July 2, 1904.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
9 
tiohs of the forest, while (lie elk, introduced from semi-, 
domesticated herds on private preserves, are less shy of 
man. This, I think, explains, for this section the less 
than usual observance of deer where that condition exists. 
Present indications are thai the season will be lighter 
than usual f r the hotels, but the region maintains its 
unsurpassed loveliness. Juvenal. 
All commounications intended for Forest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individual connected with the paper. 
New Jersey Imported Deer. 
Egg Harbor City, N. J., June 17. — The commissioners 
sent me seven deer, four Virginia and three English fallow. 
Two of the Virginia deer died soon after being liberated; 
they had been hurt while being caught. One buck of 
the English fallows was killed by a train on Easter- Sun- 
day night. This leaves only three. They were put six 
miles from here in the wilderness, but_ since about a 
month came right into the heart of this little city. They 
come right under the electric lights and enjoy the vege- 
tables in the gardens. . The buck is the most daring; the 
does do not venture in so far. Yesterday I had some 
reports that two young deer were seen with a doe; an- 
other man only saw the tracks of the young alongside of 
the old one. 
The plan of the Board of Commissioners is to get these 
deer to mix with our native deer, which are quite numer- 
ous about seven miles from here, near Weymouth. We 
all hope that they will increase, and will stay off, the 
railroad tracks. John Schuster, Jr., 
Warden for Atlantic County. 
EA AND MVEK HSfflN 
Fish Chat. 
Is Salmon Culture a Failure? 
Among the good things with which Forest and Stream 
for June 11 was filled to overflowing, was one in which 
1 was particularly interested, namely the article written 
by The Old . Angler ;. so interested, in fact, that it has 
had its third reading, and I shall keep it by me for future 
reference. , 
While I agree with him fully in some of the points he 
has taken, and believe that unless sharp curtailment of 
privileges now enjoyed by netters, weir men, et id omne 
genus, As quickly brought about, the extirpation of the 
salmon in many of our rivers will as surely come as the 
night follows the day. I do not believe that his views in 
relation to the non-advisability of the artificial propaga- 
tion of fish are unqualifiedly correct, for I have watched 
its results in too many streams to be willing to relinquish 
the conviction that the method and practice are among 
the greatest achievements of the nineteenth century. 
The stocking of streams artificially has, in great 
measure, brought back to them the noble fish which, by 
the shortsightedness and greed of man, had been- practi- 
cal 1 ^- exterminated in them, and that the salmon are not 
new abundant is not owing to the badness or worthless- 
ness of the method of artificial propagation, but rather 
to the continuation of that reckless greed which had 
formerly depleted the streams. Now, I would have no 
controversy whatever with The Old Angler; I read 
everything he writes that is printed in Forest and 
Stream with pleasure and profit, but my observations for 
a great many years have led me to believe that the artifi- 
cial restocking- of our rivers is not only feasible, but 
absolutely necessary. 
Visible Rt suits 
Among our important Eastern rivers that have been 
restocked, I will occupy space to name but a half dozen, 
for they will suffice for my present needs. In the Merri- 
mack River the Fish Commissioners of Massachusetts 
and New Hampshire have in years past liberated a con- 
siderable number of fry, which grew and flourished, 
descended to the sea and returned again, and are now liv- 
ing in the river, not in abundant numbers, it is true, but 
they are sufficiently plentiful to show that the planting 
has been a success. Before the fry were put out the 
salmon was, I believe, totally exterminated from that 
beautiful river. 
In the Penobscot River in Maine almost exactly the 
same conditions obtain ; salmon, which had year by year 
grown more and more scarce, have now become mod- 
erately plentiful, and the large fish which are now taken 
in the river, were no doubt originally among the fry 
that were in former years liberated by the commissioners. 
In Port Medway River, in Neva Scotia, the story is 
the same. In Middle River, half way between Baddeck 
and Margaree in Cape Breton, in which stream twenty- 
five years ago not a salmon existed, is now so well 
stocked that the angler may, almost any day, get two or 
three good fish. That noble river, the Margaree, which 
has been netted and seined almost to desolation, affords 
annually a respectable yield of good sized fish which 
have in years past been put into that stream as fry. 
