80 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
l^AH. 13, igoo. 
Game Law Doctormgf, 
On the train the other day just before reaching West- 
port I- met Anthony- Ross, of Essex, and was introduced 
by' him to Hon. A. W. Boynton and Richard Trumbull. 
The three gentlemen, who are lawyers, were on their 
way to Elizabethtown, the county seat of Essex county, 
which is reached by a ten-mile drive from Westporfc. 
"If you ever get into trouble breaking the game laws," 
said lawyer Ross, with a personal application which was 
altogether imnecessary, "just go to my friend Boynton 
here, and he'll get you off. He's the greatest game law 
lawyer in northern New York." 
"Does_ it make any difference whether I am guilty or 
not?" I inquired, 
"Not the slightest," replied Mr. Ross, cheerfully. "The 
game protector can prove any kind of a case against you, 
but if you can get BojTiton on your side he'll find some 
way out of the difficulty. 
"Here's a case in point: Three years ago there was a 
man tried at Au Sable Forks for violating the statute 
which says that no fishing shall be done through the ice 
in waters inhabited by trout. He was tried before 
Justice Trumbull, who, as it happens, sits on the honor- 
able counsel's right at the present moment. 
"The prosecution proved its case up to the handle. It 
had half a dozen witnesses on hand who swore to seeing 
the defendant fishing through the ice on Trout Pond, near 
Clintonville, and who, moreover, saw him haul a trotit 
up through the ice, and who identified the fish beyond any 
measurable doubt. Counsel for the defense admitted all 
these facts as far as one particular trout was concerned, 
but moved the discharge of the prisoner on the ground 
that it had not been proved that the trout was caught from 
waters inhabited by trout, as the statute provided. The 
circumstance that the pond was called Trout Pond did 
not prove the fact, and the prosecution had no evidence 
to show that there were any trout left in the pond after 
the particular fish in question had been taken from it, and 
the prisoner was acquitted." 
"I had another case," said Mr. Boynton, suavely, "of a 
man who was arrested for having in his possession a live 
deer out of season in which I secured an acquittal on 
somewhat similar grounds. We admitted everything the 
prosecution wanted to prove, and based our defetise on 
the fact that the defendant had taken the deer from dogs 
and hunters who would otherwise have killed it, and so 
was carrying out the spirit of the law by saving the life of 
the deer. The jury acquitted the man; the case was 
taken to the comity court, and he was acquitted there, 
and finally the general term affirm.ed the decision." 
_ "The native Adirondacker," remarked Mr. Ross, "be- 
lieves that game, even though it is out of season, tastes 
just as good. He has an idea that game laws are made 
for city people and against his interests, and the offender 
must be a mighty unpopular man if he hasn't got the 
sympathy of the jury with him. 
"But, as I said before, if you want to be real sure of 
getting off, you should have our honorable friend on 
your side. All lawyers are not equally good at interpret- 
ing the law from the defendant's standpoint so that 
the jury can conscientiously see their way clear to acquit 
him. 
J. B. BURNHAM. 
:7 
ANGLING NOTES, 
Tomcods. 
One day last week the New York newspapers had an 
item under the heading "5,000 Fish in One Night," 
which related to catching tomcods in the Hudson River 
near Tarrytown, and it states that the catch was made 
by four men using net and clam bait. "The water ap- 
peared to be filled with fish, and it was nothing to pull 
them out 100 at a time. One of the fishermen lost his 
hat overboard, and in throwing a net put to recover it 
he pulled in sixty- five fish. 
"The fish were placed on exhibition to-day in a local . 
store. Several years ago the Fisheries^ Game and 
Forest Commission dumped several million tomcods into 
the Hudson, and now fishermen are taking thousands- 
of fish out of the river nightly." 
The only hatchery in the State to hatch salt-water fish 
is located at Cold Spring Harbor, on Long Island Sound, 
and there tomcods, lobsters and smelts are hatched in 
addition to trout of various species. At this station of 
the Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission as high as 
48,000,000 tomcods have been hatched in one season, and 
the young are planted when hatched in the waters of the 
Sound, in the waters about Greater New York and in 
the Hudson River. The tomcod, tommy or frost fish 
is a delicious little pan fish and furnishes food for a mul- 
titude of anglers in and around Greater New York. I 
read the newspaper item I have quoted from while I was 
at Cold Spring Harbor station, where millions of tom- 
cods are now being hatched, for their season of spawn- 
ing is confined to the month of December, and they 
come ill to the shores and even ascend streams for the 
purpose of spawning as cold weather comes on. Hence 
the name "frosi ush," which has caused some people to 
mix them up with another frost fish — the round white- 
fisli of Adirondac'-: lakes, a fresli-water fish, which also 
comes into the shallows to spawn about the time of 
the beginning of the frost period in the North Woods. 
