[March 31, i$oo. 
Maine Hounds and Foxes* 
Boston, March 24. — I hear that one or two fox hunting 
parties — one from Boston and one from" Worcester — have 
lately spent some time in Aroostook county. Me., for the 
■purpose of enjoying the sport that part of the country 
affords. At the last session of the Maine Legislature, Fish 
and Game Commissioner C. E. Oak, who is also land agent 
and forestry commissioner, was reported to have told 
the fisheries and game committee that his county could 
furnish annually 100,000 fox pelts for ten years, with- 
out in the least diminishing the supply. Hunters who 
hav'i visited Aroostook co'unty this winter for fox hunt- 
ing are inclined to believe that his estimate is none too 
large. The wonderful strain of foxhounds that has been 
bred in the fox hunting sections of Maine, a race of 
patient and slow-running dogs, is peculiarly adapted to 
the enjoyment of the sport by lovers of the dog outside of 
Maine, as well as the native born. 
A fox hunter who has been there this winter tells me 
that' the dogs are simply wonderful. The result of fifty 
years' careful breeding, they have become rather short- 
legged, deep-chested and slow-running, and for such 
reasons are noted for the great delight they afford the 
hunter. Such a dog will run a fox till he is "holed" or 
the hunter gets a successful shot. The hunter says 
that his party struck a most remarkable pack of hounds. 
Let the hunter take out half a dozen dogs on the sam.e 
hunt and each dog would, if told, pick up a separate track 
and stick to it till the fox was shot or ''heil^^'-^ unless, 
called off by his master. He found that the tiriii^^s of the 
dogs could shift them from one track to afliosfet, if de- ' 
sired. To lose his track or mistake it for'anoiher always 
subjected the dog to punishment or disgrace, which the 
dog seemed to feel in a manner almost human. To rabbit 
or deer tracks they will pay no manner of attention, al- 
though the Boston hunters found one dog whose master 
claimed to be able to shift him from a fox track to that 
of a rabbit at pleasure. Of the great number of foxes 
taken in Maine the past winter, it is suggested that more 
than one-half are taken in traps. "Here," my informant 
says, "is a chance for hunters and hunting of a ven; 
fascinating nature. Stop the trapping of foxes, and 2 
crowd of hunters will be going to Maine for fox hunting. 
The sport is attractive, and the territory is great." 
A Mr. Merrow, of Auburn, Me., writes a friend, from 
the Klondike, that partridges are ven,- plenty there. The 
miners take days off for shooting them occasionally. On 
the last day Mr. Merrow was out for birds he shot nine- 
teen, and could have shot more, had his stock of shells 
held out. Shells cost there about four times as much as 
in Auburn. Special. 
A Call to Arms. 
We hope that every Massachusetts man will make it 
his business to see his representative and ask him to sup- 
port House Bill No. 549, which is the best bit of game 
bird legislation that has come before the House in years. 
AH sportsmen are familiar with this bill, and know, that 
the comniittee voted against it and in favor of another, 
a milk and water affair. But the fight has only just begun' 
Don't lose any time, sportsmen of Massachusetts, but get 
out and hustle. This action of the committee transfers 
the fight to the House, and we urge all the pressure that 
can be brought to bear on your representative. Now is 
tlie time — not a year from now, but now, and we will do 
much to save our birds, 
FiTCHBURG Rifle and Gun Clue. 
' -■ J. O. Converse, Secy. 
FiTCHBURG, Mass., March 16. 
8 — — ~ 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Companion Wanted* 
^ A CORRESPONDENT writcs from the Middle West saying : 
"T expect to start, this spring or early in the summer, on a 
long trip in a gasoline launch from some point on the 
coast of North Carolina to the Everglades in Florida, 
reaching there in the winter. As my trip is to be a long 
one, I would like to have some congenial companion to 
accompany me to the end. I want some one with enough 
means to pay his part of the boat, and yet not so rich that 
he would not accept a position which would pay his ex- 
penses if not m-ore. I want som.e one who would stay' 
with me through thick and thin, a respecter of the game 
laws, a lover of Forest and Stream, and all it advocates. 
If you can secure me such a man I should be under lasting 
obligations to you." Any one interested in this subjecl: 
may address Companion Wanted, care of this office. 
