Dec 24, 1904.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
686 
over bright golden sands, where the fish are as bril- 
liant as coin fresh from the mint. On the other is deep 
still water under the shadow of an overhanging tree, 
containing fish so much darker in their markings and 
tints that the uninitiated would be apt to declare them 
a distinct variety from the first. When the differences 
are so marked as this in the external appearances of 
fish inhabiting the same water, it is surely not to be 
wondered at that, as Mr. Hallock points out, the marine 
and fluvial trout, though identical in both species and 
variety, should constitute two distinct types. Differ- 
ences in coloring, as we all know, cannot constitute 
distinct varieties, and the sea and river trout are 
identical, not only in bone structure, but also in rays, 
in the number of pyloric appendages and in the arrange- 
ment of teeth upon the vomer, which are all taken into 
consideration by scientists, in their study of what is 
known as comparative zoology. 
Mr. Samuels, and The Old Angler. 
Thus far had I got, and no farther, when my New 
York mail arrived, bringing me the issue of Forest 
and Stream for Dec. 10. I had terminated all that I 
expected to have to say about the sea trout, when upon 
opening my paper I was startled to find that the refer- 
ences of nearly a month ago, to my late experiences 
with the so-called sea trout of the Saguenay had drawn 
out length commentaries from both The Old Angler 
and Mr. Samuels. The latter appears to be singularly 
unfortunate with the printers. Immediately after having 
explained away one mis-statement which apparently 
arose from a misprint, he is made to appear responsible 
for another. At least this is the only explanation which 
seems possible for his statement that, "In Forest and 
Stream of Nov. 19, Mr. Chambers has something in 
relation to the silvery beauties, which, although written 
in a most interesting manner, is not entirely free from 
error, or which will not, at any rate, excite some dis- 
cussion," for that it has excited discussion requires no 
better proof than the very letter which Mr. Samuels 
was then engaged in writting. Nothing would probably 
be gained by a further discussion of the relative amount 
of truth and error to be found in the personal views 
expressed by the artistic author of "With Fly-Rod and 
Camera," for after all, who shall be the- judge between 
us as to what constitutes truth and what is error? 
With due apologies to Mr. Hallock, of course, we can 
neither of us afford to despise the truth if we would 
catch any fish next summer, but in this age of bustle 
and hurry, and especially at this season of the year when 
everybody is rushing to get ready for Christmas, it 
would probably be idle to convince anybody what is 
truth and what is error concerning the sea trout. Even 
nearly 1,900 years ago, to quote Lord Bacon, " What 
is truth?' asked Pilate, and would not wait for an an- 
swer." 
And after all, if there be error in the article from my 
pen, to which Mr. Samuels refers, apart from what I have 
quoted from others, he has not indicated it. On the 
contrary, we appear to hold very similar views. Mr. 
Perley's statements were unfortunately not credited to 
that gentleman, because, for the moment, when copy- 
ing them from the memo, which I had made of them 
from his original report, some months ago, I was un- 
able to recall their source. I have to _ thank Mr. 
Samuels for the generally courteous appreciation of the 
sketch, and have no reply to make at the present time 
to his criticism of some of Mr. Perley's statements, 
farther than to say that the contents of that gentle- 
man's reports have usually been accepted as authorita- 
tive, and that my reason for quoting from them in re- 
gard to the waters of Prince Edward Island, is that 
these latter are about the only accessible ones in 
Eastern Canada with which I am not personally ac- 
quainted. In common with all readers of Mr. Samuels' 
writings, I shall look forward with no small interest to 
the appearance of his promised monograph on the sea 
trout, which may inaugurate a new era of the present 
discussion. 
