Aug. 8, 1903.]' 
" *Yoii don't believe what I am telling you, eh?' he 
finally said rather sharply. 'Well, I'll just tell you what 
I'll do with you. I'll bet you an even thousand dollars 
that I can take you up to that stream and show you 
a place where you can catch all the trout you can carry 
without wetting your hook.' " 
"Oi course I laughed at him all the harder, and the 
harder I laughed the madder he got, until finally he 
actually bet me a thousand dollars to a hundred that 
I could go up there and catch my fish basket full with- 
out wetting my hook. 
" 'Say, Bailey,' said I, 'do your trout up there have 
wings or do they go out in airships when "they want 
their breakfast?' 
" 'Never you mind,' he replied, 'we'll just step over 
to the bank there and put up the Jiioney.' 
"Put it up we did, and I never felt I was going to 
get $1,000 quite so pleasantly and easily as that. To 
make a long story short, soon afterwards we made 
the trip out west together. We went to Bonner's 
Ferry, and' took the Kootenai branch about fifty miles 
north of there to Port Hill, where Boundary Creek 
comes in. We went up the creek a little way and canle 
to a place where the stream, which was perhaps about 
as wide as this car, was a tumbling sheet of foam for 
two or three miles as it tore its way down the canyon. 
I fixed up my rod and, according to Bailey's instruc- 
tions, put a piece of red flannel on the hook, and low- 
ered it down toward the water. When the flannel got 
about three inches above the foam an immense trout 
broke the water and grabbed it. It gave me a terrible 
start. Everything was so wild around there and the 
fish were so big and savage I felt almost like taking 
to the woods. And do you know that's the way those 
fish did just as long as I cared to take them. Just 
hold the bait over the water and they jumped for it, 
yes sir! Of course, my hook got wet, but I didn't 
need to put it in the water to get fast to the fish. I 
was perfectly satisfied, and when we got home I told 
the bank to pay over my hundred dollars. It was the 
cheapest fishing I ever had in my life." E. P. H. 
Appleton, Wis. 
In the New York Aquarium. 
{Continued from last iveek ) 
An attractive tank is that of the sunfish where up- 
wards of fifty of them dwell together in peace and har- 
mony. This fish grows to a length of eight inches and 
weighs half a pound. It builds for itself a nest in the 
mud, sand or gravel. The eggs are attached to stones 
or water plants, and it is said (singular fact) that the 
male performs the duties of nurse and nest builder. 
The sunfish hang poised in the midst of their watery 
prison apparently looking out curiously at visitors and 
affording the. best view of their beauties. Their home 
is funtished with a square arch of stones. ^ 
The American sole, commotily called "sticking plas- 
ter," appears to be Scarcely thicker than that retailed 
iuticie, and, with all its adhesiveness, it clings or 
fastens itself to the rocks. In the aquarium they ad- 
here to the walls of the tank, and at first glance are 
often uHliotictid. One of the prize winners for home- 
liness is the big Mi-^sissippi catfish. Consciou.? of his 
deficiencies, he keeps himself as much as possible out 
nf sight against the back wall of his apartment. An- 
Dther conimoll looking chap is the mudfish,^ otherwise 
called bowfin, dogfish, lawyer of John-a-Grindle. He, 
too, comes from the sluggish Mississippi and its great 
bkes, and has 110 particular merit of any kind. On 
ll"e one hand he is w'orthlcss as_ food, while on the 
other he has a large appetite of his own, which he ap- 
peases with frogs and small fish. 
The big tank where the Crustaceans are kept is like 
an alcoholic nightmare. It is full of horseshoe crabs, 
lobsters, misshapen fiddler crabs, soft shell crabs, sea 
spiders, crabs Avith one claw, crabs with two claws,- and 
crabs that seem to be all claws. There is one unso-. 
ciable specimen shunned by his fellow monstrosities 
who is a perfect mass of nippers and horny legs and 
Creepers, and all that you can see as a center for all 
Uiis unpleasantness is a pair of malevolent ej'es. Next 
to this unpleasant exhibit is a tank containing the most 
inert specimens of the collection. Thej'^ are the chi- 
tons and sea urchins. The chitons look like teapot 
.covers of fluted tin. They live at the bottom of the 
tank and attend strictly to their own affairs. The sea 
tirchins are floaters. They are small, round, brownish, 
Spiny affairs, and when you touch them they roll over 
and wave their spines indefinitely about. You can 
make a A^ery good sea urchin of your own by taking a 
small round pincushion, sticking it full of headless 
black pins, and putting it in the bath tub. 
