reel, such as is used on a bass rod. 
Eatins: Poison Ivy. 
Your correspondent, W. H. Avis, writes: "I have 
never seen any animal eat the berries of poison ivy, but 
have seen cows and horses eat the leaves of the plant 
many times. Once a young man, to show how tough he 
was, ate some of the leaves and suffered no ill' eflfect, 
probably owing to a cast iron stomach, for the same fel- 
low afterward lunched on a pound of cheese and a pound 
and a half of raw steak, at 10 o'clock at night, retired to 
the dreamless sleep of the just, and got up next morning 
as gay as a lark. In Forest and Stream I once read an 
argument that man originally was a bird, and have won- 
dered if the fellow who ate the ivy, cheese and raw steak 
descended from an ostrich." 
Running, as I have done, a bureau of general informa- 
tion for the Americas. Europe and their dependencies, it 
would never do to say that I know nothing of the effects 
of poison ivy, except upon the skin, where it works upon 
our cuticles in various degrees, from a few little irritant 
watery pustides on the thin epidermis between the fin- 
gers to great eruptions all over the body, accompanied by 
fever. But a man's skin and his stomach are believed by 
medicos to dififer in many ways, and what will poison the 
skin is harmless in the stomach, and the reverse. The 
poison of the rattlesnake may be swallowed with im- 
punity if there is no abrasion of the lips and there is suf- 
ficient impunity. The snake poison is merely a blood 
poison, and so is milk, or anything which will produce a 
clol of blood in the veins, which in titrn produces death, if 
virulent enough to produce a clot, and death ensues when 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
the clot clogs that pump which we call a "heart," After 
this the eft'ect is mechanical; the pump, which was once 
supposed to be the seat of reason and all the affections, is 
choked, and there you are. 
Crows and jays eat the seeds of poison ivy, and as they 
pass the germs undigested, they are aiding nature to dis- 
seminate this plant; but why nature wishes this done is 
more than I can tell you just now. Once I saw a domes- 
tic hen eat these berries; but then, a hen has no lips to 
poison, as horses and cows have. The trouble seems to 
be entirely with the skin of man; but it would seem as if 
the delicate membrane of the lips of cows and horses 
would be irritated by the poison. 
.'\fter writing this there comes ati after thought — we all 
have these things and think what we should have said or 
done at certain bygone times. The tardy thought is this: 
Harking back to boyhood days, I remember of brag- 
ging that the poison ivy would never poison me, and in 
later years I was poisoned by it. Now the question nat- 
urally arose. Had a half century changed the characted of 
the plant, or had the man changed his plmical condi- 
tion? Surely there was a change, and I sat down to 
ponder on the problem. The leaves are more actively 
poisonous in spring and early summer, while growing and 
full of juices, than in the fall, btit there is also poison in 
the bark of the vine itself, which will raise blisters on 
some skins, especially when moist from perspiration. 
Some people are more sensitive to this poison than others. 
The late W. M. Locke, once of Honeyoye Falls, N. Y., 
with whom I used to shoot, has been poisoned by ivy 
on a warm day by passing near it, without touching it, 
and has required medical attendance in consequence, be- 
ing poisoned from head to foot under his clothing, where 
the vine could not have touched. This plant is called 
"mercury vine" and "poison oak" in some places. 
The Catadromous Eel. 
A man from Easton, Fa., writes: ''Will you kindly 
write a few paragraphs on the life history of eels, partic- 
ularly as to whether all eels go up fresh water streams in 
the spring and return to salt water in the fail." 
The little we know of the life history of the eel has 
been told many times in Forest and Stream by myself 
and others. All our common or silver eels, during their 
first few months of life, seem to swarm up the rivers; 
then, on their first migration, they swim in large bodies 
and near the shore, where they are readily seen by the 
most careless observer. If their habit was to scatter and 
move along the bottom in deep water, few, except those, 
who search for such things, would know of the migration. 
How long the great body of them may remain in fresh 
water is not known. Some make their home there for a 
while, but the larger number return to salt water at some 
tiitte, not known, for the adult eels are more numerous in 
salt and brackish waters than in fresh. Many eels which 
remain in fresh water go to the sea in the fall to spawn, 
but not all. Perhaps they are biennial spawners. The 
largest eels are caught in fresh water, and it is supposed 
that these are barren females, which develop grOw^th in- 
stead of eggs. It is not known that the male eel ever 
goes to fresh water. He is quite small, and seems to be 
comparativelj' rare — at least, but few have been found by 
scientific observers among thousands examined. 
