Oct. 14, 1905I 
FOREST AND STREAM 
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many times Caught trout which had been hooked before. 
I remember a few years ago of a visiting friend, George 
‘ A. Hull, who fastened to a good-sized trout between 4 
and S pounds in weight, which broke away after being 
. played for some moments when about to be netted, Carry- 
ing off the hook and half of his leader. He estimated the 
I trout at a somewhat heaviei weight than it proved to be, 
and came in disappointed. In less than a quarter of an 
hour afterward I had this identical trout on my fly which 
i it had taken, and brought him successfully to net, verified 
i by the indisputable evidence of the particular lost fly and 
I parted leader. This did not show much memory, and 
it would shade the theory of Dr. Dunn that the primitive 
memory of anadromous fishes directed them to the par- 
S| ticular stream of their eaidy life, directed by the dermal 
Ij sense in its magnet polarization as the needle guides the 
Ij mariner to point of destination. 
i ! Your accomplished and interesting correspondent, A. 
H. Gouraud, in one of his articles published in your 
i paper last year, concerning the movements of shad to the 
I Connecticut River from Long Island Sound, approaching 
if the mouth of the river from the east, but did not reach 
{ the mouth by a direct course from the waters of the 
:f Sound, as the discharge from the river pursued a west- 
i erly course in its current, making a loop, so to say, and 
I the shad took their course up the current of the' river 
f waters, thereby occasioning a distance of a score of miles 
i more than would be required if the shad had gone direct. 
This loop course in the Sound had been clearly defined by 
the net fishermen. This would indicate that the current of 
the river was the guide for the shad to follow. Your 
^ correspondent also adds : “This fluvial characteristic 
ri may be due to distinctive mineral particles which retain 
i in solution far out at sea, may be revealed to the delicate 
perceptiveness of the fish, and so guide it from the deep 
1 1 to its bourn.” 
I would add to the mineral particles also the vegetable, 
I an important element, distinctly, and noticeable by fish. 
\ It is the following of these elements that guides the fish, 
>1 which may to an extent have an educated perception as 
|| well as of taste. I ha^•e frquently found tvhole fresh- 
water clams up to two inches and over in length in the 
! stomachs of trout, which are apparently easily digested, 
: having been scooped up from an appetizing eagerness 
I from the scent of the open clam. Also clay and earth 
balls in large trout, as large as ordinary marbles, which 
, have been taken in during the stirring up of the water 
I bottom in ground feeding. 
[ It is doubtful if salmon depart far in the sea, from the 
!• estuaries of their native streams, not beyond the reach of 
; its diffused water, which they readily follow up on ap- 
' proach of their propagating period from three to four 
years after their exit, as the salmon are not extensive, 
travelers, as indicated by the results of seining, and upon 
' the Pacific coast it is evident that they seldom depart 
more than a hundred miles from their streams, or that 
their principal habitats are at a greater depth than from 
100 to 150 fathoms. I could give pretty conclusive evi- 
dence of this from the observation I have made in this 
respect. 
The Pacific salmon have their respective streams, and 
at their season of streams ascending are generally dis- 
tinct from any of the other several varieties, although not 
entirely so, being accompanied occasionally by derelicts 
from a kindred family. 
I should consider it very improbable that a young- sal- 
mon conveyed from one of the St. Lawrence tributaries 
to an European stream wmuld ever find its way back to 
its native stream, ■■ as its connecting link would be lost, 
and should doubt the efficacy of its magnetic dermal sense 
to direct it there. It is possible that a salmon by its 
delicate perceptiveness may distinguish the diluted odor 
of its natal tributary in the general flow of its fresh-water 
stream, else why should its ascending course be sustained 
short of its objective point? It is not likely that any dis- 
tinct memory of its early association in the tributary 
where the, first year of its life was passed, and perhaps . 
two years, though the familiar .flow of its water may be , 
detected, and appeal to its motive in pushing on. 
Thomas Tod Stoddart, an English author fisherman, 
relates that while fishing on a stream with spawn-bait 
during the day, that at the close he caught several black- 
bellied trout not frequenting the stream, excepting in a 
muddy bottomed pond connecting, situated between two' 
and three miles below, w/hich had undoubtedly been at- 
tracted to follow' up the stream by the odor of the spawn- 
bait. 
