June 8, 1901.] 
FOREST AJN1> STREAM. 
447 
lieve may be trusted. I did it once with a man I had 
been warned against — on the Tobique, too — and the first 
year he was diligent, respectful and honest. The next 
year he proved himself to be a thief, a sluggard and other 
things too numerous to relate. He was also — ^worst of all 
— a liar without art. 
It is also said that a majority of the Tobique guides are 
merely untrained farmers' boys. Many of them are, in- 
deed. Many of them can't cook and can't make camp as 
linished and handily as the Maine guide does; but most of 
them know how to shoot — that is, the best of them. I 
should say that along the Tobique there are really about 
ten competent guides — men like Ad Moore and his part- 
ner, Charley Cremin, of Nictau ; Henry Lewis, of Arthur- 
ette; the Barkers, of Riley Brook; Manzell Giberson, the 
Armstrongs, and McGinn, of Perth, and one or two 
others. 
Whether the Tobique be good or bad, no man should 
go there without first learning something about his pros- 
pective guides. I think all the readers of Forest and 
Stream that have been in that country will bear me out 
in what I have said, and if I can give any further infor- 
mation to any one intei-ested, I shall be only too glad 
to do it. M. F. 
C H* Batbef. 
Death in his ceaseless flight upon the tireless wings of 
lime is rapidly adding to the number of his victims. 
On Sunday. May 19, at his home in South Framing- 
ham, Mass., there fell before the grim reaper one of na- 
ture's noblemen. Mr. C. H. Barber. For more than fifty 
3'ears Mr. Barber had been an annual visitor to the woods 
and waters of Maine, and to the many, many hundreds 
whose good fortune it was to make his acquaintance the 
announcement of his death will come as a pang, with all 
the force of personal bereavement and loss. 
Mr. Barber had passed ' the allotted span of life — the 
three score and ten years of Scripture — and yet away back 
in early boyhood days he cast his ily upon the waters of 
the eastern portion of the State — Grand Lake, Grand Lake 
Stream and other yoted resorts — long years before sports- 
men penetrated the wilds to Moosehead Lake or the 
Rangeleys. 
He was an old-school sportsman — a synonym for all 
that is included in the title of gentleman — genial in com- 
panionship, chivalrous, courteous and obliging to all, and 
as true and steadfast in his friendship as the needle to 
the pole. 
He was a lover of good dogs and his kennel always 
contained choice specimens fit for the bench and field 
trials. 
Few indeed, if any. there are who could boast of greater 
knowledge of or greater familiarity with the covers of 
New England, and often a well-filled game bag was ample 
proof of his love of the sport arid skill with the gun. 
For many years he spent his winters in the South for 
quail and other upland shooting, and here as elsewhere 
his death will be deplored. 
During all the years of his actiA'e life he was a lover of 
fine horses, and his stables always contained specimens 
of the choicest breeding which took no dust from the 
speediest, some of which he bred and raised. C. H. 
Barber js gone — the last sad parting on earth has come — 
hut the afterglow of his life will long remain a prized 
legacy to all who knew him and came within his kindly 
influence. Geo. McAleer. 
WoRCE.sTER, Mass. 
— ® — 
ANGLING NOTES. 
Grayling. 
Eahxy m May I made an appointment in New York 
with Mr, H. C. Pierce, of St. Louis, and talked with him 
about various things concerning fish and fishing, and 
particularlv about his trout preserve and hatchery on 
the Brule River, in Wisconsin. Incidentally, Mr. Pierce 
told me that he had secured a qiiantity of grayling eggs 
from Montana to hatch in his hatchery on the Brule 
with the idea of stocking some of the Wisconsin waters' 
with the fish. Later, I regretted that I had. not gone 
deeper into this matter of introducing the Montana gray- 
ling into Wisconsin and made a memorandum to write 
to 'Mr. Pierce about it. Upon my return home I opened 
the latest copy of Land and Water, and the beginning 
of the very first item in the Fish and Fishing depart- 
ment referred to grayling in these words: "Rumors 
have been going about during the past fortnight that 
some of the" people who hold the fishing rights on part 
of the Kennet at liungerford are making arrangements 
to destroy all the grayling in their portions of the river. 
On. making inquiries I find that th^m is a certain 
amount of truth in these rumors." 
