68 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
ticularly, ducking grounds are in great demand, and the 
number of preserves has increased rapidly in recent years. 
In southern California, where suitable grounds are scarce, 
artificial ponds have been constructed and lands over- 
flowed in some cases to make conditions more attractive 
to the birds. . 
“The movement toward establishing State game refuges 
and p,,rks received added impetus in several Eastern 
States. In- Indiana the forest reserve at Henryville was 
stocked with Mongolian pheasants. In Minnesota some 
20,000 acres of land in St. Louis county north of Lake 
Superior were given to the State by act of Con- 
gress of April 28, 1904. This reservation, while primarily 
for experimental forestry, may in time become a forest, 
fish and game preserve. In New York the Legislature 
fixed the boundaries of the Catskill Park and set aside 
all lands now owned by the State within these limits. In 
pursuance of the policy of restocking the Adirondack 
Park, it made an appropriation of $500 for the purchase 
of beaver, and seven of these animals were obtained as a 
nucleus for future colonies. Better success is anticipated 
than in the case of the moose, which have already disap- 
peared, although liberated ®nly a year or two ago. The 
herd of twenty-two elk introduced in 1901 has increased 
to about 200. 
“Progress in the mtater of Federal game refuges was 
quite as marked as that in the case of State parks. On 
Pelican Island Reservation, Florida, established in 1903, 
conditions were unusual. The pelicans arrived at the 
reservation early in the season and began to nest on two 
sm^l flats adjoining the main island, but in February a 
storm destroyed many of the eggs and young, and the 
birds left the reservation early in the spring. In Novem- 
ber, however, they returned in considerable numbers and 
began nesting as usual on the main island, where they 
are guarded by a warden and are protected by the State 
law. A second small reservation comprising Breton, Old 
Harbor and Free Mason islands, off the coast of Louisi- 
ana near the mouth of the Mississippi River, was set 
aside by order of the President on Oct. 4, 1904, as a game 
refuge and breeding ground for birds. Large numbers of 
ducks resort to these islands in winter and certain spe- 
cies of terns breed there in spring and summer. A bill 
to create a game refuge in the Wichita Forest Reserve 
was favorably reported by the Committee on Public 
Lands of Congress and passed the House, of Representa- 
tives on Dec. 12. A few weeks later it passed the Senate, 
and on Jan. 24, 1905, became a law. This is the largest 
game refuge of the kind in the United States. When the 
general bill authorizing the President to establish game 
refuges which has been pending before Congress for two 
years or more is finally passed, similar refuges will un- 
doubtedly be established in other forest reserves in the 
West.” 
The California Bear Lingers* 
According to the newspapers, July 4 last was the 
hottest day experienced in San Francisco in thirty-four 
years. The hot wave got here from the Golden Gate 
yesterday, the thermometer reaching 120 degrees 
Fahrenheit at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. It declined 
rapidly after sun-down, however, and between mid- 
night and break-o’-day of this morning, it was neces- 
sary to cover with woolen blankets! That’s one beauty 
about this climate — no matter how hot it gets in the day 
time — the nights get so cool that refreshing sleep can 
always be indulged in, and one arises recuperated. 
Snow banks are in sight on the peaks 2,000 feet higher 
than the camp. Our Fourth of July lemonade was 
cooled by snow from one such a bank. And by the way 
consider a Fourth of July dinner in the high altitudes 
of the Sierra Nevadas, the menu of which included roast 
spring lamb, broiled mountain trout, boiled new po- 
tatoes, young onions, mulled claret, white straw- 
berries, ice cream, black coffee, Grenohle walnuts (Gal- 
ifornia grown), cigars! 
On Monday I started on a horseback trip to Gold 
Lake and Gold Valley, going by way of Gibraltar (note 
the nomenclature). Poker Flat, Deadwood, Solomon’s 
Temple, Monte Cristo, Fir Cap, etc. Most of this, 
is a high, wild, rough country where the bears count 
more in the population than do the human animals. 
I have lost no bear, however, and if any exciting ven- 
tures crop out from the trip, they will not be of my 
creation or seeking. 
