S30 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 25, 1903. 
ing carmine. Out of many taken at different times I 
should be disposed to say that the average weight is 
about a pound and a half. I do not remember to have 
seen one weighing four pounds, although I have heard of 
their weighing more." 
De Kay usually found them in the rapids above water- 
falls or in the pools below them. Artificial flies and com- 
mon earth worms were successfully used, and the ventral 
fins of the fish itself, moved rapidly through the water, 
proved one of the best baits. 
This fish is no longer considered specifically distinct 
from the common brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis; Dr. 
Gill tells me that many years ago he examined specimens 
of the fish and tried to find characters of specific im- 
portance, but could find none. The examples from Flush- 
ing have very large heads for fish of their size, and when 
received here had the appearance of trout that had quite 
recently spawned and were poorly nourished. The 
colored figure given in De Kay's work gives one but a 
faint idea of the brilliancy of the fish from Flushing. 
B. A. Bean. 
U. S. National Museum, Washington, D C , April 16. 
Canoe and Camp Life Along the 
Delaware River* 
Snaps 'With a Pocket Camera, and Fly Casts "With Tamarack 
Poles. 
IV. — Sight and Blindness. 
' "A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose is to him; 
And it is nothing more." 
"Every object, however near the eye, has something about it 
which you cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance 
even, into every part and portion of whatever we suppose our- 
selves to see most clearly."— Ruskin. 
"R-a-t-t-t-t-t-a-t-t-t-t-o-o-o-o-o-o !" 
A long-drawn morning rattle and roll, like that from a 
snare-drum, only much more mellow and resonant. 
It is made b}' the beak of the golden-winged wood- 
pecker, known also as the "flicker" and "highholder," 
and it comes from far up on a dry, barkless maple stub 
which stands near our tent. 
"0-o-o-oo-oo-oo-r-rr !" he cries, as he hustles into his 
retreat (a hole made in the stub with that same beak) ; 
and then he faces about, sticks out his head and watches 
us from that high place of double safety. His mate hops 
up and down the barkless, dry, horny side of the stub, 
showing the shining plumage on her back. She is locat- 
ing the noise of the worms boring in the wood. 
My comrade has been on the river since daylight try- 
ing to get enough fish for breakfast, and he is irritable 
as he returns and tosses only one small bass ashore, which 
is picked up by another very early caller — the shrewd lum- 
berman who has brought us milk for our coffee from his 
house, a half mile distant. 
He, also, is irritable. "Say," he growls to my chum, as 
he holds up the one small bass, "what d'ye call this kind 
o" fish las' night?" _ 
"Adicropterus dolomteu." 
"Eh — sa3' it agin. W-a-1-1," he drawls, "he's got a good 
crop, all right, an' he ain't screwpulus 'baout fillin' it most 
any way. But he ain't no doll-mew; and, saj', don't ye 
know what that thar fish's name is, really? If ye don't, 
I'll tell ye. He's a black bass, an' all but one's too cute 
fur ye ter git 'em this mornin'. Oh, laugh ! Any feller 
that don't know no mor'n ter fish with an' old tam'rack 
pole, don't know nothin' 'baout fish." 
"Oh, all right. Wait and have a bite of breakfast with 
us, and a cup of coffee. Smell its aroma? Kind of you 
to bring the milk so early." 
But this olive branch is vainly extended. He con- 
tinues, between gulps of coffee : 
"An' say, ye sed las' night as how I couldn't see a 
tree. The idea 1 After I have lumbered nigh outer forty 
year, and cut more sawdust 'n'd dam this river, fur ye ter 
up an' tell me jes coz yer a city feller 't I don't see any- 
thin' ! Tell me" (a sniff of disdain), "I can't see that tree 
thar! D'ye think I'm crazy?" an.d he pointed to a little 
blue beech not ten feet awa}^ 
"Can't I see 'em leaves an' branches an' — um — seems as 
'ough, neow I look sharp, 't I dew see it extry good." 
My tent-mate places a leaf from it in the lumberman's 
hand, asking that it be looked at sharply, both sides, and 
then thrown away. 
"Wal?" 
"Now take this pencil and paper, and draw its shape — 
the edges and the ribs and veins of its structure as they 
are on its lighter underside. For there is no other leaf 
in all the forests of the world that is just like it." 
"Can't." 
"Well, draw the contours and unevenness of the bark 
on the trunk of the tree ; or tell me, with back turned to 
it, about its spots of color." 
"Can't." _ ^ ; 
"Very well, which is the smaller end of one of its 
boughs or twigs, the tip or the end where it branches 
from another'bough? Mind, I mean the diameter of its 
butt, or the diameter above, where the bough next throws 
off its first bud or twig. Which end is the smaller?" 
"Ridickerlus ! Why, the part closest to whar it grows 
from ther bough is thickest." 
He is asked to pluck any bough, and is handed a steel 
measure of small diameters which fits over the bough like 
a monkey wrench. He tests this and several more 
boughs, and is amazed. For the first time he listens. 