Among things secured by the aquarium's own col- 
lectors, there are now here a number of small decorat- 
ing crabs, the familiar and yet marvelous crea:tures 
that decorate the top of their shell with threads of 
marine plants, which they place there seemingljr for 
purposes of adornment, but really to make themselves 
invisible, and so to protect them from their enemies. 
When it has attained maturitj' and large size the crab 
ceases to decorate itself. With its long, slender. curA'-- 
ing legs it looks then like an enormous spider, and it 
relies then upon its size and activity to keep others at 
a distance; it would seem as though it inight, for that, 
safely rely upon its appearance. But in its youth the 
decorating crab does wonderful things. It plants upon 
its back, to be held there in a sticky glue which it se- 
cretes, bits and shreds of marine plants, commonly 
placing them near the front of the shell, above which 
they rise like the feathers or other adornments on the 
front o.f a woman's hat. It begins to do this at a very 
early age. Little decorators a quarter of an inch in 
diameter have been taken with bits of plants sticking 
to them; the little creatures had already begun to 
adorn themselves. Red plants the decorating crabs 
iappear to use the most, but they take those of bright 
green, too. and of other colors. Decorators have been 
(Captured that had upon their shells scraps and shreds 
as many as five kinds of marine vegetation. 
When it is very j-^oung and small the decorator casts 
,ofF its own shell to make way for the new one it 
sheds at frequent intervals; the very little decorators 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
shed twice in a month, the sheddings being less and 
less frequent as the crab grows older and bigger. 
When the decorator has come to be quite a crab and 
so as to carry upon its shell the bits of plants that it 
may place there for a longer time, these plants may 
groAv more or less. When it does shed its shell, at 
whatCA'^er stage of its own growth, it sheds of course 
Avith it Avhatever fragments of plants may be left upon 
it. These sheddings, with the plant scraps upon them, 
may drift about and be lost or destroyed. If ofie 
should lodge in some place where it would remain un- 
disturbed by the tides, the bits of plants upon it might 
then sprout up and grow into a considerable bunch of 
A'egetation. 
Of all the freak fish none appears more ridiculous 
than the boxfish. It looks as much like a gherkin as 
anything else. Covered with little spines and rather 
oblong in shape, it is doubtful if the ordinary farmer's 
boy of¥ for a Sundaj^'s fishing would know whether it 
was vegetable, animal or mineral. The cowfish is 
rather a homely chap, with a serious cast of counten- 
ance. The cowfish is so-called by reason of its re- 
•scmblance to the head of a cow and has little horns 
that protude just above the eyes. Its body is almost 
Avholly encased in a bone shell, which makes it clumsy 
of movement. It feeds on mollusks and other small 
organisms found on sea vegetation, such as snails, 
cockles and shrimp. 
Among the more remarkable fishes at the aquarium 
the strangely shaped file fish holds a prominent place, 
and the tanks in which they pass their contemplative 
lives are the objects of much attention. This is not so 
much on account of their liveliness as because of their 
most peculiar shape. So grotesque are they that one 
is tempted to believe that they are rather the victims of 
some marine accident than fish produced by nature 
purposely. If there were railroad trains on the bottom 
of the seas one might reasonably enough imagine that 
the file fish were its survivors, crippled and deformed, 
of a particularly bad rear end collision. They have 
dents and angles where the ordinar}!- fish has glossy 
and shapely sides. Their fins are stumps and wiggle 
with touching industry in an apparently painful effort 
to keep the queer bodies upright, and the beholder 
watches Avith tension to see them turn turtle, for it 
seems impossible that the little fish should continue 
long to float in any Avay except Avhat would seem the 
more natural Avay, namelj', on their backs. File fish 
are cosmopolitans. They appear in almost all seas. 
In the aquarium are specimens from the Bermudas, 
from Florida and from Gravesend Bay, which is just 
behind our OAvn Coney Island. 
Three specimens of Avhat is considered the rarest 
salamander in existence were received not long ago at 
the aquarliun. They are known as the Typhlomolge 
rathbuni — the last name being a Latinlzatlon of the 
name of Richard Rathbun, the assistant secretary of 
the Smithsonian Institution at Washington — are found 
in only one part of the world, and are the only live 
ones that have ever been offered for exhibition. 