My friend, Walter M. Brackett, the veteran salmon 
fisherman and distinguished fish painter, wdth whom for 
' nearly half a century I have compared fishing notes, is as 
strongly convinced as I am of the extraordinarily acute 
sense of smell possessed by the Salmo family, and relates ' 
in his own experience at his own Canadian sahuon 
stream, w'here he has never used any attraction other 
than a fly, of noting large numbers of salmon and trout 
as having been attracted and drawn up from considerable 
distances down stream, from a quantity of spawn being 
attached to the stern of a canoe fastened at the river 
bank above. 
In_my experience with trout in the Rangeley Lakes, ex- 
tending over many years, I have found that trout are 
divided up in various groups quite distinctly, and that 
such groups occupy certain localities apart from others 
during the greater part of the year. I speedily observed 
this early in my visitations during the winter, when for 
cight or ten _ years I made regular trips for fishing- 
through the ice. This sport, then allowable, may not be 
considered as of high form by skilled fishermen, but was 
of much relief and delight to me then, closely occupied in 
business, and its auxiliary enjoyments of skating, 'sled- 
ding, snow-shoeing and roughing w.'s no small part of 
such excursions. In these two weeus’ outings, accom- 
panied by a few' friends, it w'as our habit to divide tip, ' 
taking separate localities for setting lines with live bait. 
These localities would be a mile or two apart. At the 
close of the day as the different catches were laid out at 
camp and weighed, the distinctiveness of the groups w'cre 
very_ apparent, so much so, that if niixed up they could 
readily be separated again. The different groups would 
vary in size and w'eight according to length, and very 
perceptibly in colors. The excess of w'eight from one 
locality \vould varv largely from the minimum group. 
One locality 1 have in -viewq where the trout were always ' 
of a more brilliant hue than elsew'here, and averaged 
from I to 3 pounds. The most opposite locality wqs 
where the trout were long and very dark, and so sinuous 
that one of sixteen inches in length would weigh scarcely 
over a pound. I remember of catching one at this locality 
which was the longest trout I ever saw, thirty inches, 
which weighed but 6H pounds, w'hile from a photograph 
before me is a trout which weighed il pounds, and 
measured but twenty-eight inches in length, and another 
of 9^4 pounds measuring twenty-seven inches. 
After the ice disappears in the spring, and at the 
spawning season, these habitating trout leave their locali- 
ties more or less, but by no means lose their reckoning. 
Trout, if removed from their habitats and dropped in 
any parts of the lake, will speedily return home; of this 
I have had abundant evidence. This is especially evinced 
during the spawning season, when trout taken away from 
,a spawning bed will return with celerity. A particularly 
thin and slabby milter weighing about 2 pounds I pur- 
posely experimented with, by , carrying him off into the 
lake a mile before liberating him froni the towing car, 
and caught him at the first place again that evening. I 
liberated him the second time fully three miles away and 
found him the following morning at the old stand. One 
winter, while coming into camp, but three miles away, 
and stopping for lunch by the shore near a spawning bed 
well known to me for its handsome and plump trout, 
more beautiful than any in the lake that I have known 
of, and which until the lake was raised some ten or twelve 
feet, were annually there, I caught half a dozen trout 
from this place and brought them alive to camp in a box 
of water drawn on a hand sled ; their escape that night 
from a sunken car at camp three miles distant was acci- 
dental from a loose slat ; the next day I visited the first 
place, which I yearly was in the habit of doing; it was 
in the latter part of December, and there was some six 
inches of blue ice with a few inches of snow above it. It 
will be observed that some families of trout inhabit the 
spawning beds into January, and others commence spawn- 
ing as early even as August, and possibly earlier. The 
water at this spawning bed was scarcely three feet deep 
below the ice where some feeble springs emitted a slight 
current ; the bed was bright with white pebbles and sand, 
and a short time after opening a hole through the ice I 
watched the beautiful trout below returning after the dis- 
turbance, reclining upon a blanket with my head covered 
over by another, so I could readily observe the life below. 
Trout, however much disturbed at a spawning bed, and 
however thoroughlv driven away, will in a few moments 
return again. I recognized three of the trout which had 
escaped - the night before, which had returned in the 
night, fully three miles beneath the ice and snow ; they 
were distinctly marked in the following manner: The 
day before, when we halted for lunch, I had no tackle ; 
•Mr. Lawson Valentine, of New York, found he had in 
his valise half a dozen .small hooks attached to light guts 
with red silk. With twine for line and meat for bait, the 
six trout were caught, no hooks were lost, but three 
broke off by the. weak guts after the trout were on the 
ice, by their flopping about, and were left in the mouths 
of the trout to be after disengaged. I recaught two of 
these trout without difficulty. 
