^88 
_j 
0iade frantic efforts to recover the oar, and in so doing 
precipitated the crisis that followed. 
•Of course none of us knew exactly how it all hap- 
pened, but we were all iiounderiag in the chilly water and 
desperately clinging to an upturned boat. The channel 
was deep at this point, the waves large and feathery, but 
the wind was gradually backing us to one side, where, to 
our joy, we' saw the protruding top of a mud flat. We 
immediately proceeded to help the waves by kicking and 
paddling as best we could with our hands and arras. In 
this way we worked the boat into shallow water, and 
then proceeded to walk to the mud flat, where at least 
temporary quarters of safety were open to us. 
In our eagerness to get on dry land and out of the 
chilly water, less attention was given to the boat than it 
deserved. When all four of us stood shivering out of the 
water, with mud up to the ankles, and the flat less inviting 
than we first thought, we discovered that our boat was 
slowly floating away, not by the tide or wind, but drawn 
by some invisible power from below. Could it be that the 
flounder which had caused all the trouble was actually 
running away with our skiflf after stranding us on this 
desert island of mud? 
This certainly seemed the oiijy explanation to the 
curious phenomenon, and we all started back in the water 
after the craft. But tiic boat moved so fast, and we trod 
through the thick mud so slowly, that it was in deep 
w^ater before we could reach it. Then, as nobody dared 
venture forth in the chilling deep water of the channel 
loaded down with wet clothes, we mournfully returned to 
our mud island and held a council of war. 
Those who have had experience with the mud flats of 
Jamaica and Great South Bay know something about our 
predicament. At a distance the soft slimy mud seems to 
ofter an inviting surface to rest on, and it looks like sohd 
ground; but no quicksand ever more cruelly deceived a 
victim. There is absolutely nothing in its favor. The 
mud is soft and sticky, and one has no chance to rest 
on it. Even the little feet of the snipe make deep im- 
pressions on it. In the spring of the year it is colder than 
water, for frost and ice actually stay in it a few- inches be- 
low the surface, and our feet felt as if they were packed in 
an ice cream freezer with plenty of rock salt around to 
hasten the freezing process. 
The sun overhead was bright, and the air had the odors 
of spring in it, but under feet it was cold and wintry. The 
wind still blew in violent gusts, ruffling up the bosom of 
the bay. Our boat was no longer drifting, but seemed 
anchored in midstream, with the wind and tide occasion- 
ally shoving it first in one direction and then in another. 
It was a predicament long to be remembered, and not 
easily brought to an end. We waited in vain for a boat 
to appear in sight, and shouted ourselves hoarse.. Hour 
after hour passed, and not until late in the afternoon did 
as.sistance come. Then some fishermen returning home 
sailed up and rescued us from the mud flat. We were 
more dead than alive then, but every man had life enough 
in him to demand an investigation of the irpturned boat. 
We sailed out to it and pulled it to the mud flat, where 
we righted it. Then we hauled in the tangled hues. We 
expected to find a monster fish on the end of one. In- 
stead of one large fish we discovered eight flounders on 
as many hooks, two on each line. They were all alive and 
decidedly energetic. Then we all breathed the one sen- 
tence in unison: "I thought so." 
That was our full catch .for the day, the rest having 
been overturned with the boat into the bay. but we ate 
every one with double relish, for in so doing we felt 
that we were getting the only revenge possible against 
such cold-blooded creatures. G. E. W. 
** Modern Fishculture." 
In Fcestb and Salt 'W^atef. 
Since 1857, when Theodatus Garlick, the "Father of 
American Fishculture," gave us "A Treatise on the Arti- 
ficial Propagation of Certain Kinds of Fish" — this country 
with its great wealth of fish species, and scores of fish 
hatcheries, probably exceeding in their operations of prop- 
agating fishes artificially all the rest of the world com- 
bined — w^e have had very many valuable repoYts of fishing 
commissions and special papers on fishculture, ayd but a 
beggarly array of books devoted exclusively to the art of 
fish hatching. 
Fry, Norris, Slack, Roosevelt and Green and Stone 
comprise the list of American authors of their technical 
book, and to-day. Stone's "Domesticated Trout," a 
standard authority upon the cultivation and care of the 
brook trout, survives; the others being out of print, 
obsolete, inaccurate, or unreliable at this time, so that the 
field was ripe for "Modern Fishculture in Fresh and Salt 
W ater," by Fred Mather, a contemporary of most of the 
authors mentioned, but a man who advanced in experience 
beyond all but one of them, and who was equipped to 
bring a book on artificial fishculture down to date, and 
the title he selected was a peculiarly happy one. for the 
book is modern in every sense. 