The salamanders Avere discovered in an artesian well 
owned by the United States Fish Commission at San 
Marcos, Texas. The well is 188 feet deep and the dis- 
covery that it Is inhabited by the Rathboni family has 
caused the ofiflcials of the Fish Commission to conclude 
that the bottom of the well is in some manner, as yet 
unexplained, connected with a subterranean caA^ern. 
They are of a pinkish white color, somcAvhat similar 
to the axolotl family, and like the fish that inhabit the 
mammoth caves of Kentucky, are eyeless. Unlike 
other species of the salamander family, they have gills. 
They have a broad, shovel-shaped head, and their body 
is shaped something like that of a fish. They have also 
four skeleton-like legs that are believed to be utilized 
as feelers, since they propel themselves entirely with a 
short stubbed shaped thing that looks something like a 
tail, although it is not, strictly speaking, such an ap- 
pendage, according to Mr. Spencer, who has charge of 
the laboratory. 
A gluttonous starfish, a clam with an eleven inch 
neck and oyster shells nearly a foot long, were among 
the curious recent arrivals at the aquarium. All hail 
from local Avaters. The starfish is of the ordinary 
variety, but It possesses an extraordinary appetite for 
small snails. This appetite soon gained him distinc- 
tion. Soon after his arrlvel he was observed by Mr. 
Spencer to be humped up In an apparent knot. His 
appearance was so odd that an examination Avas made, 
and no less than six small snails Avere found under him. 
One Avas clasped tightly to the mouth by the small 
tentacles and was in the act of being devoured. The 
others were held by the tentacles along the forearms 
for future meals. There Avere enough to last two 
weeks. The starfish secures his food by clasping the 
open part of a snail shell to his mouth in the center of 
the under side of the body and sloAvly sucking out the 
live snail. 
The clam, Avhich Avas described by a keeper as the 
original "rubber neck," is four inches long, and of the 
soft A'arlety. Shortly after It Avas placed in one of the 
balanced aquaria — the laboratory — his abilities as a 
neck stretcher became apparent. The other day he 
broke the record by extending his neck eleven inches 
from his shell by actual measurement. 
The large oyster shells Avere secured by Mr. John 
De Nyce, of the aquarium staff, in an old mill pond 
near Gravesend Bay. They are the largest, as far as 
knoAvn, eA'^er found there, the largest of them measur- 
ing ten and a half inches in length and being in its 
heaviest part something like an inch in thickness. In 
old times oysters were planted and cultivated in this 
tidal pond. Their cultivation ceased long ago. These 
great oyster shells, bleached white by the scouring of 
many tides, grew undisturbed until the oysters were 
killed b}"^ borers, or died of old age. The oysters that 
lived in these big oyster shells must have been twenty 
years or more old when they died, which is patriarchal 
for an oyster. 
The spiney lobster, which is something ncAv at the 
aquarium, is much like the common lobster in shape, 
but the peculiarly spotted and marked body of delicate 
shades of silver, blue, purple and amber makes it one 
of the most beautiful of crustaceans. This lobster is 
from Bermuda and has no pincers like ours, but fron? 
109 
— 
its head are extended long, hard spines thickly covered 
with sharp stickers or -needles similar to the cactus 
plant. In their native element they live the greater 
part of the time under the rocks. Before entering a 
crevice they use their long spines for exploring to fiind 
out if there is anything in it. If it Is empty they turn 
around and back into it, leaving the spines sticking out 
of the entrance on guard. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST, 
A Giant Pike. 
Chicago, 111., Aug. t. — Every once in a while there 
comes very tangible proof of the fact that not all the 
big fish are caught as yet. For instance, each two 
years or so we hear of a very large large muscallunge 
being taken in Fox Lake waters of Illinois, only fifty- 
five miles from Chicago, and in a district literally in- 
fested with cottagers, "resorters," and all sorts and 
conditions of fishermen. Oddly enough, these big 
muscallunge of Fox Lake — and they are a genuine 
muscallunge and not the great northern pike— are 
nearly always discovered under singular circumstances. 
Two or three have been found dead on the shore, 
choked of their own rapacity. One w.as found, as re- 
ported in these columns, tangled up in the rushes and 
fast to a set line. Only very few have ever been taken 
with rod and reel, although every once in a while come 
stories of lost spoon hooks, of heavy surging strikes 
and monsters of the deep seen for a moment and then 
gone forever. These details might be classed as fisher- 
men's stories were it not for the occasional absolute 
proof of their probability In the shape of these big 
muscallunge Avhlch are taken, dead or alive. 