One may wonder at the quick return of these trout 
beneath the ice in the dark of the night, but it was com- 
paratively simple. The general movements of the Salmo 
family occur in the night as in ascending streams, how- 
ever tortuous or difficult, lying by in the daytime. Their 
feeding also is done principally after dark, when they are 
more daring and predatory, and they do not assume their 
full night vigorousness in the dusky twilight, nor by 
moonlight, but in the darker hours, when their boldness 
is conspicuous, and will take the fly of sombre color in 
preference to one of white. I have wondered with their 
night adaptiveness of sight how little their day shyness 
is indicated, when I have frequently had them in pur- 
suit of small fish, dash up within hand reach on flat rocks 
or the sandy beach where I have been sitting. 
The lake water appears uniform as does the sea to the 
casual observer, but there is a varying quality, and many 
currents in both. These qualities are not apparent to our 
coarser senses excepting in a very ordinary way, but the 
respiratory organs of the fish, the gills, etc., may be keenly 
sensitive to conditions of temperature an.d water admix- 
tures, even as our sense of smell detects the faint odor of 
smoke in the country fields or forest. The different quali- 
ties of water in this lake of six miles in length which I 
am now looking out upon, are quite apparent to my taste, 
and' I have often remarked the odor in drinking water 
fiom the sheltered coves, arising from vegetable matter; 
also in that taken from a forty or fifty-foot depth. 
Every stream or rivulet which empties into the lake 
has a distinctive taste, apart from the others, stamped 
and impregnated with the quality of the ground and 
foliage through which it makes way. 
The ice indicates perceptible to the eye the prominent 
instances in this respect; currents imperceptible to the 
eye are constantly moving in various directions, and are 
the directing signboards for the fish. 
The trout liberated from the car mentioned striking 
out into the lake followed the currents familiar to them 
in their flowing to their accustomed haunts without diffi- 
culty. 
Fishing frequently on the Pacific California coast in 
1892, off the Santa Cruz," Monterey and Carmillo bays, 
where I made forty excursions with fresh fish bait in the 
months of July and August, I caught some hundreds of 
salmon by trolling with a light steel rod and 600 feet of 
line. I observed the following features: That as schools 
of salmon comprising' many thousands came in from deep 
water following up the anchovies, sardines and squid, 
which came in for spawning, they would at certain 
periods, mostly all, disappear to be followed after a lull 
by other .schools. I, observed that the s'almpn would dis- 
appear a few day's after a rise of water from either the 
San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, mrnptying in the Bay 
of San Francisco, giving abundant salmon for the seining 
arid canning works upon the banks of the latter. By the 
San Francisco papers the noting of the salmon arrivals 
would be four or five days after their disappearance from 
the Monterey waters. 
The Japanese current known as the K%iro Siwo, the 
great current stream from the Yellow Sea, corresponding 
with the American Gulf Stream, pursues its way across 
the Pacific Ocean to the California coast, regulating the 
climate from California to. Alaska as does the. American 
Gulf Stream that of England, France and Iceland, pur- • 
sues its way north .some 300 or 400 mil?s -west of Qali- 
810 
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fornia until it reaches the long extending loop of the 
Aleutian Islands, which ends but a few hundred miles 
from the Asiatic coast. This loop of islands diverts the 
Japanese current inland and the stream curves in its 
route until it proceeds south along the Washington, 
Oregon and California coasts, and the remarkable feature 
is presented of two mighty streams but slightly apart, 
proceeding in opposite directions in greater volume than 
all the combined land rivers of the world could exhibit il 
united in one body. 
The speed of this mighty current south opposite the 
outlet of the Bay of San Francisco is estimated at be- 
tween thirty and forty miles per day of twenty-four 
hours. In this current pours the brackish and roiled 
waters of the bay. 
The .fresh water combining with the salt is quickly de- 
tected by the salmon a hundred miles below, and a gen- 
eral exodus of the salmon takes place, leaving but a few 
stragglers remaining. 
In three or four days after their departure the canners 
on the Sacramento River are abundantly supplied by 
seiners. 
