80 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July is, 1905. 
following table gives the average size of the carapace 
and the weight of the young; 
Breadth 
in centi- Weight in 
meters. grams. 
2.5 
4.2 23 
8.8 169 
10.6 300 
13.5 663 
16.1 760 
One of the most important questions in turtle farm- 
ing is that of food supply. The profit depends largely 
on whether a constant supply of healthful food can be 
obtained cheaply and abundantly. In the Hattori f^r™ 
chief dependence in this respect is laid on the ‘ shiofuki 
shell {Mactra veneriformis Deshayes) which occurs in 
enormous quantities in the Bay of Tokyo. These shells 
are crushed under a heavy millstone rolled in a long 
groove in which they are placed, as shown in Fig. 2, 
plate III. Other kinds of food given are any dried fish 
scraps, silkworm pupae, boiled wheat grains, etc. 
A curious part of the ecological relations of a turtle 
pond is this: It would be supposed that putting other 
animals in the same pond with the snapping turues 
would be detrimental to the welfare of the latter, but 
experience has proved just the contrary. It is now 
found best to put such fishes as carp and eels in the 
same ponds with the turtles. The reason, I am told, 
is that these fishes stir up mud and keep the water of 
the pond always turbid, and this is essential to the well- 
being of the turtles, as is proved when the messmates 
are taken out of the pond. Dirt and mud then settling 
down, and the water becoming clear and transparent, 
the turtles, which are extremely timid, will not go about 
searching for food, and thus very undesirable results 
are brought about. _ _ , . , ,, 
The business of turtle raising has thrived well. When 
I first became acquainted with the turtle farm, now 
over twenty years ago, it was a small affair with only 
a few small ponds, and the eggs hatched out in one year 
were, all told, not much oyer 1,000. Now the enter- 
prise embraces three establishments; (i) The original 
farm at Fukagawa, Tokyo, now enlarged to 7 acres; 
(2) the large farm at Maisaka, near Hamamatsu, prov- 
ince of Totomi, over 25 acres, whither the main part 
of the business has been transferred; and (3) the second 
farm in Fukagawa, about 2 acres in extent. These 
three establishments together will yield this year (1904) 
about 4,100 egg deposits, which means 82,000 eggs, 
counting 20 eggs to a deposit on an average. Probably 
70.000 young will be hatched from these, and de- 
ducting 10 per cent, loss before the third year, there 
will be about 60,000 “suppon” ready for the market 
ill three years. The turtles sold in a year in Osaka, 
Tokyo, Nagoya, and a few other towns weigh about 
2.000 kwan (= 16,500 pounds), and are worth about 
6.50 to 7.50 yen (i yen = $0.50) per kwan. . 
There are several minor turtle farms besides those 
mentioned above, but as they are all modeled after 
those under Mr. Hattori’s management, they need not 
be described further. 
Fly Fisherman ys. Sea Angler. 
It is interesting and often amusing to note the calm 
complacency with which the devotee of one kind of ang- 
ling asserts its superiority over all others, and I have 
often, when discussing such matters with one of my 
friends, been almost unable to keep a sober countenance 
when he, with a metaphorical hand-wave, brushed into 
contemptuous insignificance methods of recreation which 
have charmed some of the master minds of the world. 
“Salmon and trout angling,” exclaims _ a bass and 
squeteague fisherman, “not any in mine, if you please. 
I’ve tried them, and I give you my word, I never 
such a beastly time in my life. I was invited by a friend 
who had a salmon stream in Canada to come up and try 
my luck with him, and in a weak moment I accepted his 
invitation, got up an outfit, split bamboO' salmon rod, a 
150-yard oiled silk line, big reel, casting lines, fly book 
and flies that cost me all the way from $5 to $20_ a dozen 
and all fhe other accessories that are deemed indispen- 
sable, and we started for the north. 
“Well, my friend talked salmon, breathed salmon, and 
for aught I know, dreamed salmon from the moment we 
stepped on the train until we arrived at the river. Now, 
when I go fishing I like to take solid comfort; I go for 
recreation, for all the sport I can get out of it. I like to 
sit comfortably in my boat and take my bass or sque- 
teague in a quiet, gentlemanly way, and when the fish are 
not biting I can enjoy my cigar in peace and refresh my- 
self occasionally with a bottle of Bass’ ale or Milwaukee 
beer which repose comfortably in a box of pounded ice 
beneath my seat or in the cuddy. Yes, sir, that’s solid 
comfort. . 