If, instead of telling a little side experience of my 
own with sea trout in the Saguenay, and quoting from 
Perley as to his in other waters, I had plunged head- 
long into the controversy between The Old Angler 
and others, taking sides, and asserting my own personal 
views as to the identity of the so-called sea trout, 
bolstering them up, moreover, with boastful recapitula- 
tion of all the waters in which I had foughtand killed 
it, I should probably have escaped all the misrepresen- 
tation with which The Old Angler favors me in Forest 
and Stream. How amusing will his reference to my 
"single season's study" of the sea trout appear to the 
elder Hovingtons and the other Tadpussac guides, with 
whom I angled for the fish in the lower Saguenay 
more than a quarter of a century ago, as well as to the 
guides and angling companions with whom I have 
killed the silvery beauties in various streams of New- 
foundland, and in many of those flowing into the Baie 
des Chaleurs and through the interior of Labrador into 
the Gulf of St. Lawrence. And upon what has The Old 
Angler based his gratuitous assumption? "There is 
nothing," he says, "in the article to indicate that Mr. 
Chambers ever saw these sea trout except _ in the 
Saguenay and some of its tributaries." There is abso- 
lutely nothing in the context to lead one to conclude 
that "last summer was the only time" I had seen them. 
There is nothing in the article to show that I ever went 
to school, that I was ever in Europe, or ever visited 
New York. Then, I suppose, that I could never have 
been there! 
Similarly, as to the scope of the article in question, 
The Old Angler simply assumes what he imagines that 
it implies, namely that these sea-run trout are denizens 
of the sea, etc. Now it implies nothing of the kind. 
1 have no objection whatever to be judge and criticised 
for what I write. It is nothing but right that I should 
be. But I do strenuously object to be held responsible 
for what I have neither said nor implied, nor yet in- 
tended to imply. And I most sincerely regret the un- 
warranted assumptions which have been drawn from 
what I have purposely omitted to say, because I am now 
compelled to express opinions as to the recent con- 
troversy, which I have carefully avoided up to the 
present time, believing that it was not the part of 
modesty to intervene, and that neither my own ipse 
dixit nor yet that of Mr. Hallock or Mr. Samuels, or 
of The Old Angler would have any weight in settling 
the matter, or could possibly be accepted as final or 
authoritative, in view of the positive findings of those 
who occupy the seats of the mighty in piscicultural lore 
and who speak with the recognized authority of science. 
Silence as to my own views, now, would simply mean 
assent to the opinions which have been gratuitously 
and wrongly attributed to me, and which are exactly 
the opposite of what I really hold. 
Unlike those of Mr. Samuels, my opinions on the 
sea trout question, though differing but little, if at all, 
from his own, have never changed except to become 
more and more decided. Eight years ago I published what 
I had then held to be the truth on the subject for 
nearly a quarter of a century. No controversy was 
being publicly waged on the sea trout question at that 
time, so far as I can remember at present, and so my 
expression of opinion simply passed without comment 
for what little it was worth. At page 245 of "The 
Ouananiche and Its Canadian Environment," I wrote, 
in 1886: "These fish go down to the sea in great 
shoals, and, after seeing and fattening upon the wonders 
of the deep, reascend to fresh water, to spawn, most 
gorgeous in their freshly burnished liveries of silver 
and olive and purple and crimson and gold." This 
surely does not look as if I considered them to be 
denizens of the sea. And after speaking of the fabled 
specimens of which I had been told, but had never 
seen, and which, by the way, I never expect to see- 
described, as they are, to differ from fontinalis in more 
respects than the immaterial one of coloring — I added: 
"But for this, and sometimes even in spite of it, I am 
tempted to doubt the existence of any distinction but 
that of anadromy, between these gorgeous sea trout 
of the estuaries of rivers flowing into the gulf and the 
brook trout of our inland waters. In other words, 
are they not to these latter what the_ sea salmon is to 
the ouananiche — a fresh-water species that has ac- 
quired the sea-going habit?" 