Speaking of bears — that reminds me that that is about 
the only big game left in some large portions of Cali- 
fornia. In the past fifteen months I have traveled over 
a considerable area of Butte, Nevada, Plumas and 
Sierra counties, and what struck me most forcibly was 
the almost total absence of game except bear. Bear, 
if anything are getting more numerous, bruin being al- 
most common, while deer, once very plentiful in the 
ridges and ravines of the region named, are quite 
scarce. But of this I may write in more detail some 
time in the future. At present I am on a mineral 
campaign, but look forward on its completion, to a 
season on the beach, sniffing the briny breezes_ of the 
Pacific and subsisting on pompano, stuffed artichokes 
and alligator pears. That’s my dream of the future. 
[July 22, 1905. 
_ For the now, it is the strenuous life of the mountains 
(including encounters with woodticks, mosquitoes, 
fleas, gnats, buck-flies, etc.), with a big share of the 
simple life in the way of bacon and beans for susten- 
ance, because there will not be much time for hunt- 
ing or fishing before the autumnal equinoctial storms 
■drive me out of the mountains. Wm. Fitzmuggins. 
Propagating Qaail. 
Boston, July 16. — In a recent letter I spoke of the efforts 
■of Mr. Louis E. Morse, of North Attleboro, in breeding 
quail. He has considerately written me giving details. 
He hatched thirty-three chicks and raised ten to full- 
grown birds. Seven of these through carelessness es- 
caped. He made the mistake of putting broods of dif- 
ferent ages together and the older ones killed the younger 
ones. Thus fifteen of the thirty-three were lost other- 
wise than by natural death. He says he considers them 
very hard;^- birds and comparatively easy to raise. 
“If I can raise ten,” he says, “it proves it can be done.” 
He has turned over to the State the three birds he had 
left. Considering the fact that he was almost a green 
hand at it he thinks the result very encouraging, and ex- 
presses the hope that the State will some day be able to 
hatch all it needs to keep the covers well stocked. The 
wniter hopes he may hear from others who have facts 
touching the breeding of quail. • 
Mr. Morse writes that deer are quite plentiful in his 
section, as many as eight having been seen within a 
month. He had the pleasure of seeing a fawn two weeks 
ago, which stood for more than five minutes and watched 
the automobile go by on the State road. A short time 
ago a doe became entangled in a wire fence and was 
killed in Malden. A gentleman residing in West New- 
ton reports seeing a deer there recently. One has, in fact, 
been klled by a train within the limits of Boston. This 
occurred last week in West Roxbury. There is no ques- 
tion that deer are multiplying quite rapidly in all sec- 
tions of the State. 
Mr. George M. Poland, of Wakefield, tells me that a 
young man in his town a few days ago came upon a 
brood of ten young partridges within a short distance of 
the village. Many similar reports seem to indicate that 
this has been a very good breeding season and gives 
promise of a good number of partridges in the covers 
the coming fall. About the quail there is more uncer- 
tainty. There are, doubtless, more in the State than there 
were a year ago at this time from the fact last winter 
was less severe than that of 1903-4. No one, however, 
expects to find them numerous this season. Central. 
The Tarpon* 
Dr. Theodore Gill prints in the Smithsonian Miscel- 
laneous Collection, a paper on “The Tarpon and Lady- 
Fish and Their Relatives.” The family of Elopids, to 
which these belong, is, says Dr. Gill, one of the most_ re- 
markable of the families of fishes, yet comparatively little 
is known of the habits of any of the species. “Very much 
has been written about the tarpon, but most of it has 
been of a personal or subjective nature and not about 
the fish itself.” The family of the elopids has four living 
species, which belong to two very distinct groups, which 
are usually considered the only genera — Elops and Me- 
galops. The genus Elops contain two species, the wide- 
ranging Elops saurus, and the localized Elops lacerta, of 
the Congo and western Africa. 
“The Elops saurus is common in the open sea along 
the coast of the southern United States, and is best 
known as the ten-pounder, though it has received many 
other names. The accepted name was current at least as 
early as the seventeenth century, for Dampier, in his 
‘Voyages to the Bay of Cam.peachy,’ for i676_ records (p. 