“When we arrived at our first tentmg-place I was just 
simply fagged out, for we had come in on an old buck- 
board over the roughest road imaginable for a half dozen 
miles or so, and at the end of that road we had to take 
shank’s mare for a couple of miles through the woods; 
that was the roughest tramp I ever took in my life, and 
I never shall forget it. 
“All the way through the woods we were followed by 
an endless drove of mosquitoes. Now I thought I knew 
something about mosquitoes, for I made their acquaint- 
ance in Jersey many years ago, but all that I ever saw in 
that remarkable mosquito breeding ground were not a 
patch on those hungry brutes in Canada. 
“I had my rod case in one hand during that tramp and 
with the other I slapped and fought and rubbed and 
scratched, and though I killed hundreds, perhaps thou- 
sands, of the fiends they streamed out behind me in as 
many more thousands like the tail of a comet, and my 
friend assured me it wasn’t an extra good day for mos- 
quitoes at that. 
“By dint of perseverance and endurance I reached the 
camping place. Yes, it was a pretty enough spot, the tent 
having been pitched by the guides by the side of a large 
basin in the river which my friend called a pool, although 
it was not my idea of a pool, for the water seemed alive 
in every portion of it, moving around in it in all kinds of 
whirls and eddies. 
“Abovq it wer^ two or tbroe-cascade§ or whatever on? 
Length in 
centime- 
ters. 
Jtrst hatched 2.7 
First year 
Second year 16.6 
Third year 14 -o 
Fourth year 16-6 
Fifth year 1L6 
may please to call them, my friend said they were rapids, 
and I guess he was right, for the water came tumbling 
and roaring down over the rocks in a way that was de- 
cidedly rapid. 
“The place was picturesque all right, for on both sides 
of the river were huge, rocky cliffs which towered up 
higher and higher until they became veritable moun- 
tains. 
“It didn’t take my friend long to set up his rod and get 
his tackle ready, and while our men began to make prepa- 
rations to get supper, he went up to the head of the pool 
and began casting, while I sat down on a boulder nearby 
and watched him. I thought I wouldn’t fish that day but 
wait and see how it was done, for I hated, mortally, to 
have the guides know I was a tenderfoot. I had a feel- 
ing that the way I swore at the mosquitoes during that 
long tramp had not given them a very high opinion of 
me as a starter, for somehow those fellows have a way 
of sizing up a man in very short meter, and so I allowed 
I would not try to do much salmon fishing until I saw 
how the trick was done. There’s no mistake he handled 
that big rod with consummate skill, and he cast his fly 
all over the pool, which was seventy-five feet wide at 
least, just as easily as I could throw out a fiddler crab or 
menhaden bait for striped bass. 
“While I sat on that boulder watching my friend, and, 
I am free to confess envying the skill with which he 
handled his rod, I discovered an entirely new sensation. 
Now, discovering a new sensation is often a good thing. 
Old Nero tried it and lots of other duffers after him 
have tried it, and there’s a host of fellows in New York 
to-day who are actually aching to realize something new 
in this line, but a little of the kind I, had will go a con- 
demned long ways. 
“I had heard or read somewhere about black flies, but 
my entomological experiences had never before enabled 
me to make the acquaintance of those little insects; but 
when I sat down on the boulder I had an introduction to 
them which was far from formal. I felt a burning sen- 
sation behind my ears, on my neck, and on my forehead 
just below the rim of my hat. I say burning sensation, 
and preachers have told us about heaping coals of fire 
on one’s head, but I swear to you I felt as if some chap 
was rubbing live coals all over my head and face, and 
when I put up my hand to rub one of the burning places 
I found it was smeared with blood, the black flies had 
sampled by venous fluid, and no mistake. 
“I jumped up and began rubbing my face and neck 
with my handkerchief, and when I removed it it was 
thoroughly stained. Just then one of our men who had 
been watching my gyrations, approached me with a box 
of ointment in his hand which he advised me to rub on 
my face, neck and hands. 
“‘What it is?’ I inquired, looking at the box rather 
suspiciously. 
“ ‘It’s fly poison,’ he replied, ‘rub a lot of it on and 
they’ll not bite you any more; it’s made of tar, penny- 
royal and oil,’ he added. 
“Well, I smeared myself with that flamboyant smelling 
stuff, and the flies kept away from me; they couldn’t 
stand the odor, but I had to. To drown the smell I filled 
my pipe and lighted it, but I couldn’t quite overcome the 
perfume of the ‘fly pison.’ 
“I sat down again and watched my friend, for barring 
a greasy feeling on my hands I was, in a way, beginning 
to feel comfortable. Suddenly, as he was dragging his 
fly from a distant part of the pool, I saw his rod bend 
and then his big reel gave a shriek and I knew he had 
hooked a salmon, and a good fish it was, too, for it was 
soon leaping and cavorting around for all the world like 
a barracouta; the fish seemed to be in a dozen places at 
once, and in the air about as much as in the water. 