Years ago I had made simple comparative anatomical 
studies of the marine and fluvial types of fontinalis, as 
Mr. Flallock has happily termed them, and had be- 
come convinced myself that they were identical in 
structure. Last summer, I was tempted by the late 
controversy to pay rather closer attention to the fish 
and its habits of feeding and fighting than on former 
visits to the Saguenay, and hence the few rather un- 
connected notes, which have been the innocent cause of 
so much discussion. Into the merits of the controversy 
I had never any intention of entering. 
E. T. D. Chambers. 
Labrax and Striped Bass. 
Newport, R. I., Dec. 7. — Editor Forest and Stream: 
In reading "Forest, Lake and River; the Fishes of New 
England and Eastern Canada. By Frank M. Johnson. 
Two volumes. Boston. Printed for subscribers, 1902," 
I was struck by two errors in an article on the striped 
bass by Dr. Heber Bishop. He says : "As far back as 
the days of the ancient Greeks, Archetratus speaks of this 
fish (the striped bass) as an "offspring of the gods." 
There is no such person as Archetratus. 
Archestratus was a Greek poet of Sicily of the third 
century B. C. He is chiefly known from a poem on 
cookery, which has come down to us in fragments, and is 
quoted chiefly by Athenseus. 
The passage in question is found in Athenseus VII., p. 
311a. In this the poet says: "Whenever you go to 
Miletus, get the Labrax, the child of the gods." 
(tov Seonaida Xa/3 poena-) That is unimportant, the 
omission of the "s" being perhaps a printer's error. 
The second I cannot understand. Liddell & Scott's 
Lexicon says that the \ajipaB, is "a ravenous sea 
fish, perhaps the loup-de-mer bass." Century Diction- 
ary gives the bass of the Greeks and Romans as Labrax 
lupus. Jordan, in his "Catalogue of the Fishes of 
Greece," p. 259, says that the Labrax is the Dicentrarchus 
labrax of the Serranidse family. 
To call the fish spoken of by Archestratus the striped 
bass is absolutely incorrect. The striped bass (Roccus 
linealus, Bloch), is entirely unknown in European waters, 
and even the specimen described by Bloch is an American 
one in an ichthyological collection. To make assurance 
on this part doubly sure, I wrote to the United States 
Bureau of Fisheries in Washington on the subject, and 
they assured me I was entirely correct in my statement 
that the "striped bass was unknown in European 
waters." 
I was astonished to see such a statement in a book 
published in a limited edition at a great cost, and pur- 
porting to be the latest authority on each fish described. 
Having been a fisherman of the striped bass for over 
thirty years and a devoted admirer of his, I can not re- 
frain from drawing attention to this misstatement of fact. 
Daniel B. Fearing. 
New York Fishcttlture. 
Figures from the forthcoming report of the Forest, 
Fish and Game Commission, which is now being com- 
piled by the secretary, Mr. John D. Whish, show that the 
total output of game fish during the season of 1904 was 
5,045,914. This is an increase of 583,459 over the output 
of the previous year, which was considered high-water 
mark in the hatchery work. The game fish distributed 
included 2,857,415 brook trout, 1,519,389 brown trout, 
416,062 lake trout, and 251,922 rainbow trout. There 
were saved from failing waters a total of 4,450 game fish, 
mostly black bass, which were distributed near the lo- 
calities where they were taken. 
Over 34 per cent, of the game- fish distributed were sent 
out in the fingerling stage, which is that most favored 
by the Commission. About 8 per cent, were distributed 
as yearlings, which went for the most part to the larger 
bodies of water. The Commission as a rule does "not 
furnish yearling fish, as the hatchery output is taken by 
the fingerling applications, but the sudden coming of cold 
weather last fall made it necessary to carry over many 
of the treut until spring. Next season's output will be 
almost entirely fingerling fish, and but few fry will be sent 
out, as additional accommodations have been provided at 
the hatcheries to hold the fish until the fingerling stage 
is reached. The capacity of the Catskill Mountain hatch- 
ery at Margaretville has been almost doubled in order 
to meet the requirements of that region, which is difficult 
to reach from other sections of the State. 