"You now see that no matter how far each normal 
bough extends outward, it does not get smaller by one 
hair-breadth until it throws out a bud, twig, or another 
bough; and that its bulk is then diminished by exactly 
what it thus throws off, and no more. The tapering of 
many tree-trunks and larger limbs has been caused by the 
loss of limbs that have died and long vanished, an inci- 
dent in the growth of almost every healthy tree, because 
the sap passed them by and sought limbs stronger and 
above them that were in sunlight and air." 
"Wall, I d'clar! Say, lend me that little steel measure, 
I wanter fool my foreman up 't ther mill, fur he thinks 
he's so dum smart 1" 
By this time we have other and better listeners — two 
Princeton boys, our tent neighbors. My chum now talks 
to them : 
"No man can see fully, and no deftest worker with the 
pencil can show on paper the exquisite delicacy and finish 
of the lines of the boughs and twigs, and their curvature. 
Very few know of the spiral growth, anticipated even 
in the yet unsprouted bud, that enables each bough to 
throw out buds and leaves where each can get farthest 
away from comrades, and thus secure room, air and light 
to the utmost. Take up any one of these boughs and 
observe the neighborly courtesy and companionships of 
the leaves and twigs — their recognition of the needs of 
WADING THE SHALLOWS. 
their brothers. Do you see all the leaves of that tree? 
Here is a photograph of its boughs only, taken last 
winter. You cannot even see them. It is in foliage now, 
full of mystery. If you study it long and keenly you 
will begin to see the purple shadows, and how they cross, 
interlace and blend. Then how hopeless of comprehen- 
sion is Nature when she expands and retires from us — 
when the character and life of a woodland, mountain, 
lake or river are to be studied! The whole outward 
v-forld is an organism full of mysterious life, much of 
which Ave do not observe, and which even defies our most 
subtle analysis. That leaf which you have crushed — do 
you see what makes it grow, or understand its life- 
principle? To even begin to know these plants, the trees, 
this river and these hills, we would have to study them 
for many months, watch their moods at all seasons of the 
year, all hours of day and night, in cloud}' weather, 
storm and sunshine, and under moon and stars, and love 
BOUGHS. 
the ferns and forests, the rocks and their lichens, the 
flowers, plants, colors and perfumes. But the wind has 
changed, and we must get out for a few bass." 
The college men plead with him to "go on." 
"Very well. Here is my chum, who has fished for forty 
years. You also, are anglers ; and I am a landscape pho- 
tographer and botanist. Yet we behold as we look, only 
some small part of the_ truth of space, fonn, color, 
chiaroscuro. Nature is infinite : man is finite, with lim- 
ited senses. What he sees is largely determined before- 
hand by very complex conditions of sense, education and 
faculty, causing variations in what artists call taste. We 
u.se sight over an infinity of forms, and the eye remains 
dulled through its use for mere purposes of ordinary safe 
gu.idance and casual impression. We do not look sharply 
for specific things; and so myriads of objects pass before 
our eyes that are actually not seen at all. Hamerton, the 
etcher, states that he drew oxen for twenty years before 
he saw them in the artistic sense. Nearly all men glare, 
and do not behold." 
He looks out at the exquisite view of the river as the 
little sailboats of the early pleasure-seekers began to dot 
the water — the view shown in the accompanying illus- 
tration—and drinks in with carefullest sight, all that fairy- 
like transparence of air and water, and that under-world 
of reflection, seemingly as much below the water as above 
it — the whole one of those occasional moments when 
Nature seems to put on her most marvelous costumes, 
robe after robe in quick succession of color and effects of 
atmospheric transfiguration — beautiful as a capricious 
coquette ! 
"Now, watch her don the shadow-robe and adorn it 
with driving cloud effects along the hills, the silent, for- 
ever changing, mile-long shadows slowly creeping over 
thern; while far down the stream the balanced white mist 
wraiths, 'mixed out of something and nothing,' stoop to 
play hide-and-seek with the patches of hemlocks and 
pines. Over all are subtlest hues, like the shadows of 
old thoughts, peace and seclusion! See how the clouds 
deepen and dissipate in dreamy rainfall, vanishing in a 
far-off pathos of silence, melting away in partial efface- 
ment, seeming to bring back from nothingness and show 
as visible dreams, the swellings of those great hills and 
promontories, their summits now changing from dun and 
purple when in shadow, to the 'strange, faint silence of 
possession by sunshine.' Note how the mists are building 
themselves into a range of towering crags and peaks that 
fill half the northern sky; and as their shadow covers us, 
look around and see how much more distinct all objects 
are in shadow than in bright sunshine. See the bit of 
blue sky through that cloud-rift? No sky so blue as that! 
Do you know why? Yet men think that they 
'hold 
Converse with Nature's charms, and see her stores unrolled.' 