Shortly afterwarc a fresh school came in which de- 
parted as those before after a few dayv following a fresh 
rise of the river waters, and appeared as in the first 
instance a few days after their departure at the usual 
seining localities. These instances occurring several 
times during my fishing period plainly indicated to m'e 
the result of the river freshets. No mistake could occur 
in the identity of the particular schools in disappearing; 
from the Monterey waters and appearing at the Sacra- 
mento River, as the same class of salmon known as the 
King or Chinook, although inhabiting the Columbia River 
several hundred miles north of the Bay of San Francisco, 
average about 22 pounds in weight, while those of the 
Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers average almost ex- 
actly 17 pounds, as shown by the average weights taken 
at each locality. 
No salmon-ascending rivers existing, between the two 
mentioned points would clearly indicate the identity of 
the Monterey and Sacramento River class. So on the 
salmon of the Pacific coast go to their spawning grounds? 
never to return to the refreshing sea again, or if by 
chance a few should be able to, their bruised condition 
and totally impaired digestive organs result in but a brief 
existence. No authentic instance is known of a river 
salmon’s survival on the Pacific coast. If any had been 
taken they would show their identity by their disfigured 
appearance, which has never been observed. 
In the ban:ier year of 1902 15,000,000 salmon were 
canned on the coast ; yet no serious diminution in num- 
bers has occurred, nor have the results of conducted 
hatcheries shown great success, despite the general 
opinion to the contrary. Therefore the great mass of 
salmon regularly taken may be assumed to be the progeny 
of those who sacrificed their lives for successors. 
That electrical elements are prominent features in the 
denizens of the sea and fresh water bodies, is clearly 
apparent and of undoubted efficient service, and may be a 
part of that element I have designated as scent, as a gen- 
eral sense which gives perceptiveness of fresh water in 
the sea, or of minerals and earth in solution from mag- 
netic qualities. This electric quality, or whatever we may 
choose to call it, we observe in freshly-caught fish which 
curl up and Imeak in cooking, giving a feature not ap- 
parent when fish have been kept a day or two. 
Eels display this element prominently, and also the 
bullhead or horn pout. The marine mammals may receive 
large benefits from it in their long passages in the sea. 
I am reminded of an account related to me by an 
English friend of a pet seal owned by some one he knew, 
who kept a lighthouse on the coast of England, which,- 
captured when a cub, was domesticated with the family, 
being fed and allow'ed the range of the kitchen on the 
ground floor, to which the seal had ready access. This 
seal would make its way daily dowm to the water and 
pass many hours in the element, securing more or less 
food, but alway.s -returned to its place in the kitchen at 
night. Blindness finally came on with age to the seal, but 
it continued its journeys to the sea but returned home 
as regularly as before. Complete blindness finally came to 
the seal, and fully fed by the househould, its visit, to the 
sea became less frequent. As old age came on, it caused 
annoyance by its peculiar cry for food, and lessened abil- 
ity to get about, so much so that the family accounted it 
something of a nuisance, and not wishing to kill it, ar- 
ranged with a fisherman to carry it well off some twenty 
miles away and drop it in the sea, expecting it would 
naturally die in that element. But it appeared the sec- 
ond day after at its accustomed place. Another effort 
was made to get rid of it by arranging with a sailing 
vessel to take it several hundred miles out at sea and 
then drop it in. This was done, and a number of days 
passed away without the seal. Six or seven days after, 
during the night, the kitchen maid, who slept adjoining 
the kitchen entrance, fancied she heard the plaintive call 
of the seal at the kitchen door, but being of a supersti- 
tious cast, and believing the call was from the Banshee or 
bad spirit, covered her head beneath the bed clothes. In 
the morning the emaciated body of the lifeless seal was 
found at the kitchen door. The story may be authentic 
or not, but I do not consider its truthfulness to have 
been impossible. 
The vegetable growth in the water, kelp, etc., and cur- 
rents were familiar to the seal, and sight would have been 
of little aid to it compared with following the perceptions 
of its other senses. 
Some naturalists have expressed the belief that fishes 
find their way to their spawning rivers or desired locali- 
ties in a direct course by the pointing of instinct, and 
that alone. This conclusion does not seem to be well 
evidenced or satisfactory. J. Parker Whitney. 
Medicine in the Woods, 
A FIRM of London chemists have devised a convenient 
way of putting up medicines in gelatine lamels. The.se 
lamels consist of thin, pliable sheets, subdivided into 
squares, each square containing an exact quantity of the 
medicine with which the sheet is impregnated. With a 
pair of scissors or a knife the required dose can be cut off. 
THE MANY-USE OIL 
Tfiis famous reel oil never gums. Substitutes will. fail you.— Arf-u, 