“My friend played him skillfully, and it was nearly a 
quarter of an hour before one of the guides, succeeded in 
gaffing it. It was as bright as silver, which showed it 
was ‘fresh run,’ as my friend said, whatever that meant, 
but it weighed only ten pounds. It didn’t seem to me 
nearly as strong as would be a bass,- kingfish or barra- 
couta of equal weight. We had some of that salmon for 
supper, and it was the real thing, and no mistake, alto- 
gether different from a salmon that has been kept on ice 
a month or two — such as we get in our markets. 
“That night I was lulled to sleep by the howling of 
mosquitoes in the tent, by the rush and roar of the 
rapids, and the hooting of a big owl in the trees nearby. 
I say lulled to sleep ; I should say I was kept from going 
to sleep a long time by these sounds. On the following 
morning I set up my rod, and rigged my tackle, attach- 
ing tO' my casting-line one of my handsomest and most 
costly flies, for I wanted to do- the liberal thing by the 
fish, and, selecting a favorable point, I began casting, 
imitating my friend in all his movements as well as I 
could, and I flatter myself I was rather an apt pupil, for 
I succeeded in placing my lure where I wanted to. Some- 
how I got the right drag and I thought I was getting 
on swimmingly, although I had not raised a fish. But 
if I was all right in my front casts, I wasn’t in my back 
ones, for the first thing I knew my fly was hitched high 
up in a tree and it was hitched so firmly I couldn’t pull 
it down without breaking my casting-line, which I dis- 
liked to do, and to free it I had to call one of our men 
who was preparing breakfast and he, to release my fly, 
was obliged to climb the tree. I will say right here that 
I kept one of our men busy climbing trees during the 
few days I was on the river. 
“Well, to make a short story of it, I didn’t kill a sal- 
mon; in fact, I din’t kill much of an3rthing in the fish 
line except a few measly sea trout, none of them over 
a pound in weight. 
“No, sir, no salmon or trout fishing in mine, if you 
please, give me the deep blue sea, where the mosquitoes, 
black flies and those other little fiends, the midges, 
cometh not, where there are no trees to bother one in 
his back-cast and where, when he hooks a fish, he has a 
chance to play it in, good, deep water, without being 
obliged to wade out to one’s armpits, or to race down a 
fiver chasing a salmon, stumbling over rocks and boul- 
ders and barking one’s shins every now and then by way 
of additional excitement. I don’t think there’s any com- 
parison between salt and fresh- water fishing, and give 
me the salt every time.” 
“But think of the deadly monotony of it,” replies the 
fly-fisherman, remonstratingly. 
^‘Monotony, nothing !” es:claime4 the other. “Whfrt i§ 
there monotonous about fishing for striped bass from the 
I'ocky ledges all along the coast, casting the bait far out 
into the boiling surf and fighting a fish that is game to 
the finish. I tell you a lo or is-pound bass gives just 
as good sport, yes, better than does a salmon of the same 
size. It’s true, he doesn’t leap like the other, but the 
barracouta does, and lots more of the fish which are 
found in the sea. Why, there’s nothing monotonous 
about still-fishing for bass and squeteague from a, 
boat, even, for one has the ocean all around him, a vast 
body of water which has ever varying moods and chang- 
ing conditions ; why, its color even is changing all the 
time ; there the lungs are filled with the purest ozone ever 
vouchsafed to man, and when the fish are biting freely 
the angler has all he wants to attend to. No, sir, I’m- 
a salt water fisherman every time, and I’m not alone in 
my devotion to the sport, by a long shot. Here, see what 
a celebrated English writer says about bass fishing,” _ he 
continues, taking a book from the shelves and opening 
it. “This is what Mr. G. A. Thring says about it: 
“ ‘Bass fishing has a decided fascination. It is most 
fascinating, perhaps, when indulged in from the rocks, 
but it is not unpleasant in a boat on a breezy day. There 
is another aspect in its favor. It is a healthy sport and 
one without many of the disadvantages of other pursuits. 