The writer Alder is at a loss to know why the gray- 
ling should be destroped, but assumes that it is to give 
more room for trout, and he concludes: "At any rate 
it would not produce an increase in the number of trout 
which would even remotely approach compensation for 
the lo5s of the grayling." 
Within two weeks last past I was talking with Mr. 
Dean Sage, of Albany, and he mentioned a visit which 
he made to Michigan "to angle for the Michigan grayling 
with the late Mr. David Fitzhugh, the times being before 
visits" of other eastern men. fishculturists, who attempted 
to take the eggs of the fish to propagate the grayling in 
New York State. 
Mr. Sage has very pleasant recollections of the gray- 
ling as a game fish and that they were the quickest fish 
to take the flv of any species he had ever fished for, but 
there is no accounting for tastes; for while one sports- 
man is spending money freely to bring one species of 
grayling to new waters, fishermen across the sea wish 
to destroy the fish in their waters, and other anglers are 
mourning the disappearance and utter extinction of still 
another species of grayling in yet other waters. 
Rod-Fishing on the Backs of the Hodson 
Often in riding up and down the Hudson River, either 
on the Central or the West Shore railway, I have ob- 
served from the car windows people fishing from the 
shore. At times nearly every dock or pier head will have 
several anglers, and at certain points the retaining wall 
of the railw.iy itself will have anglers at intervals, and 
the thought has occurred to me that here was an indus- 
try that found no place in fishing statistics. The people 
who engaged in the fishing enjoyed a day in the open 
air, and there can be no better relaxation for the people 
of the towns, and they add to their larder excellent food 
at little cost, and it is certainly a distinct blessing to 
those who can engage in this fishing that the river affords 
both recreation and food at such slight expense. One 
afternoon, very lately, I presume the tide was just right 
as \he train I was "on, going south, rushed along, for 
there seemed to be an unusual number of fishermen on 
the wharves and sea walls, and I wondered how many peo- 
ple daily resorted to the river for the fishing from the 
banks purely for pleasure, and I regretted that I had 
not counted those to be seen from the car window, and 
I resolved to do so on my return. I returned on the 
Empire State Express and unfortunately the smoking 
compartment was on the land side, so that my count was 
,very imperfect, as I spent some time in smoking where 
I could not see the river, and a great part of the river 
could not be seen from the train even if one gave up 
smoking entirely, for buildings hide some of the docks, 
and down trains will pass just as one is straining one's 
eyes to see if a particular dock contains anglers. I de- 
cided to count only those who were fishing with rods 
and fishing from the bank. As the train made the curve 
at Spuyten Duyvil I gave up a partly smoked cigar and 
went to my seat on the river side of the Pullman, and 
began my very imperfect count. The wall from Spuyten 
Duyvil north was w«ll peopled and in a short distance 
I counted eighteen anglers. One man was accompanied 
by his wife, apparently, and she was reading a book 
while he held his rod in hand. A lunch basket near 
by indicated that they were out for the day. There were 
not nearly as many anglers visible when I went north 
as when I went south a few days before, and the tide 
was apparently not favorable to fishing. This I judged 
from seeing no squat nets iu operation. In fact, I saw 
but one, and that on a man's shoulder as he walked to- 
ward the river bank. On the down journey I saw a 
number of squat nets in operation. I did not count 
hand liners on the bank, nor did I count anglers 
in boats anchored near the shore, but when I reached 
Albany I counted the marks in pencil on the margin of 
the morning paper I did not read, and found that they 
represented a total of 49 rod fishermen I had that morn- 
ing seen fishing in the Hudson from the bank between 
Spuyten Duyvil and Albany. How many were fishing 
that I did not see it would be useless to speculate about, 
but I am satisfied from that and other days when I have 
watched the fishermen from the train that on every fair 
day several hundreds of people fish from the docks or 
banks in the Hudson between the Battery and Albany, 
the precise number of hundreds I leave to some one else 
to guess. Here is fishing that costs nothing, for guides 
or boats, a rod and line and bait and a walk to the water 
is all that is required. If the angler gets not-hing but 
white perch or tomcod in the autumn, he' is probably 
hoping always that striped bass will bite, and if he gets 
no fish at all' he g(?ts a summer day of rational, healthful 
enjoyment in the open air, and he is better for it in body 
and pocket than if it had been spent where beer flows 
and tempests blare and the hurdy-gurdy gets, in its 
seductive work on a hot day. How man}'- of these 
anglers have a love of nature in their souls and how 
many fish for the pan or broiler alone I do not care to 
know; it is enough that so many people are enabled 
to gratify one desire or the other, and I wish that there 
were more as fortunately situated. As I am writing a 
letter comes to me from a lady, and I quote a paragraph 
from it: 
"I am here for a short stay and the weather is behav- 
ing disgracefully. I felt a wee bit hungry for the smell 
of the blossoms and the balm of green foliage on town- 
tired eyes, and so anticipated sunshine and balmj''-scented 
breezes. Instead, I shiver in the light of a roaring hearth 
fire, and count the crystal beads , that ornament the maple 
leaves outside mj'- window. 