Nearly all works upon fishculture, American or 
European, have been devoted solely to the propagation of 
fresh-water species, and almost without exception to 
members of the salmon family, but the pages of "Modern 
Fishculture" are not so circumscribed, for nearly, if not 
all, the fresh-w^ater fishes, fall spawning and spring 
spawning, are treated; salt-water fish and shell fish and 
even frogs have pages devoted to them. The informa- 
tion given is drawn largely from the author's personal 
experience, and as he was a pioneer fish breeder he had a 
vast fund of information at his disposal, but he has 
added chapters upon certain subjects from the pens of 
others who have given them special attention, and has also 
treated of matters kindred to fish breeding, so that the 
book is a fund of valuable information aside from the 
mere handling of fish eggs and the rearing of fish fry. 
In a very few instances one may differ from the author's 
opinions, such as the value of fresh-water shrimps as fish 
food; the benefits to be derived from the introduction of 
fresh blood in stock fish, and, particularly, the relative 
value of fry and yearling trout for planting'; but believing 
in planting fry rather than yearlings, though in a hopeleS.S 
minority, he advocated and practiced it consistently. 
These, however, are minor matters when viewed in coil' 
nection with the great amount of practical infofmatiolii 
drawn frotn long practice contaJnsd in th« votum?. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
The book is divided into eight sections, with forty-eight 
chapters. The first section, 144 pages, is devoted to 
"Trout Breeding" and "Water Supply/' "Pollution of 
Waters," "How Nature Does It," "Eggs of Trout," "In 
the Hatching House," "Hatching Trays," "Taking Trout 
Eggs," "Number of Eggs in iVout," "Care of Trout 
Eggs." "Care of Fry," "heeding Fry," "Growth of Fry," 
"Putting Out the Babies," "Streams," "Ponds," "Drains," 
"Dams," "Screens for Ponds," "Temperatures," "Food 
for Adult Trout," "Natural Foods," "Planting Fry," 
"Time to Plant Fry" and "Transplanting Adult Fish," 
are but a portion of the subjects treated in, the twelve 
chapters constituting this section. It is most difficult to 
select any one of the subjects for specific mention in 
detail, for nearly every one should be read in connection 
with the others, but on one page Mr. Frank N. Clark, who 
some years ago surprised fish breeders by going back to 
the use of gravel in his hatching trays, explained why he 
did so, and it seems that he keeps his trout eggs on 
gravel only until they are eyed, and then they are placed 
on trays as is the custom in other hatcheries from the 
beginning of the hatching process. 
Hatching troughs, trays, hatching tools, etc., are figured 
and illustrated in this chapter, and the method of stripping 
a fish is shown from a photograph so ac<:urately repro- 
duced that the spots on the trout, and particularly its fins, 
while-bordered on black, pronounce it to be our native 
brook trout that is in the operator's hands. In the matter 
of feeding fish fry, the author has gathered together the 
methods employed by fish breeders generally in this 
country and Europe, and it can be read with profit by 
others than those engaged in fish breeding, for there is a 
woeful ignorance in the minds of so many people in re- 
gard to the necessity for feeding fish, and later the 
author treats of food for adult fish. The only extract 
that will be taken from the book in this notice is this: "I 
would not recommend any person to undertake to raise 
young trout by artificial feeding in troughs or boxes for 
the first three months unless they can feed them every 
hour. The appetite of the juvenile trout is as frequently 
intermittent as that of other yoimg animals, and requires 
one to stand over them almost constantly." When this 
fact is thoroughly digested it may be forced upon the 
reader that adult trout do not lose their appetite with their 
growth, and that planting trout in wafers that do not 
contain food in abundance will prove an abject failure. 
Section two is devoted to "Other Trouts and the 
Salmons." and the brown trout (common brook trout of 
Europe, and since its introduction into this country called 
Von Behr trout by the U. S. Fish Commission, and 
"German trout" by those who know no better), and rain- 
bow trout receive considerable attention. The author 
conunends the brown trout very highly, and advocates 
their planting, apparently without restriction, and if they 
destroy our native trout, which he doubts, it will be the 
survival of the fittest in his opinion. This idea will find 
comparatively few supporters in this country, for, excellent 
fish as the brown trout is, it certainly does grow faster 
and larger than the native brook trout, and it does not, 
thus far since its introduction, prove to rise to the fly 
or even take bait as readily as the native fish, and com- 
plaints are constantly made that the introduced fish have 
driven out our brook trout, and that it is not the survival 
of the fittest. 