71) ‘ten-pounders’ among the fishes (including tarpons, 
parricootas, etc.) he found in ‘the lagunes, creeks and 
fivers.’ ‘Ten-pounders,’ he adds, ‘are shaped like mullets, 
but are so full of very small stiff bones, intermixt with 
the flesh that you can hardly eat them.’ ” 
Of the genus Megalops two very distinct forms are 
known — so distinct indeed that they have been referred 
to different genera — the Megalops cyprinoides of the In- 
dian Ocean and northern Australia, and the Megalops 
atlanficus or celebrated tarpon of America. 
We quote Dr. Gill’s description of the tarpon: 
The tarpon {Megalops at’anticus) has an elongated 
fusiform shape; the forehead , slightly incurved (rather 
than straight) to the snout; the chin projects and is ob- 
liquely truncated; the dorsal (with twelve rays) is on 
the posterior half of the body, nearly midway between 
the ven'rals and anal ; its free m.argin is very sloping and 
incurved and its long hind ray reaches nearly to the ver- 
tical of the anal ; the anal (with tw^enty rays) is about 
twice as long as the dorsal and falciform; the caudal fin 
has a very wide V-sbaped emargination. The scales are 
in about forty-two oblique rows. It reaches a length of 
about six feet — sometimes more.- 
The oldest form of the name seems to have been 
tarpon; such is the guise it has in Dampier’s “Voyages Jo 
the Bay of Campeaehy” in 1675, and in Roman’s “Concise 
Natural History of Florida” (i 77 S)- Dampier found 
that “the fish which they take near the shore with their 
nets are snooks, dogfish and sometimes tarpon. The tar- 
pon,” he says, “is a large scaly fish, shaped much like a 
salmon, but somewhat flatter. ’Tis ot a dull silver color, 
with scales as big as a half-crown. A large tarpon will 
weigh 25 or 30 pounds. ’Tis good, sweet, wholesome meat, 
and the flesh solid and firm. In its belly you shall find 
two large scallops of fat, weighing two or three pounds 
each I never,” continues Dampier, “knew any taken with 
hook O’- hoe; but ?.re either wifti nets, or by striking them 
with harpoons, at which the Moskito-men are very ex- 
pert.” Such are the ideas of the fish gained by Dampier 
in its southern resorts. How different they are from 
those now prevalent in the United States will appear 
hereafter. 
The name in most general use is tarpon and this may 
be considered to be the literary and accepted phase. 
Tar punt was also an early form, but is now obsolete. 
Along the Texan coast Savanilla is still in general use, 
but is gradually being superseded by tarpon on account of 
the influence of anglers. The apt descriptive name 
Grande-ecaille (pronounced grandykye and meaning 
large-scale) was given by the French settlers of Louisiana. 
Other names of still more limited use are silver-fish 
(Pensacola), and jewfish (Georgia and parts of Florida). 
Jewfish it shares with many other fishes, and another fish 
of Florida, a gigantic Serranid, is better known by the 
term. Silver-king is a euphemistic designation. Caffum 
is a name current in the island of Barbados. 
The tarpon may be briefly defined as a littoral fish of 
warm American seas often entering into rivers and accli- 
mated in some inland lakes. 
The boating excursionist along some favored shore of 
Florida or Texas during the spring and summer months 
at least — perhaps during all but the winter months — may 
be startled by the sudden projection from the water of a 
silver-like mass, which, after describing a low arch, will 
splash into the water again at a distance of maybe twenty 
feet from the starting point; that mass is the tarpon, or 
the “silver-king.” Florida and Texas are the States in 
whose waters the fish is most frequently seen, because 
there most looked for, but its range extends far beyond 
those coasts in all directio-ns. In summer wanderers visit 
the north as far as Massachusetts, where large individuals 
of the “big-scale fish,” as they are there called, are 
“taken every year in traps at South Dartmouth” in the 
“latter part of September” ; southward they may be found 
in Brazil and sporadically in Argentina. Around all the 
islands of and in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico 
schools may be met with. Further, immigrants have 
found their way into ■ rivers that enter into the tropical 
seas, and the Lake of Nicaragua has long been famous 
as the home of the species. 