Manors fof Mt* Lancastej 
We are informed. that Mr. Charles Lancaster, the well- 
known gunmaker, of 151 New' Bond street, London, has 
lately been honored with warrants of appointm-ent from 
H. I. M. the Emperor of Germany, H. R H thp Ptipce 
of Wales and' H. R. H. Prince Christian. 
He already held warrants of appointment from Her 
Majesty the -Queen and from the late Prince Consort. 
New Yotk Game Legislation. 
The Governor has signed Assemblyman Post's bill pro- 
viding that, on Long Island, deer shall not be taken at 
any other time than between daylight and sunset on the 
first and second Wednesdays and the first and second 
Fridays of November, Also his bill providing that, in 
Suffolk county, Mongolian ring-necked pheasants shall not 
be taken between Jan. i and Oct. 31. 
Hotels iot Spoftsmcn. 
Persons who are conducting hotels or camps in regions 
where there is good shooting or fishing should under- 
stand that the be.^t way to make their places known to 
persons interested in these sports is by advertising in the 
Forest and Strra'm. Sportsmen have come to depend 
on the hotels which are advertised in Forest and Stream, 
and registered in its Information Bureau, and the hotel 
keener'? who patronize these columns are unanimous in 
declaring that they receive most satisfactory returns for 
the money inveatei. j . _ j _ ' ^ — 
Aftet Many Years* 
Going out from Madison Square Garden With my 
friend Harry Brown, of the New York Herald, to get 
luncheon, we found that we could have broiled scrod, and 
so we had it, and it was as delicious as any I ever had in 
Boston, where broiled scrod y/as discovered soon after the 
Pilgrims; landed, and where it is cultivated to this day to 
make glad the hearts of those who love the fish in the 
. liesh that is' typified in metal on the State House. Over 
our sea fish we talked of fishing with the fly for fishes of 
the sweet waters, and as we lighted cigars and moved 
our chairs into more comJortable positions for enjoying 
our smoke after a satisfying luncheon, I discovered Mr, 
Young, of the Madison Square Garden Com.pany, at a 
nearby table, and as he had also arrived at the tobacco 
and colfesj stage of his repast we talked of the fish exhibit 
then in the Garden, and of proposed future exhibits, until 
he told me of some fishing he enjoyed last summer in a 
lake in Columbia county, in this -State, The lake was 
planted with pike-perch twenty-five years ago. and there- 
after for nineteen years nothing was known of the fish 
planted Nineteen years without a single pike-perch 
' -being taken from, the planted lake, and then a!! at once 
, ' 'pike-perch began to take the baited hook, and it ivas not 
■''"unusual to take five or -six fish to a fi.sherm.an, fish of 
from 4 to 5 and 6 pounds weight, and now, after nine- 
teen years of famine and six 3'ears of plenty, pike-oerch 
are caught in the lake weighing up to 10 pounds. As 
pike-perch were not hatched artificially twenty-fi-ve years 
ago. the planting must have consisted of adult fish, and 
from, what Mr. Young said it was apparent that the oike- 
perch did not begin to bite the hooks of the fisherm.en 
until they had eaten about all the natural food the lake 
contained, for he says they have practically cleaned out 
the minnows, suckers, chubs and even the bullheads. 