Section three, "Other Salmonidse," is devoted to gray- 
ling, the whitefishes and a special chapter on the culture 
of the whitefish. 
Section four, "Other Fresh-Water Fish, with Free 
Eggs," covers the mascalonge, pike, pickerel, shad, fishes 
that are hatched in hatching jars, instead of on trays in 
troughs like the heavy free eggs of the trout and salmon. 
Fishes with adhesive eggs are treated in the eleven 
clupters of section five, and the list is a long one. Ad- 
irondack frost fish, smelt, black basses, crappies, white 
perch, pike-perch, sauger, catfish, carp, alewives, sturgeon 
and yellow perch are considered more or less at length, 
with special articles on the black bass, and on pilce-percli 
culture. In the treatment of pike-perch eggs after im- 
pregnation and the bath of loam water, it would seem to 
he a great saving of labor and time to "blow" the eggs — 
1. e., place them in a metal cylinder of loam and water 
with intake at the bottom, and by blowing through the 
intake pipe separate the bunched eggs, which are imme- 
diately coated with the loam in the water. This is the 
method employed in New York. 
Section six, "Parasites, Diseases and Enemies," is par- 
ticularly interesting, and the next section, seven, is devoted 
to salt-water fishes — codfish, tomcod and lobsters. 
The last section, eight, is devoted to miscellaneous sub- 
jects, and here may be found the number of eggs in dif- 
ferent fish, and the character of eggs, in a table; how to 
measure the flow of water; fishes which guard their 
young; how fish find their own river; terrapins; the 
blooming of ponds and a chapter on fishways, with fig- 
ures of different forms. One table, quoted from Mr. Tit- 
comb's measurements and weights of fry trout, shows 
from actual records that the estimate commonly em- 
ploj'ed by fish breeders that each pound of trout will pro- 
duce 1,000 eggs, is quite out of the way. for 31 pounds 
,634 ounces of trout produced 38.580 eggs. 
The information contained in "Modern Fishculture" is 
direct and to the point, with no useless verbiage, and it 
covers about everything one may desire to know on the 
subject, and the book in its entirety will doubtless be- 
come a standard text-book on fishcultural operations. 
A. N. Cheney. 
Fly-Fishing and Systems. 
Philadelphia, March 17. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
My advent here is rather an effort to straighten out a 
tangle than to criticise either dry-fly or the so-called 
Taylor system of fly-fishing, being a practitioner of both, 
though the latter unknowingly, according to its present 
classification. 
Any student of entomology is pretty well satisfied that 
the species of dragon fly are more favored with speed 
power, compared with the May fly, which is much less 
SO- The mane\ivers of each are at wide variance as to 
flight, hovering over and dropping in the water. 
If, as it appears, from these two specimens of insect 
life and their families are evolved separate and distinct 
.■iystemsf of fly-Ashing, .what of the almost countless In- 
t€rme<ii8t« cla4f^§ or vgmtjes, th« flight and maneuviers 
[April 14, 1900, 
of which can be seen for the looking? System, discovery, ' 
genera, color, form and size — yes. General manipulation ' 
to conform to actions for enticing our finny friends, "the 
enemy" — no. Letters patent belong to nature's wide-open 
book, for she discriminates not and unfortunately all of 
her students do not get into print. It is therefore un- 
just to known, and many unknown, past masters of the 
art of successful angling now to flaunt as a discovery 
nature's tuition, to hover or even spat on the water hex 
strong- winged specimens, deftly drop the weak, drop and 
play the intermediate as the case may call for, or even com- 
mingle all this without regard to sect. Mr. Taylor evi- 
dently must be a student of nature, and I take it as an in- 
justice to accredit him with being efficient in and re- 
lying solely upon one single part of the whole, more 
especially as teasing or humoring permits of numerous 
variations. 
It is beyond human skill to closely imitate with a long 
line all that we see. If, then, there is any real systern 
whatever in sight, _ let it be propounded once and for all 
that it is centered in the art of approach, good eyesight, 
with an ever-present inclination to use it. Once acquired, ' 
the results (at very much less than 10 yards) must deeply 
impress one as being no particular individual's system, dry^ 
or wet, but a simple application of certain pages of that' 
same wide-open book. Furthermore, in stream fishing if 
will clearly illustrate that trout were not born absolul 
proof against capture, particularly to the coaxing, humt' 
ing, "rise-in-spite-of-it" powers of semi-dry work, tn 
wliich no one does or could lay claim; nor, for that 
matter, to any practical imitations of the natural in flight. . 
dip or drop, varied actions followed, partial or full re- 
covery, movements submerged, etc. With due reverence 
to the valued works of Halford and others, we must agree 
that there is in this connection much unwritten though not 
always unknown. 