By the same token, the common name of tomcod is not 
confined alone to this member of the codfish family 
which bears the specific name of Microgadus tomcod, 
for there is a real tomcod on the Pacific Coast, and 
the name is applied there also to the young of quite 
a diiTerent fish: but what I had in mind particularly is 
that the kingfish of the Atlantic Coast is called tomcod 
on' the coast of Connecticut, and thereby hangs a tale 
which should have been mentioned in this column years; 
ago. 
My friend the late Prof. George Brown Gaode sent 
-me a copy of his trqok, "American Fishes," at the time 
it Vis published ':(T find from "his inscription on the fly 
leaf tliaf it wa-s' sent July. 1888), but it was not until 
years^' Iater 'that I discov(^red that the book perpetuated 
ail 'error ajid caused tne steal the thundej- of some 
other angler. One day I happened to open the volume 
at the chapter devoted to king and queen fishes, and to 
my surprise I read: "Its great gameness, its beauty of 
color and form, and its excellent flavor, Mr. Cheney 
assures us, caused the loyal citizens of New York in 
colonial days to call this species the kingfish." Later 
in same chapter I read: "Mi-. A. N. Cheney gives the 
following instructions for kingfish angling." 
As I never had assured any one that the fish was called 
kingfish by Io3ral citizens of New York, and never gave 
any instructions for angling for kingfish, I wrote to 
Prof. Goode at once disclaiming the authorship of what 
he had credited to me; but to this day I do not know 
whose instructions I was made to father through an 
unintentional slip, nor could Prof. Goode recall how he 
happened to credit me with something I did not write. 
The Atlantic tomcod is a small fish, from 6 to 12 inches 
in length, and in form is a codfish in miniature, with 
barbel on its chin and fins of same number and placed 
as in the case of the codfish; but in coloring it is quite 
different. It is a prolific fish for one of its size, averaging 
about 25,000 eggs, although a single fish has been known 
to give 43>ooo eggs. The eggs are small, 1-15 of an 
inch in diameter, and are heavy and non-adhesive — unlike 
the codfish eggs, which are buoyant and non-adhesive. 
The eggs are hatched in McDonald or Chase jars, the 
flow from the bottom upward holding them in suspension 
as it were. With w.ater at about 40 degrees the eggs 
hatch in from twenty-seven to thirty-five days, and in 
four days more the umbilical sac is absorbed. 
For five years past the Fisheries, Game and Forest 
Commission has planted an average of a million young 
tomcods a year in the Hudson in the vicinity of Tarry- 
town, where it is reported that such large numbers of 
the fish are now being taken by the fishermen, and if 
one-fortieth of the annua! number of tomcods hatched by 
the Commission adds so greatly to the food supply in 
one locality, what must the other thirty-nine-fortietlis 
add to the food supply in other localities where the fish 
are annually planted? Ntw York is the southern limit 
of the range of th? tomcod on the Atlantic coast, and 
Cape Sable on the north, and if it were not considered a 
common fish it would easily assume a place as a most 
delicious fish; in fact it has been sold under the name of 
London trout — and a name is often a potent factor in 
disposing of a fish or a race horse. 
Fofge Pond. 
Of all th^ places where I fished as a boy and in early 
manhood, there is none that I retain in fonder memory 
than Forge Pond. Of my fishing companions who re- 
sorted regulcu-iy with me to this pond not one is left this 
side of the great divide. They were all my elders, and 
I was the kid of the enthusiastic Forge Pond coterie, to 
which 1 was admitted solely because 1 developed a love 
of fishing, probably about the time 1 graduated from 
dresses to knickerbockers or kilt skirts, for I was re- 
cently presented with an old arabrotype of myself in kilt 
skirt with a fish rod in my hand and (perhaps I ought 
not to confess it) a pipe in my mouth: but I am sure that 
the latter must have been at that time a property pipe. 
Several times lately I have been told that the streams 
on which Forge Pond was located contained a number 
of dead trout, and that they were possibly killed by acids 
from a gold reduction establishment just below the site 
of the old Forge Pond dam. I had not been to the place 
in ten years or more; but I sent for a special State game 
and fish protector, and yesterday we investigated the re- 
ports, the residt of which has nothing to do with this, 
as our investigation is not finished. 