In another lake in northern New York a quantity of 
adult pike-perch were planted — big fish brought from 
Lake Cham.plain — and after the plant was m.ade nothing 
was seen of the fish until it was claim.ed that one was 
found injured at the surface of the water, and was cap- 
turned and proved to weigh 9 pounds At the time I was 
satisfi.ed in my owti mind that the fish was speared on its 
spavt'ning bed by some painters at work on a hotel near 
by. Then it was reported that a lot of the fish were seen 
one spring apparently spawning on a sandbar, and that 
is the last I have heard about them. If a period of nine- 
teen years must elapse before they take the hook, the 
time is not Up, nor will it be for several years to come, 
but the other feature of Mr. Young's report may cause the 
thinking people to hesitate before planting pike-perch m 
waters where they are not native. The State of New York 
hatched millions of pike-perch every year, and applications 
are sent in for the fish to be planted in new water.s, often, 
I fear^ without proper consideration oi what the result 
will be if the fish thrive and multiply. It Is .a cunou,s 
fact that fish, not only pike-perch, but numbers of the 
salmon family, may be planted in waters apparently suited 
for them, and that they live and reproduce, and that they 
will not take the hook for years after. Then of a sudden 
they m.ay be caught, and thereafter the fishing will be 
fairly good. There are instances of this kind in planting 
both the brown and rainbow trout. The biological sta- 
tion that has been proposed for the State of New York 
would, upon its establishm.ent, remedy many defects now 
existing in our system, of fish planting. We would 
know what our waters contained of fish food and plant 
life, and knov,;ing that, could provide fish best adapted to 
the water, or supply food and make barren waters teem 
with foor for the people who every year demand more 
and cheaper food. Haphazard fish planting should be- 
come obsolete and the product of our hatcheries be plant- 
ed only in an intelligent manner, and that can be accom.- 
plished only by knowing first what our waters contain 
and the conditions necessary for the v.rell beinsr of ihc 
fish to be introduced 
'-'To Enrich Poo? Watess," 
While I was writing the aboi^e note, and while the ink 
•-.vas yet wet, (he evening mail brought m.e the London 
Fishing Gazette^ and as Marston had written on the 
wrapper "See page 123." I opened it at once to find aii 
article in line with the subject I was at the very m.om-ent 
touching upon It is an article that Mr. Marston has 
translated from, a Germ.an fisheries journal, and relates 
to experiments made by two German savants to enrich 
barrf:n , water, water entirely destitute of fish and food 
to sustain fi_sh, Messrs. R. Zuntz and Karl Knauthe,. of 
the A,nim-al Phj'siological Institute of the Royal Agricul- 
tural High School of Berlin, are the gentlemen who are 
experim.entmg in a way, as Mr, Marston says, to show 
how determ.ined .Germ.an scientists are to get at the bot- 
tom of thing.5. "It is useless to turn fish into waters which 
Avill not support the food on which they live." It would 
be an excellent idea to print that sentence on all fish ap- 
plications, but I doubt if applicants for fish would ap- 
preciate the force of it in all instances; but we have 
been turning fish into waters without knowing whether it 
contained food or sufficient food to sustain the fish, and 
that is why we need a biological station in New York 
to determine what our waters actually contain. But to 
return to the German experiments, the object being to 
discover the nature and quantity of food required to en- 
roura,ge, on the one hand, green algfe, and on the other 
daphnia?. If you can start the one-cell algte you can then 
breed the daphni^e, which feed on the algte; then you 
can out in the fry of fish which feed on the daphnise: 
"If these German chemists succeed in their experiments, 
as they evidently hope to, they will be able to say just 
what chemical food the water requires, and how much 
to -put in per acre — so much nitre, so much salt, so much 
sulphate of potassium or ammonia, or magnesia or iron, 
etc. 
"They first take a quanliLy of the water to be tested, 
fdter it, and put some of it uito f-welve glass retorts. They 
then prepare ten seoarate solutions of the sulphates of 
iron,' magnesia, etc., in strengths varying from t per cent, 
to 5 per cent.— for instance, the sulphate of iron is a I 
per cent, solution, that of amm.onia 5 per cent They 
also make an infusion of straw by pouring boiling water 
on to it (10 grammes of straw to 100 of water) and let- 
ting it stand for a day, and then filtering it, and in another 
botde have some decomposed urine. 
"To each of the twelve glass retorts filled' with the 
water to be tested they add four drops of the solution— 
a different solution to each retort, all cropcrly labeled 
and num.bered. Then to the contents of each of the glass 
retorts they add one drop of a collection of Protocaccus 
or other one-cell algee, which can easily be fished up by 
means of a plankton net from a pond. The retorts are 
then plugged with cotton wool, and placed in a warm, 
light place where all the bottles will get an equal amount 
of warmth and light. 
"If the pond or lake water under examination is want- 
ing in one or other of the chemical m.atters, in two or 
three days' time a luxurious green growth will be seen 
in those bottles which contain the matter in which the 
pond water is deficient. A.t this point a few daphnias are 
put into each of the bottles in order to observe the effect 
of the different solutions upon them. Eight or ten days 
will suffice to produce striking dift'erences, as this period 
IS sufficient for the development of several generations of 
daphnia. It is advisable not to add the daphnise until 
the algs have m-ade a good start, as the daphnise feed on 
the algse; just as.it is not advisable to turn a flock of 
sheep into field in which newly-sown grass seed is only 
just sprouting. 