From Fox Lake to the muscallunge country of Wis- 
consin and Minnesota is a long jump, yet until one 
goes to the upper tributaries of the Mississippi which 
drain the great pine woods country to the north of us, 
there is hardly a water Avhlch produces the muscal- 
lunge. These big felloAVS in Fox Lake are simply 
there as the Skunk River and Desmoines River and 
Ohio River muscallunge are, or Avere, by chance, by 
survival, almost, one might say, by accident. We have, 
however, all through this western district, from the 
Ohio River north to the pine woods country, that 
other giant pike sometimes confused Avlth the mus- 
callunge, the great northern pike, the same fish which 
is commonly called pickerel all through this part of 
the world, but Avhlch Is not in truth a pickerel, but just 
what it actually is, the great northern pike, neither a 
muscallunge nor a pickerel. 
I remember stating in these columns some years ago 
the facts regarding the capture of two or three enor- 
mous pike in the little lake in Waukesha County known 
as Deep Lake, or Lulu Lake, or Schwartz's Lake, 
which is connected with Eagle Lake by a narrow rushy 
channel. This is the same lake on Avhlch J. B. H. and 
myself pitched our little camp for very many years in 
succession. We heard these stories of great pike, and 
one day had some reason to believe them, for J. B. H. 
brought up a great shiner bait cut in half as neatly as 
though by a pair of scissors. Billy Tuohy told us of 
one of these big fish which he himself had hooked and 
had up to the side of the boat. He thought it weighed 
25 pounds. On still another occasion he Avas out Avith 
an angler who hooked a pike of about the same size, 
but which broke away. One day a farmer, casting frog 
along the shore of the lake Avith a long cane pole, had 
a heavy strike. He started inland on foot, and Avith- 
out halt or hesitation dragged out a great northern 
pike which weighed nearly 30 lbs. So much for con- 
firmation of the repeated rumors of an occasional giant 
pike in this little lake, which is set like a beautiful gem 
among the quiet green hills of lower Wisconsin, one of 
the most beautiful regions that ever lay out of doors. 
Now we come to the story In question. A fcAv days 
ago Mr. W. L. Curtis, a salesman of A. G. Spalding & 
Bro., this city, went up to Billy Tuohy's place on Eagle 
Lake. He wanted to find the hidden bar out in the 
middle of the lake — the same bar which Billy Tuohy 
showed to J. B. H. and me, and where we caught our 
croppies and occasionally struck something heavier 
than croppies — but like most unskilled folk was unable 
to locate this little cone which rises up out of the bot- 
tom of the deep Avaters. Mr. Curtis was equipped with 
an ordinary bass outfit and started to troll with a 
spoon around the left edge of the lake as one goes in 
from the channel. When he got about opposite the 
little spring — the same spring which J. B. H. and I 
used at our yearly encampment — he felt a heavy surge 
on his line. What this big pike Avas doing over on 
that side of the lake I can't tell. Probably he was just 
Avanderlng around in a morose and savage mood. At 
any rate, after about half an hour's hard fighting, Mr. 
Curtis got him up to the side of the boat. Happily he 
Avas provided with a combined gaff and landing net of 
his own invention. ScA^eral times, as in Mr. Tuohy's 
case, this big fish had escaped, because there was no 
way of getting them into the boat when brought along- 
side. Mr. Curtis gaffed this fish, and came back with 
it. It was a beautiful specimen, deep, fat and bright, 
and Aveighed just tAventy-eight pounds. The fish is 
now In Chicago for the purpose of mounting. Mr. 
Curtis was accompanied In the boat by Mr. Horace 
Haff of Chicago. So much for beautiful little Lulu 
Lake. Since the death of J. B. H. I have never seen it, 
nor do I purpose ever visiting its shores again, but I 
am glad to see that it verifies to-day our beliefs of 
years ago. 
For the Nepigon. 
Mr. W. S. Forrest, the distinguished criminal lawyer 
of this city, is, like a great many other professional 
men, a very ardent devotee of the angle. Mr. Forrest 
leaves to-day, Avith his son, for a trip of some duration 
on the Nepigon. H^ takes a big outfit along, and is of 
course practically certain of sport among the great 
trout of that noble stream. 
For Newfoundland. 
Mr. George M. Eckels, of this city, is outfitting this 
Aveek for a touring and troutlng trip to the far off 
province of Newfoundland. At least Newfoundland 