Being essentially a warm water fish, it is only in the 
warm months that the tarpon is to be found at its north- 
ern and southern limits. On the approach of cold weather 
it retires toward the tropics. Along the southern Flori- 
dian coasts some “appear in February, increasing rapidly 
in numbers in March, April and May” _; in Texas, _ “early 
in March.” At first they refuse the bait but “during the 
latter part of May and in June” bite freely. “About the 
first of December” they “disappear entirely” from the 
Texan waters. In the tropical seas they may be found 
always, and about Tampico, in Mexico, their “season is 
from Nov. i to April, the time wheij the tarpon prac- 
tically disappears from Florida and Texas.” 
The tarpon is sensitive to sudden changes of tempera- 
ture and especially to cold, and to such changes it is some- 
times subject ki its northern range During a cold wave 
which invaded Florida toward the end of January (26-27) 
1^5, according to a letter of E. J. Brown in Forest and 
Stream, “the tarpon especially were affected by the cold,” 
There were brought to “Lemon City between forty and ; 
fifty tarpon which had been so benumbed by the cold as 1 
to be easily speared by parties who were searching for ^ 
them.. The largest fish was in length seven feet. one and i 
three-quarters inches, girth thirty-nine and three-quarters ; 
inches, weight 194 pounds. Several others were nearly ■ 
this size. * * * The tarpon were salted, tO' be sent to ! 
Key West market, where there is a ready demand for 1 
them.” ' 
That the tarpon is a most active fish may be inferred : 
from its form, which is especially adapted for swift and 1 
enduring action. Its life is spent in the enjoyment of its . 
power and in pursuit of food ; a carnivorous fish, it preys i 
“eagerly upon schools of young fry, or any small fish that \ 
it is able to receive into its mouth, and in pursuit of 1 
which it ascends fresh water rivers quite a long distance.” ' 
The schools of mullets contribute largely to the great ‘ 
fish’s supply. Such it attacks by darting upon them and j 
generally seizing them tail foremost. Its frequent leaps y 
into the air, like those of the salmon, seem to be mostly 
in sportive manifestation of its intense vitality and not > 
for food or entirely from fear. C. F. Holder tells that 
one leaping tarpon “fell headlong” into a “boat, passing 
through the bottom”; that another leaped over man and 
boat; and that still another sprung up to the “deck of a ; 
steamer” and “fell headlong into a passenger’s lap.” Other ■ 
wonderful tales are told of the activity of the tarpon. 
According to Holder (at second hand from another), a ' 
fish made an “initial leap of twelve feet” and followed ■ 
this up “with six leaps all equally high.” The same ob- 
server believed that “the ordinary height a tarpon leaps “ 
is from seven to eight feet.” While leaping, its gill- , 
covers are frequently spread out and its blood-red gills 
visible. Withal it sometimes goes into very shallow 
water and seeks out a quiet nook in which it may rest, 
“perfectly stationary,” for quite a long time. 
The life history is very imperfectly known, but it does 
not appear to breed at any place along the continental 
coast of the United States, for none except large indi- 
viduals have been recorded from those places most re- 1 
sorted to by anglers. For a very long time one of 30 ■! 
pounds weight was the smallest obtained in Florida and ; 
one of II pounds in Texas. It apparently demands a ; 
temperature and conditions which the reef- forming coral ■ 
animals require and sheltered brackish or fresh water for : 
oviposition. In such localities about Porto Rico, in Feb- 
ruary, 1899, Evermann and Marsh found not eggs, but ' 
very young, and there “it evidently breeds.” Thirteen fry, 
“2.25 to 3.25 inches” long, were collected at Fajardo; at , 
Hucares, “in the corner of a mangrove s\yamp” in “a | 
small brackish pool of dark colored water,” “entirely : 
separated from the ocean by a narrow strip of land, four 
from 7.5 to 1 1.5 inches long were seined.” The smallest ! 
oreviously known was about nine inches long. All these. ; 
are probably the young of the first year. * 
The very young or will doutkless be found to be^ 
* 
t 