My visit to the spot awakened a flood of memories, 
and last evening over sf\eral pipes filled with tobacco I 
dreamed day dreams of Forge Pond in all its former at- 
tractiveness to me in the long a,go. The pond was formed 
by building a dam on a trout stream, yet famous for its 
fish, and one that the State plants with fry or fingerlings 
from time to time, and it being half-way, as it crosses 
the old Militarj' road of French and Indian war times, 
between old Fort Edward on the Hudson and Fort Will- 
iam Henry at the head of Lake George, it is called Half- 
Way Brook. The pond filled a depression between two 
Sand hills where once stood mighty yellow pines, and 
the stumps of the pines protruded from the water from 
one end of the pond to the other. There was a fringe of 
pines left standing on the south shore, and a scrub 
growth on the north, both serving as wind breaks. 
At first the fishing was done from a half-log of yellow 
pine poled from stump to stump, btit in time that gave 
way to a scow not perhaps as safe to fish from as the 
half -log, The trout were particularly fine flavored, and 
even in that far away time extremely waiy in the shallow 
but cold water. 
I do not propose to recall much of the fishing in Forge 
Pond in these notes, but one night I was sitting up with a 
sick boy friend and toward daylight he said he thought if 
he could have a fried trout he could eat it. When I was re- 
lieved abottt daylight. I drove to the pondand caughtthree 
trout weighing ij^, i and pound respectively, and 
was home before the ordinary breakfast hour. Many 
and larger brook trout have I taken since that day, but I 
doubt if any subsequent catch gave me more pleasure 
in the catching. 
The last time I fished the pond I caught my trout, 
v'^uch as I caught, through the ice in March. At that time 
it was the regular thing to fish through the ice for 
trout after the law expired, either March i or March 15, 
and fine sport I considered it then. 
Jimmy Sargeant was my companion, and Prince James, 
as some called him, because of his old-fashioned courtly 
ways, was a rare sportsman, and Jimmy to Nat Harris, 
Fred Ranger, Aiken Sheldon and old man Pardo, of 
those who were the chief worshipers at the shrine of old 
Forge, and who have passed into the beyond. For bait 
we used white grubs cut with an axe from dead second- 
growth pines, and there was a witchery or glamour aSout 
ii that made it seem a most delectable sport when 
practiced at old Forge, when the ice was getting soft 
and the slcy was getting blue, and the first venturesome 
robin might be heard of a morning. No one that I knew 
. ever fished old Forge to make a record or to take all 
the trout that would bite: a few of the superior fish from 
that stump-studded pond was a genteel sufficienc}'-, and a 
..man who loaded his basket, if he could, would Have 
^been sent to Coventry by the old guard who. loved and 
fished it, and talked about it Avhen it could not be fished, 
for old Forge was a sort of sacred place and at that time 
had not been invested by those who fish for gross gain. 
Yesterday Forge Pond was a waste. The stumps re- 
main because they cannot be sold in the market at a 
profit, and the brook winds its way among the stumps 
down to what was the dam, where stood Dixon's mill. 
Where once was the bottom of the pond grass grows and 
furnishes pasture for cows. The mill is gone, the pines are 
gone, the scrub growth is gone, and all is a desert. A 
few rods below where Dixon's mill sawed a few logs 
after a thunder shower, there is on one side of the brook 
a plant for making barrel bung stoppers and horse- 
shoers' rasps. On the other side is a plant for removing 
gold from the sand hills, and the hills are furrowed with 
ditches and tall smoke stacks rise where the wind once 
soughed through the pines, and steam whistles screech 
out where in other days there was naught but a Sabbath 
stillness except on the rare occasions the mill was started 
to saw a few boards to build a fence or mend a hen coop. 
I was sorry that I saw the place in its present condition, 
but I suppose the steam whistles and the smoke stacks 
are types of the progress of the century; but it is a very- 
rauch-out-at-elbow sort of progress as I saw it, and if it 
proves true that poisons are allowed to run into the 
stream they will be taken out if State laws can accom- 
plish it, if for no other reason than because old Forge 
was once the Mecca of some very honest fishermen of 
simple tastes, who loved the spot and whose shade would 
haunt me -if I did not do all in my power to prevent the 
fouling of the stream which remains and which once fed 
the pond. 
Books for the Pocket. 