'T like the country town in the rain, far better than 
the city's stones and flags, and I feast my soul on all its 
possible glories, forgetting, when I came, the absence of 
the sunshine. I am reminded by Thoreau's 'Week on the 
Concord and Merrimac' and his description of fish and 
fishing, to ask you a question or two." 
We all have a touch of it, if we examine into the com- 
ponent parts of our composition. It is less diluted and 
nearer to the surface in the case of the cultivated woman, 
who gives expression to it, than in the case ©f the man 
who sits dumbly, perhaps, on the railway wall on the 
bank of the Hudson, but we all have it in a greater or 
less degree, because "He orders all things well." 
Trout Eggs. 
Occasionally some angler enters a protest against the 
open season for brook trout, claiming it is too long 
because the trout he has taken have been found to con- 
tain eggs in July or August and therefore the season 
should close the last of June or the middle of July. 
When told that the eggs he has found in the summer 
are undeveloped eggs, and that they would not be fully 
developed until October or November, he is surprised, 
and perhaps more surprised when told that trout have 
eggs every month of the year. It is a good sign to have 
a man say it is wrong to take trout containing eggs in 
August, for it is proof that he has not seen the eggs of 
trout when they are ripe and after the legal season has 
closed, but there is no more harm done in taking the 
fish in August than it would have been to take the same 
fish on the first day of the open season — say, in April. 
While at the Suffolk Club, on Long Island, in April, I 
was examining the contents of the stomachs of some 
trout to find what they had been feeding upon, and in 
the ovaries of a female I found one single egg of last 
season's development with the undeveloped eggs of this 
season, which the fish would have deposited next fall 
had she not taken a fly of feathers and tinsel in mistake 
for the real thing, and I wished for once that I was a 
camera fiend that I might photograph the eggs to serve 
as an object lesson. The developed egg, as large. as a 
June pea, was a great contrast to the undeveloped mus- 
tard seed eggs, and the, most skeptical would have been 
convinced that if the single egg was ripe the others were 
far and away from ripe. Some individuals of the salmon 
family fail to deposit all their eggs and carry a few over 
until the next spring, and the belief is that these eggs 
are absorbed during the season of recuperation, but I 
have yet to be convinced that this is so. Of all the 
trout that I have opened and examined in the spring and 
early summer — and 1 have examined a great number dur- 
ing the past thirty years or so — I doubt if I liave found 
more than five or six that contained eggs that should 
have been deposited the previous autumn, and never have 
I found more than two or three eggs in the ovaries in 
the spring that were developed, and _ these ' eggs have 
always been full and plump and well colored as though 
the time were October instead of April or May. Why 
the eggs that remain over should not have been cast at 
the proper time I shall not pretend to say, as it would 
be mere speculation, but in stripping trout by hand if 
all the eggs are not secured the fish will go into the 
hatching sacs and try and make a bed as certainly as if 
none of her eggs had been taken, and this will be re- 
peated until all the eggs are taken by the operator or 
she casts them herself. A few years ago I noted in this 
column that a ripe female trout had been discovered in 
a New England breeding pond in August. My inform- 
ant was one of the fish commissioners of the State, and 
he related what had been told to him by a former super- 
intendent. In fact, I think two different trout had been 
found with ripe eggs at different times, one in July, as 
I recall it. and tlie oth er in August. That the eggs were 
ripe was discovered by handling the fish, and the explana- 
tion was that possibly something had happened to each 
fish to retard the development of the eggs the previous 
autumn, and so they had become ripe at an unusual time, 
and there was no ripe male fish in the ponds to impreg- 
nate the eggs. The number of eggs that came from the 
fish in the summer I never knew, but since hearing of 
the incident I have been led to believe that it was possi- 
ble that the fish did spawn at the usual time and retained 
a few eggs in the ovaries, which made them escape when 
the fish was handled the following summer. Unfortu- 
nately such fish as I have discovered to have a few devel- 
oped eggs in the spring were dead when the discovery 
was made, and, therefore, it was not possible to deter- 
mine if the eggs could have been stripped from the fish 
in the usual manner employed by fish breeders in the 
autumn; but until it is proven to the contrary I shall 
hold to the belief that eggs remaining over in the ovaries 
can be stripped by hand if an opportunity offers to make 
the trial. The trouble will be that no one will be looking 
for a trout that contains developed eggs in the spring 
retained from the previous autumn, and so the trial may 
not take place. A^ N. Cheney. 