"Can you tell the reasons for the dift'erent hues of 
morning and evening light, or why white sunshine 
caught and held in clouds often turns them to deepest 
scarlet? Take this little opera glass and look up and 
down the river, noting how much more you see. That 
proves the universal law of obscurity under which we 
live. Besides, to really see, you must be sensititive to 
'tone,' richness and mellowness of effect, limpidity and 
transparence. Even then, as any oculist will tell you, 
no two eyes are alike in balance and vision — so no two 
men see alike. 
"It would be easy to carry this same truth into the 
world of colors — the five hundred tints, each named, as 
shown under the spectroscope. But I am tired of staying 
off the water, and I want to land that five-pound bass that 
I saw over there in the eddy last evening. Put back the 
tamaracks into the canoe. It is not all of fishing to fish, 
but we must fish a lot when we go a-fishing." 
F. Brown, 
Opening of the Trout Season. 
Canadensis, Pa., April i8.- — Many trout fishermen 
from many sections of the country will welcome the news 
that Price Brothers have rebuilt the "Spruce Cabin Inn," 
and are again in shape to entertain their old friends and to 
make new ones. The popularity of this "Roost," the 
"Broadhead," the Luvis Branch, Goose Pond Run, and 
their tributaries is best attested to by the arrivals here on 
the evening of the 14th and each incoming train there- 
after, notwithstanding the fact that a nor'easter was at, 
and remained at, its height throughout these most desir- 
able nights and days. 
There is but one "crank" on earth that exceeds in in- 
tentness the gun and dog crank, and that fellow is the 
"fly-fisherman;" his season is shorter than the season of 
the other sort of cranks, consequently he will concen- 
trate his bristling energies into a given space of titne, and 
live on its recollections the other nine months in the year. 
Here are men with six rods and six dozen of flies to 
fish two days. He has the cook up at five A. M., and 
only comes in when he can't see to make another cast. 
He tells for the last time of his one "rise" during the 
day at one o'clock in the morning; he hangs out of the 
window at two condemning the weather, and has his 
roommate up at three to relieve the strain on his own 
feelings ; at seven he again departs, "rubbered" from 
toe to crown, while the nor'easter roars down the swales 
and the torrents of rain swell the already swollen brooks, 
while the chilled and sluggish trout sleeps on beneath the 
legs and rocks contentedly, oblivious .to the inexhaustible 
efforts of the crank with the fly. 
As night comes on gloom may settle on and somewhat 
smother his soul, but he shows it not. He has only tried 
forty-nine varieties of flies, and his supply of flies only 
equals his store of patience, and smaller streams look 
more promising. His last call echoes down the hall in the 
night: "Wes, have the team drop us at the head of 
Brush Run in the morning; I'm sure we'll do business 
there." And to the gentle music of the old mill dam just 
across the road he passes into his dreams. Oh, so tired, 
yet— "I had two rises." 
Would this crank abandon his ivory-leaved book whose 
pages are made gay, bright and beautiful by their varie- 
gated and venerated assortment of flies, and strap to his 
manly bosom the green painted and gold lettered worm 
box? Not if he was hungry. He isn't built that way. 
He has elected himself into a class of his own; he hates a 
worm because of its ugliness, only the more because when 
used by his more "prosy" brethren it will destroy that 
which might be induced to rise to a fly when the wind 
changes, when the water goes down, when the sun comes 
out, when the temperature is better, when the trout are 
ready. 
It is to be regretted that this was "wormy" weather 
entirely. Very few trout were taken with flies; there 
were some fine catches made with bait, and the trout are 
of fine size, running from eight to fourteen inches, and 
are very fat, the freshets having fed them well and de- 
feated the early fly crank. His time is near at hand, how- 
ever, and fish stories will be told by a weary dynamo dur- 
ing the next thirty days. 
Among those "first night" devotees here were to be 
seen and heard Messrs. E. H. Fitch, Kenneth Fowler, J. 
C. Faulkner, T. W. Lee, H. P. Seymour, Wm. P. 
Ketcham, of New York; Dr. C. P. Franklin, of Philadel- 
phia; Dr. H. Ingram and T. S. Ingram, of Atlantic City; 
Chas. F. Roe and W. H. Schroder, of Elmira; L. A. 
Morey, of Passaic, N. J.; C. C. Tolcott, of Montclair; 
L. H. Long and H. H. Howe, of Wilkesbarre; M. B. 
Hawley, A. C. Monies and A. R. Gould, of Scranton; J. 
H. Farrier, Geo. A. Cooker, E. D. Stupp, J. D. Stark, C. 
S. Stark, of Pittston, and E. J. Smith, of Binghamton. 
In the new Spruce Cabin Inn, Price Brothers have ac- 
commodations for 150 guests. Old friends of these inn- 
keepers and guides will be glad to learn that Mr. Milton 
Price is fast recovering from a very serious illness. 
Canadensis is reached by the D. L. & W. R. R. to 
Cresco, thence by stage. T. E. Batten. 