It may be assumed that by books for the pocket I mean 
an angling book that will fit an angler's pocket, and not 
.a portemonnaie or wallet. Again and again have I 
taken some little book to read on the cars, and it almost 
always has been a book which related to fish or fishing 
and of a size to slip into my pocket without inconve- 
nience to me. So often have I done this that it caused me 
to look over my modest angling library and find who 
produced these convenient little volumes — and nearly all 
of them came from abroad — and as a rule American pub- 
lishers seem not inclined toward small and compact 
volumes on angling or sporting subjects. To me a book 
which takes me off to a trout stream or salmon river is 
of much greater interest than a novel, and when Mr. 
George A. B. Dewar sent me his dainty little book "In 
Pursuit of the Trout" I put it in. my traveling bag to be 
read on the first journey I was called upon to make, and 
thereafter it made a number of journeys with me, being 
changed from bag to pocket and vice versa at the be- 
ginning and end of each journey. 
"Days in Clover" and "On a Sunshine Holiday," by 
the Amateur Angler, who is the father of Mr. R. B. 
Marston, and who writes lovingly of many things out 
of doors besides angling, have been with me on journeys 
of many hundred miles. The pages of "In Pursuit of 
Tro.ut" arc 4:4 by 6j4 inches. Mr. Marston's little books 
are 4K by 7 inches and 4 by 6],^ inches respectively. A. 
reproduction of the first edition of Walton is 354 by 5 5-8 
inches, and a reproduction of the fifth edition, in limp 
leather, ^^is 5J4 by .35',s inches. Blacker's "Art of Fly- 
Making" is by 6f/S inches. "Salmonia," by Sir Hum- 
phrey Davy, is only 65/s by 4 inches, and Marston's 
"Walton and the Earlier Fishing Writers," in large paper, 
is but by 7 inches; but these and many others were 
published in Great Britain, chiefly in London. 
On the other hand, the first book on angling, accord- 
ing to Mr. Dean Sage, of Albany, who has one of the 
finest angling libraries in the country, published in the 
United States, is but 35^ by 55^ inches. This is the first 
edition of John J. Brown's "American Angler's Guide," 
published in 1845 by Burgess, Stringer & Company, and 
for sale by John J. Brown & Company at the Anglers' 
Depot, 122 Fulton sti-eet. 
Nessmuk's "Woodcraft," published by Forest and 
Stream^ Publishing Company, is 4}4 by 6% inches, and 
Charles Dudley Warner's "In the Wilderness'^ is -4 by 
5% inches. 
I need not extend this list, but I aitt possessed of the 
feeling that small volumes convenient for the pocket and 
devoted to angling subjects would tend to cultivate a 
love of angling in men who have not the time to peruse 
more bulky volumes at home or at the office. 
The English exchanges of recent date note the publica- 
tion of the "Compleat Angler" in a thumb edition. There 
are 608 pages, each 2^4 by i-34 inches bound in a volume 
^4 of an inch thick. One paper says, "One of the classics 
of the world in the back of an ordinary watch claiuT; 
admiration for the technical skill implied on tlie part of 
the printers; but one is always inclined to doubt the real 
use of such eccentricities." 
The book is printed on Oxford India paper, "and the 
print is extremely clear, in spite of its minuteness." It 
is botmd in parchment and sells for an English shilling, 
or in various leather binding at an increased price. 
This, however, is not the kind of book I had in mind 
when I wrote books for the pocket, as probably the 
type is too shiall for reading in a vehicle that is in 
motion; but the books I have mentioned specifically 
and others like them are printed in type large enough 
not to tire the eyes if read in a moving railroad car. 
A good bishop of one of the Southern States who fished 
with me used to take several books out in the boat with 
him, and he was not particular as to the size of the 
volumes. A new book by Dr. Henry Van Dyke has 
an illustration showing a figure which I take to be 
Walton's, sitting on a bank under a tree reading a book, 
or it may be a "copy of verses," while he waits for his 
float in the stream before him to indicate that he has a 
bite. Readin.g while journeying is all right enough if it 
does not strain the eyes, but to read while fishing is as 
much out of place as wading trousers at a State ball. So 
while the illustration is charming to look upon in a book 
when the streams are frozen and the snow is falling, a 
fisherman is advised not to follow tlie example if lie 
expects to catch fish, 
Up-to-Date Fishcultaie. 
On occasions I have said in convetsation tliat Euro- 
pean fish breeder.-; were more progressive than we were 
in some particulars, an<} this generally raises a row, and 