The crank, deep in the mysteries of rare fly 
terial, who, for well-defined reasons, governs, or ?i 
tempts to govern, the dressing of a fly by grades of soggy, 
one-quarter, one-half,' three-quarters and full dry, may be ' 
rated daft perhaps ; but nature gives him so many alluring 
invitations that it is hardly his fault, and there is method 
in his madness in that it is in practice and has been for 
years. But no system is claimed for it ; neither for the , 
curious rod movements not down in the standard books 
nor easily described, yet which are a part of a work, in- 
volving, of course, rapidity or stillness of surface water 
and just what a modern-build rod over a certain pitch, 
consistent with convenient handling, can or cannot be 
made to do. 
If all possibilities of success in fly-fishing are covered, 
by following the two extremes of insect life mentioned,: 
Nemo's statement can be easilj^ demonstrated beyond con-' 
tradiction. A possible plea for his silence — is it perhaps 
due to the fact that most of our open waters in the East; 
are now overfished, and the abuses that might follow 
every angler speedily becoming a close practitioner of 
nature must tend to annihilate the sport, since the time i- 
not yet when the ranks could satisfactorily settle the vexed 
question of "how many" as a day's catch? Is he selfish or 
humane — ^which? M. G. S. 
New England Fishing. 
Boston, April 7. — After all, consilerable fishing was 
done on the opening day of the season in this State and- 
the day following, especially down on the Cape and in.j 
that vicinity. Mr. Luther Little, Dr. Langmaid and ■ 
one or two others were down on their preserve on the 
Cape. -This preserve is mostly cranberry bog streams, - 
where, under favorable conditions, the fishing is good. 
Generally the box owners have kept them flooded over 
winter, but the past winter they have tried the experiment, 
of leaving them bare. This was rather favorable to the 
early fishing, and Mr. Little caught nine trout, while his 
friends were also successful. 
Dr. J. C. Maynandier, of Boston, was down on the Cape 
and took thirty-four trout. Mr. J. Russell Reed made a 
fair catch at the opening, taking eight trout. The 
Chamberlain preserve camps, at Bourne, had a number of 
fishing guests on the opening day, and some pretty good 
strings of trout were taken. 
Salmon fishing in Nova Scotia has begun early this 
year. Mr. J. B. Baxter, with Dame, Stoddard and Ken- 
dall, has a report of two salmon already taken at Mill 
Village, Port Medway River. Quite a party is being ' 
formed to start for that location about April 19. Last 
fall Mr. Baxter sent Dr. Baker, of New Jersey, down 
there, who was in quest of good fishing. He was happily 
surprised at the sport he realized. He caught all the 
trout he desired. The average length of the trout taken 
was 14 inches, or slightly over i pound weight. He 
hooked six salmon and grilse, and landed three grilse.. 
The others were lost under the miserable condition of 
poor hooks. ^ . 1 
Boston, April 9. — A special from Weirs, N. H., says 
that the fishermen are just getting through with one of tlie^ 
best seasons of ice fishing on Winnepesaukee and Winne-- 
squam ever noted, with some of the largest trout taken. 
The ice is beginning to get thin and unsafe, and the fisher-' 
men are now giving their attention to trolling in the open - 
bays and at the mouths of entering streams. A big string 
of trout and cusk were taken last week by Manchester 
fishermen, through the ice, while but few fish have yet 
been taken in the open coves and bays, trolling. Under 
the laws of New Hampshire the brook trout season is 
now open, but nature has put on a close time of its own, 
the brook trout still being locked in ice and full of snow 
water. It is feared that the trout season will be a very 
poor one, when it does begin, for the reason that all of the 
streams were unusually dry last fall, throughout the en- 
tire mountain and lake regions. It is feared that the trout 
were killed by the dry weather, and that the streams will 
never again be good till restocked, either by nature or lli-^ 
Fish Commission. 
An instrumental organization for the protection' and 
nropagation of fish and game in New Hampshire is the 
Belknap Countj' Fish and Game League. This organiza- 
tion held its annual meeting last week and chose a hoard 
of officers; President, Julius E. Wilson, Lakeport; Vice- 
Presidents, William R. Clough. xMton : Charles O. Ten- 
kins. Belmont! A. J, Piilsbury. Tilton; Thomas S. Ftt'Hc^. 
Gilfp»f4; Thomsw CoggsweU, Glltnanton; John T. J^n^H, 