Even the little Dunk River, in Prince Edward Island, 
in which a generation ago the capture of a salmon would 
scare an angler out of a year's growth, is now, I am in- 
formed, a fairly good salmon stream, it having been 
stocked artificially for several seasons. 
If These Streams had not been Stocked. 
Now, while it may be, and probably is, true, that The 
Old Angler is right when he states that the catch of 
salmon has lessened annually since the practice of artifi- 
cial propagation began, it seems plain to me that the de- 
cline of the fishing is not attributable to the practice; 
for if no efforts had been .made to keep up the stock, the 
catch would have lessened much more quickly than it 
has, and the occupation of netters and weir men would 
now be gone. 
The Netters Get the Cream. 
Now, as I have already stated, I agree fully with The 
.Old Angler that the privileges now enjoyed by netters 
should be sharply curtailed, for this is a doctrine I have, 
been preaching for upward of twenty-five years. I have 
Jost no opportunity to put it forth, and I believe that 
every one who is interested in the matter should spare 
no effort to bring it about. 
In 1886 I stated in a public address, printed in part 
subsequently in "With Fly-Rod and Camera," that in 
such rivers as "the Penobscot and Margaree a few weir 
owners and netters are reaping a rich harvest from the 
w 7 ork done by the commissioners, and the Government 
pays the bills. It is preposterous that a crop sown by 
the people should not be harvested for the benefit of the 
whole people. * * * I believe that since they reap the 
chief portion of the harvest, the netters should pay a 
liberal share of the expense of planting it, or else their 
privileges should be greatly curtailed. * * * Unless 
something is done, salmon will grow scarcer, no matter 
how many are planted." 
A Howl Will Go Up. 
Individual or spasmodic attempts to secure proper 
legislation will not be of much avail, and concerted ef- 
forts by the press and all who are interested in this im- 
portant matter should be made, and speedily at that. # 
A number of years ago I attended a great many legis- 
lative hearings on matters pertaining to the fisheries, and 
when any attempt was made to curtail privileges that 
weir men and netters enjoyed, those men were out in 
force, and with an array of legal advisers that was almost 
overwhelming; the fight they waged against those who 
attempted to bring about a reform was bitter in the 
extreme, and a similar experience will be the outcome 
when an effort is made to save the salmon, to right what 
is now one of the most palpable of wrongs. 
While it is not impossible that the American and Do- 
minion Governments may be made to see the wisdom of 
repressive measures in salmon netting, it will require no 
little effort- to bring this about,- and such men as The 
Old Angler, who know the facts thoroughly, should gird 
on their armor and begin the good fight. 
An Evir-Wicfenning Market. 
To one who is not familiar with the fact, the demands 
made by the ever-increasing market for fresh salmon are 
not well understood ; there are such demands, and they 
are daily growing wider and wider, and to meet them the 
efforts of the netters and weir men will increase pro- 
portionately. But no matter how great the supply they 
secure may be, it will fall far short of the demand. I 
venture to say that the city of New York alone 
could consume, even at the existing high rates, 
every ounce of the catch of Atlantic salmon that 
is annually made, but only a small portion 
of it reaches that city. There are thousands of pounds 
sold in its markets for Penobscot salmon, which were 
never taken east of the Rockies, and a fresh caught fish 
with bright eyes and red gills is a rarety. As for the 
delicious fish taken in the waters- of Nova Scotia, I 
doubt very much if many of them ever pass the limits of 
Boston, and there is no probability that this condition 
of things will improve. The main reliance of our con- 
sumers, therefore, will have to be placed, so far as fresh 
caught salmon are concerned, on the catch of the netters 
of the Baie des Chaleurs and the St. Lawrence, and that 
there is a probability that this supply will soon fail, there 
is not, in my mind, much doubt. As The Old Angler 
truly says, "We cannot eat our cake and have it, too :" 
and in order that there may be a future supply of salmon, 
we must curtail considerably the encroachments made 
upon the present one. 
Keep up the Good Work. 