"If in the course of ten days or so the algse and daphnia 
in some of the bottles increase and flourish much more 
than in others, it is clear that the chemical manure, as 
one may call it, which has been added to the bottle in 
which the daphnise and algse do well is what is wanting 
in the pond or lake water which is being investigated. 
''"'The next thing is to discover what percentage of it 
gives the best results, and whether the addition of other 
m.atter gives still better results, and so on. 
''The result of these minute and careful experiments 
with the particular water they selected showed that if 
their estimate is correct the pond or lake it was taken 
from required 15 kilogrammes of sulphate of iron and 
225 kilogrammes of Chili saltpeter (Natrium niirat) per 
hectare in order to make it suitable for the free growth 
. of algas and daphniae. (Kilogramme = about 2 pounds. 
Hectare = about 2 acres.) 
"They hope to continue their researches on a practical 
scale, and promise to report progress, 
"As I feel sure some of m.y readers, especially in 
Am.erica, may like to have particulars of the solutions, I 
give them, m English: Sulphate of soda (Glauber's salt), 
bibasic phosphate of soda, nitrate of soda (Chilian soda) 
saltpeter), chloride of sodium (common salt), sulphate 
of potash, sulphate of am.monia, chloride of calcium, 
sulphate of magnesia, sulphate of iron, caustic lime (lime 
wash), 
"I find I have been led on to give more details of this 
extremely interesting experiment than I intended, but I 
need ha.rdly point out that if a poor and naturally almost 
barren water can be rendered rich and life-supporting by 
the addition occasionally uf a little cheap chemical ma- 
nure, the ultimate benefit to fishculture and consequently 
to anglers mzy be immense." 
This matter is of so much interest — importance may be 
a better word to use — that Mr. Marston need make no 
apology for .giving details of the experiments at lengtli. 
The mere taking of fish egg.b and hatching them is hut 
a preliminary stage in fishculture to-day, ttnd it is high 
time that an advance be made to determine something 
.about the diseases of fish reared in conhnement; the food 
necessary to preserve the health of breeding fish; what our 
waters contain of fish food, and how to supply it when 
lacking; the plant and insect life of the waters where fish 
are planted by thousands or millions, and ejcpected to 
j^'ield returns in the form, of food; the tem.perature of 
waters at different seasons and the chem.ical properties 
of waters that are barren of fish and fish food, that 
fish planting may be conducted intelligently to obtain thf= 
greatest results in an increased food supply. Whatever !=v 
done to increase the supply of food fish must of necessity 
benefit the angler, the com.mercial fisherman and the 
consumer. 
Yellow Fetch. 
Mr. George A. Gales, of New York city, writES-: "Will 
you kindly inform me if perch caught m fresh water ponds 
or lakes in this State are fit to eat at all season.- of the 
year?" 
Yes. If you desire a personal opinion, 1 will sav 
they are better eating than black bass when the perch 
com.e from, some of the cold lakes m the northern part oi 
the State The colder the water the better tlie perch, and 
they are at their best — sweet -firm, and delicious — when 
taken through the ice this very month of March, for they 
spawn in April and May, depending upon the ivater 
they inhabit, and after spawning, their flfesh is apt to be 
watery, though not unfit for food. At times in different 
localities an epidemic has been known to visit the perch 
of a lake or pond, and they perish in great quantities, 
often being washed up on the shores by the wind until 
it is necessary to turn out a force and bury them; but 
even at such a time the perch that show no marks of 
disease are fit to eat. and they are eaten. Again and 
again after such a visit it has been thought that the 
perch of a lake have been exterminated by disease, but in 
a few years they appear, always, as plentiful as ever. Then, 
too, it is charged that perch are infested with parasites, 
and so are black bass in warm waters in summer, even 
more so than the perch, and so I come back to the answer 
I first wrote, that perch in this State are fit to eat at all 
seasons, though they are better at some seasons than at 
others. 
The Passing of the Graj^llog. 
To me there has always been a charm about the Michi- 
gan grayling which is difficult to describe in words. I 
know of the fish only from reading about it, but more 
than once have T resolved to make a pilgrimage to the 
waters where it is found, or w"as found, to become per- 
sonally familiar with it. Twice since the fish was discov- 
ered I haye been in Michigan for a number of weeks, 
but each time ray visit was made in the winter, and gray- 
ling fishing was not in season. 