^'Between Casts/' 
Chaklestown, N. H., May 2g.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The exquisite illustration of a scene on a trout 
brook, entitled "Between Casts," in the supplement to 
Forest and Stream received this morning, is almost an 
exact duplicate of an old photograph which hangs over my 
writing table, taken years ago, of a favorite Vermont 
brook, just across the Connecticut River from our village, 
out of which I have taken scores and hundreds of trout in 
the years long past. The photograph only needs the ad- 
dition of the two anglers and the fallen pine to make the 
resemblance perfect. It is more than sixty years since I 
first fished the stream, but I have had many a day's 
pleasant sport by its waters, sometimes alone, sometimes 
in the company of brother anglers who have long since 
gone over to the majority. My last trip to its sparkling 
waters was in the company of a young friend from New 
York, who has since written you one or two interesting 
letters from Central America. The remembrances are 
recalled bj^ your illustration, which will keep the photo- 
graph company, but I fear I shall never see those rapids 
again except in the pictures and in memory, for my days 
for such scrambles are over. "The spirit is willing, but 
the flesh is weak." 
I have been very much interested lately in brother 
Cheney's letters on large and small trout, and wish to 
indorse him fully in his expression ''of the opinion that 
the large trout are the ones to be caught, leaving the 
small ones to groAV and become breeders at two or three 
years of age, when bj^ all phj'siological experience in all 
varieties of animal life the progeny Avill be stronger and 
healthier far than from their maturer ancestors. 
There is no question as to the cannibalistic propensities 
of these full-grown or overgrown fish, an;d I got a bit 
of information last week which seems to carry out^the con- 
clusion. I have written you once or twice of the ex- 
treme drought of the last two summers, which prac- 
tically dried up most of the small brooks here in south- 
western New Hampshire, leaving only pools of water here 
and there in the deeper holes, and of my fear that the 
trout would be exterminated. A few days ago I had occa- 
sion to employ the village Rip Van Winkle who strips 
the brooks annually, to do some work, 'n my garden which 
was beyond my powers, and I asked him incidentally if 
he had been fishing this spring. He said he had, but had 
very poor luck, and added that all the trout he caught 
were very large ones. He said that he did not see a 
small trout in either of the two brooks he had fished.. He 
had caught thirteen trout the first day and about twenty 
the second one, in another brook, and repeated that they 
were far above the average size of his catches, but that he 
saw no small ones whatever. 
Now I think this carries out Mr. Cheney's contention 
completely. The trout had all been driven by the drought 
into the deep holes, the big fellows had gobbled up the 
little ones and another year the brooks will probably be 
tenantless. I fear ray fishing days are over, except in 
the columns of Forest and Stre.a,m, where I enjoy the 
records of other fellows' adventures and successes. I 
hope Kingfisher and Mr.' Starbuck will take to the woods 
again this year and give us some more delightful records 
of their experiences. ^ 
Let me congratulate you on the accession to your col- 
umns of Fayette Durlin, Jr. His stories of Old Hogarth, 
Sooner, and Saunders' Mule are among the best things I 
have read in a long while. If I do get a chance to wet a 
line, I will drop you one if I have a favorable response. 
Yon W. 