But even if the netting of the fish is so restricted that 
the nets must be lifted five or six days in the week, the 
salmon that would ascend the rivers could not, by their 
natural method of procreation, keep the stock sufficiently 
large to withstand the drain made by the nets even if. 
they are down only but one or two days in the seven, and 
it seems to me that the natural method should be supple- 
mented, by the artificial one, and that the hatcheries, in- 
stead of being closed, should be pushed to their utmost 
capacity, and that the various commissioners and other 
officials who have the matter in charge should have much 
more ample means than are now placed at their disposal, 
and increased power to secure the enforcement of proper 
restrictive laws. 
What Netting Has Done. 
The Old Angler has shown how the Western catch has 
been diminished by over-fishing, and we have had many 
examples of its evil results on the Atlantic Coast. In the 
reports of the United States Commission will be found 
abundant evidence of the destructiveness of weirs, seines, 
pounds, etc., and I have quoted at considerable length 
in past issues of Forest and Stream from the facts that 
have been given ; but the fish that were captured were 
all species which breed in salt water, which have a 
greater range and more ample opportunities for reproduc- 
tion than have those which are restricted in spawning 
to rivers. Now, if those marine species could be brought 
to such a near point to extirpation as to make fishing 
for them with hand-lines entirely futile in numerous 
places where such fishing was formerly the calling of a 
large class of men, we can easily see that a river-breeding 
species, if closely pursued, had but little chance for its 
life. 
Connecticut Shad. 
As an example of this I will cite but a single instance. 
A number of years ago— how many I cannot now say, 
for I have no memoranda by me — the Fish Commission- 
ers of Massachusetts endeavored to stock the Connecti- 
cut River with shad. A large number of fry were put 
out, and the experiment proved so successful that the 
river teemed with the fish ; they grew and waxed to a 
good size, descended the river to the sea, and returned 
again, and the prospect seemed good that the river 
should regain its value as a home for shad, for which it 
was in former days so famous. But the seines and weir 
owners at the mouth of the river and along its lower 
shores soon became alive to the presence of the fish, and 
their traps were set so thoroughly, and, I think, un- 
restrictedly, the fish were captured almost to the last fin. 
Massachusetts had the satisfaction of proving that the 
shad could be restored to the river, and paid the bills, 
but Connecticut netters and trap men reaped the harvest 
that had been sown. 
Gut for Casting Lines. 
In the issue of Forest and Stream above noted, Mr. 
Chambers had s~"ue interesting jottings, particularly the 
one relating to silk-worm gut and its preparation. Some 
twenty-hve years ago my father conceived the idea that 
he could secure a supply of superior silk-worm gut from 
our native worms. By great and persistent effort he 
succeeded in procuring a number of the larvae of the 
great Cecropia moth, which he bred in captivity until 
his stock numbered, in the course of two or three years, 
over a thousand worms. To show how patiently he 
worked, I will state that his first year's supply numbered 
but five or six larvae, which matured, spun their cocoons, 
completed their transformation, and emerged from their 
silken homes in the spring perfect moths. The sexes, 
fortunately, were about evenly divided ; from these a 
supply of eggs was obtained which proved fertile, and 
his new stock of caterpillars numbered many hundreds. 
The larvae of the Cecropia moth feed principally on oak 
and maple leaves, and an abundant supply of its food is 
therefore always to be obtained, which is not the case 
with ordinary Chinese silk worms, which require for food 
the leaves of the mulberry. 
Raising Silk Worms. 
He was very successful with his worms, and when he 
began his experiments in taking their silk supply he had 
an abundance of material at his disposal. Those great 
green larvse were almost double the size of the Chinese 
or European worm, and their silk supply was conse- 
quently much greater than is that obtained from the 
other species. 
His worms were immersed for twenty-four hours or 
more in vinegar, a portion having been_ put in strong 
cider vinegar, and the others in what is called white 
wine vinegar, which is, I think, made from acids and 
not from grape juice. From those which were placed 
in the cider vinegar he obtained a great number of 
strands of remarkably stout gut, many of which ex- 
ceeded eighteen inches in length: nearly half of these 
were round throughout their entire length, but in the 
others there were flat sections extending sometimes half 
the length of the gut. The perfect strands were stretched 
and dried, and from some of them we tied some leaders, 
such as we had never before handled; the flat strands 
could never be utilized. He tried in a number of ways 
while the gut was soft and plastic to make the flattened 
portions round, but all his efforts were futile, and the 
gut was wasted. 
Now, there was no apparent difference in the health 