It needs nO' wading — a frequent cause of rheumatic 
troubles. It needs no rain and showers, dear to the soul 
of the trout and salmon fisher, but dangerous to his 
lungs. Bright sunshine, fresh sea air, and plenty of 
ozone are its chief associations. Truly, it is an ideal 
sport for the worn-out man of business and the jaded 
city hack.’ ” 
“That’s all right,” replies the fly-fisherman ; “while I 
admit that the striped bass Is a gamy fish well worth the 
following, I still deny that the ordinary run of salt water 
fishing from a boat begins to compare with the sport de- 
rived from the use of the fly, and your own author says 
so, too,” he exclaims, quoting from the book which the 
other had been reading, for this is what he maintains : 
“From a sportsman’s point of view sea fishing is gen- 
erally either wearisome or monotonous. It is wearisome 
to tack up and down all day with a line lazily dragging 
outside the boat, even though the day be fine and the air 
refreshing; it is monotonous when at last the right local- 
ity is found, to pull in the line incessantly with one or 
two fish attached to it every time. Indefinite slaughter 
is unpleasant and unworthy of the true sportsman.” 
“No, my friend,” he continues, closing the book, “give 
me my fly-rod on the wild mountain stream where even 
the water rushing over the rapids sends out a music sur- 
passing any that dear old Beethoven ever wrote. The 
ever-varying scenery, the picturesque hills, cliffs and 
ravines, the constantly changing moods of the perfume- 
laden forest, the flowers, the songs of woodland birds, 
and last and perhaps best of all, the capture of the beau- 
tiful trout with the feathered lure and delicate tackle. 
As you say, there is no comparison between the two, and, 
as for writers, I can quote dozens to your one. That 
grand and devout angler in his most entertaining book, 
‘I Go a-Fishing,’ says : 
“ ‘You must have quick ears to hear any sound when 
either C. or Dupont throw fifty feet of line on the lake, 
for they—use light rods, and there is an absolute perfec- 
tion of beauty in the curves described by their lines. Now 
and then the sharp rise and swirl of a trout may attract 
your attention for an instant as one or another strikes 
him, but go on thinking while we go on fishing. If, in- 
deed, you be an angler, join us and welcome, for then it 
is known to you that no man is in perfect condition to 
enjoy scenery unless he has a fly-rod in his hand and a 
fly-book in his pocket.’ 
“As for the poetry of fly-fishing, here is what F. E. 
Pond says in ‘Fishing With the Fly’ : 
“ ‘It has been said that the angler, like the poet, is 
born, not made. The genuine angler is almost invariably 
a poet, although he may not be a jingler of rhymes — a 
ballad-monger. Though, perhaps, lacking the art of ver- 
sification, his whole life is in itself a well-rounded poem, 
and he never misses the opportunity to cast his lines in 
pleasant places.’ 
“And here is what Dr. J. A. Henshall says in the same 
book : ‘The charms of fly-fishing have been sung in song 
and story from time immemorial by the poetically gifted 
devotees of the gentle art, who have embalmed the mem- 
ory of its aesthetic features in the living green of grace- 
ful ferns, and the sweet-scented flowers of dell and 
dingle, and in the liquid music of purling streams. The 
fly-fisher is a lover of nature, pure and simple, and has a 
true and just appreciation of his poetic side, though he 
may lack the artist’s skill to limm her beauties or a poet’s 
genius to describe them.’ 
“Why, man, there’s a whole' library that supports me 
in my views,” continues the fly-fisherman ; “here is what 
David Foster, the author of the ‘'Scientific Angler,’ says; 
‘The roving disciple of the rod w'anders up to the head 
of the river, into the heart of the mountains, sometimes 
cheered by the pleasant converse of a few true men 
and honest anglers like himself; often alone with nature 
in her fairest or wildest loveliness. Solitary or social, 
his appreciation of all the sweet charms of wild nature is 
keen and lively.’ 
“And here is an extract from a letter lately received 
from an old angler who knows as much about fish and 
fishing as any other man: ‘For real enjoyment give me 
the stream well stocked with trout from one-half to two 
pounds in weight, along the banks of which I can pursue 
the sport with light tackle and small flies ; every turn of 
the stream displaying a different picture ; here a foamy 
rapid, there a long, quiet reach, broken only by boulders 
near which lie the big fellows whose capture depends 
largely on my knowledge of their habits, my judgment as 
to their taste in flies, and my skill with rod and reel.’” 
Now, both fly-fisherman and sea-angler are right each 
from his own point of view; while it is true that fishing 
with the fly on forest lake and mountain stream appeals 
more strongly to all that is aesthetic in our n.atures, the 
man who casts his lure on the bosom of the mighty ocean 
finds in many ways as keen enjoyment as does the other. 
All men are not constituted alike, and it is fortunate that 
this is the case, for were it otherwise the world would 
be monotonous, indeed. 
To him who has the time and means at his disposal 
which will enable him to seek the princely salmon in the 
north, or qven th^ beautiful spotted trout whi^ in,** 