The eel question is perennial, and ever-blooming. Per- 
sonally. I had tired of it from the standpoint of a writer, 
and had decided to say no more on the sttbject, because 
1 tliought I had told all I know^ of it; but now- comes Mr. 
Cr. A, W^all, in Forest and Stream of Dec. 30, who 
writes so intelligeiitly of eels; but as he w"as a student 
under that eminent zoologist, Dr. Joseph Leidy, this is a 
matter of course. Mr. Wall says that he tells what he 
knows and what he doesn't know' of this slippery cus- 
tomer, and the spirit moves me to take up portions of 
his article and comment thereon. 
Yes, the eel is an oviparous fish and the sexual organs 
are figured in the report of the United States Fish Com- 
mission of a year that I cannot name, for I am now nearly 
1.500 miles from the larger portion of my library. The 
male eel is quite small, and darker in color, with smaller 
eyes and lower fins (Jordan), and is rarely found. No 
specimen of the male has been found in fresh water by a 
competent observer, although Dr. Bean found them in 
Great South Bay. Long Island, which is brackish. My 
own partial count and estimate of nine millions of eggs in 
a 6-pound eel has been printed in many forms and in sev- 
eral lattguages. 
From such evidence we believe that fertile females mi- 
grate from fresh to salt water to breed, while only the 
barren females remain and bed in the mud of fresh water 
ponds; but we do not know where the migrants go. nor 
where they spawn. 
It is not believed that the habits of the European eel 
differ from our own; both are catadromous — i. e., "going 
to salt water to breed" — thus reversing the order of the 
anadromous fishes, which go from salt water to fresh to 
breed. 
Now comes a most important point, and one which en- 
titles Mr. Wall's paper to serious consideration. He 
"strongly suspects * * * that the eel is an ovo-vivi- 
parous fish. * * * j ^y^^ compelled to leap the stream, 
* * and as I did so I noticed something of a white 
color waving in the water. * * * This turned out to 
be a great mass or aggregation of eels wrapped and 
twisted around one another like a rope and slowly turning 
from side to side, with their heads all up stream. * * * 
Unfortunately, owing to the darkness, I could not ascer- 
tain what they were doing in this singular attitude." 
This was in Viriginia, in Highland county, and in Au- 
gust. Like a dream comes the stories of "eel balls" in the 
i&reat South Bay of Long Island, from Captain Ed. Smith. 
Said he: "Ef you wan to get a lot o' eels, jes' git down 
here 'bout October an' go out with me a-spearin' eel balls, 
and you'll git a dozen or twenty at each throw. What? 
Eel balls! Never heard on 'em? Well, they just knot 
up an' roll around up an' down the tide; p'r'aps they're 
kind o' visitin' hke, or courtin' — I dunno; but they's lots 
on 'em then, an' they gang up in balls." 
This was in 1880. w-hile I was gathering fishery statis- 
tics for the census, and had had quite an experience with 
m.en whose ideas of fun exceeded their regard for statis- 
tics, and I credited Capt. Ed. with a good attempt to jolly 
me. and thought no more of it until Caot. Tuthill. of Nev? 
Suffolk, some eighty miles east, told the same story, 
when I thought it merely a Long Island yarn to enter- 
tain a duffer in search of information, and it did not ap- 
73 
. I I .■) iir-.: . ■_■ .11 1:"/ ■ ■ /L'1i'.''*"'fr'''r'^''"T'^*'**''fT1r*T~'^--| L 
pear in my report, which was published in the seven vol- 
umes of "Fisheries Industries." Of course, it has beeni 
brought down from memory's shelf many times, but the: 
dread of that ridicule which follows after a tenderfoot has; 
held the bag for snipe in the swamp deterred me fromi 
ever referring to this matter in print. Now, that a gen- 
tleman of some scientific training has seen such a massing 
of eels. T do not hesitate to tell that I have heard of the 
same thing. 
Mr. Wall says that he has "been informed by eel fisher- 
men that they had met with such phenomena while 
spearing eels late in summer on dark nights." He thinks 
from this that the eel may be ovo-viviparous, and who 
shall .say him nay? 
That he has not heard "that no one ever met with ^ 
gravid eel" is fully answered in the notes above. 