The Commission hopes that another season will see the 
beginning of black bass culture, as rearing ponds are 
now being built at Constantia for this purpose. The total 
cost of running the State hatchery system is about 
$50,000 yearly. 
"Forest and Stream" Designing 
Competition No. IV. 
Sixty -foot Waterline Cruising Power Boat. 
$225 in Prizes. 
The three designing competitions previously given by 
Forest and Stream have been for sailing yachts. In 
this competition, the fourth, we are to change our sub- 
ject and give the power boat men an opportunity. The 
competition is open to amateurs and professionals, except 
that the designers who received prizes in any of the three 
previous contests may not compete in this one. 
The following prizes will be given : 
First prize, $100. \ 
Second prize, $60. 
Third prize, $40. 
Fourth prize, $25, offered by Mr. Charles W. Lee for 
the best cabin arrangement. 
Mr. Henry J. Gielow, N.A., has very kindly agreed to 
act as judge. In addition to making the awards, Mr. 
Gielow will criticise each of the designs submitted; and 
the criticisms will be published in these columns. 
The designs will be for a cruising launch propelled by 
either gasolene or kerosene motors, conforming to the 
following conditions: 
I. Not over 60ft. waterline. 
II. Not over 4ft. draft. 
III. A signalling mast only to be shown. 
IV. Cabin houses, if used at all, to be kept as low 
and narrow as possible. 
V. Construction to be of wood, and to be strong, 
simple, and inexpensive. The cost of the boat complete 
in every detail must not exceed $9,000. 
VI. The location of tanks and engine or engines to 
be carefully shown. Either single or twin-screws may be 
adopted. The power and type of the motor must be 
specified. 
VII. The boat must have a fuel capacity sufficient to 
give a cruising radius of 700 miles at a rate of 8 miles 
an hour. The maximum speed shall not be more than 14 
miles nor less than 10 miles. The estimated maximum 
speed must be specified. 
VIII. All weights must be carefully figured, and the 
results of the calculations recorded. A thousand-word 
description of the boat and a skeleton specification must 
accompany each design. 
The design must be modern in every particular, with- 
out containing any extreme or abnormal features. We 
wish to produce an able, safe, and comfortable cruising 
boat, one that will have ample accommodations, so that 
the owner and his wife and two guests, or three or four 
men, can live aboard, and one that can easily be managed 
at all times by two or three paid hands in addition to the 
steward. The draft is restricted to 4ft. in order that the 
boat may have access to nearly all harbors, canals and rivers 
North and South, and may thereby widely increase the 
cruising field. We have in mind a boat that can be used 
North in the summer and South in the winter, and a 
craft well able to withstand outside passage along the 
coast in all seasons of the year. 
Special attention must be given to the cabin arrange- 
ment. The interiors should be original, but devoid of any 
impractical features. Arrangements snould be made for 
a direct passage forward and aft without going on deck. 
Drawings Required. 
I. Sheer plan. Scale, J^in.=ift. 
II. Half breadth plan. Scale, ^in.=ift 
III. Body plan. Scale, ^in.=ift. 
IV. Cabin plan and inboard profile and at least one 
cross-section. Scale, ^in.^ift. 
V. Outboard profile. Scale, ^in.=ift. 
The drawings should be carefully made and lettered; 
all drawings should be preferably on tracing cloth or 
white paper, in black ink. No colored inks or pigments 
should be used. 
The drawings must bear a nom de plume only, and no 
indication must be given of the identity of the designer. 
In a sealed envelope, however, the designer must inclose 
his name and address, together with his nom de plume. 
All designs must be received at the office of the Forest 
and Stream Publishing Company, 346 Broadway, New 
York, not later than February 3, 1905. All drawings will 
be returned. Return postage should accompany each. 
The Forest and Stream reserves the right to publish 
any or all the designs. 