To his inquiry, I will say that no fishculturist, up toi 
date, has hatched the eegs of the eel or has ever seen themi 
after they were fertilized. Modern naturalists apply the; 
term "larva" to any animal, insect or crustacean which' 
differs from its parent when it emerges from the egg, and! 
the eel does this, but as to where and how the great num- 
ber of eggs are laid nothing is known. This larval eel was 
long thought to be a distinct animal, and was given a name 
which has escaped me now, and I have not the reference 
at hand; possibly it is Leptocelyhalus, to the best of my 
guessing ability. That is the generic name of the conger 
eel. an animal which has no scales, as our river eel has. 
The eel is very susceptible to cold, and is seldom found 
above the sixtieth parallel, even in summer. In tropical 
waters they are active all the year, but in the nonthsrn 
Unitf^d States they bed in the mud during the very aald 
weather. 
Fish Hawk and Carp. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In the recently published report of the Commissioners 
of Fisheries, Game and Forests, Mr. Annin mentions the 
fish hawk as one of the winged enemies of our fishes. Ad- 
mitting that this is in a sense true, I trust that nothing 
may be done in the way of destroying this bird, in this 
vicinity, at least, as we have learned to look upon him as 
a public benefactor. With the exception of a few herring 
taken by him in the spring of the year, his principal food 
here is the carp and gold fish, both of which are destroy- 
ers of our wild rice crop, are unmitigated nuisances, and 
of little or no value as food for man, notwithstanding the 
fact that the former named is frequently found on the 
fish market stands. 
Our river — the Hudson — is filled, and but for the kin.."ly 
offices of the fish hawk, would overflow with these worth- 
less fishes, and our wild rice crop be entirely destroyed', 
by them. When the tide is out the carp and gold fish ini 
the shoal water behind the dykes become an easy prey 
for the osprey, and large numbers of them are taken. 
One of the most interesting features of an early morn- 
ing tramp after snipe is to see one of "ihese birds provide 
himself with the material for a breakfast — more especially 
interesting if that material happens to be a carp of a 
weight nearly equal to that of the bird. I have been witness 
to many a struggle of this sort, and in some instances have 
seen the hawk relinquish his prey after repeated attempts 
to raise it. This will not seem strange when it is known 
that these carp here frequently attain a weight of 25 
pounds and upward. In my humble opinion our osprey is 
a grand bird, and a useful one. a useful feature of our 
landscape, and trust that his shadow may never grow 
less, and that he may live long to feast and wax fat on 
carp and c.her worthless fishes. M. Schen'CK. 
T«c.y, N. Y.. Jan, 15. 
Pollution of Lake Champlafn. 
Larrabee's Point, Vt., Jan. 12. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I want to ask if anything can be done regarding 
violations of the law, both as to net-fishing and the 
emptying into the lake of chloride of lime and black 
ash. Since leaving the city, six years ago, I have been 
living on the banks of Lake Champlain, not over 100 
feet from the lake shore. So you see when I say I live 
on Champlain, I don't mean that I live anywhere from 
one to five miles from the lake. There has never been 
so much of the pollution by lime as at this time on 
both the New York and Vermont sides of the lake. As 
to the black ash, the mills in Ticonderoga are emptying 
their refuse into Ticonderoga Creek, which brings it 
down into Champlain, two miles south of our point; and 
yet so strong is the stuff that we can't use the water. I 
have counted 250 dead fish — bass, pike, perch, pickerel — 
from the railroad draw up to the lower mill, about one 
and one-quarter miles. Ch.\mplain. 
[We have written to our correspondent that his best 
course is to lay his evidence before Chief Protector 
Pond.] 
Potomac Notes. 
Washington, D. C. — There is little doubt now that 
the fish netters in the Potomac are reaping a harvest as a 
result of which thourands of black bass, mostly large- 
mouthed we pray, are being shipped to other ports. There 
is said to be strong evidence that many of these fish are 
taken within the limits of the District of Columbia, 
which is w-ell protected by law — the District, not the 
fishes. What the section needs is a warden who will see 
that the laws are obeyed, or, if broken, enforced. 
A large number of German carp are now being shipped 
to New York City and elsewhere from this city. They 
are in prime condition, and must add quite a little to the 
income of the fishermen. 
How long will the bull frog (Rana catesbiana) live 
without food? We saw the other day two fine large, 
though now rather thin, frogs that have been kept in a 
g-inch glass jar for five months, and for at lea=t three 
months have not been fed even a fly. The jar is almost as 
wide as high, and at present has 2-inches of water in it. 
B. A, Bean. 
"Forest and Stream'' Calendars. 
There are four of them. They measure about 3 6 
inches, and are convenient to hang over a desk. We shall 
be glad to send one of them to any address 00 reqiiest 
