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FOREST AND STREAM 
November, 1920 
THE EXTINCT AU SABLE 
GRAYLING 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
T HE publication in Forest and 
Stream of the article by the late L. 
D Norris on the Michigan grayling is 
like the unearthing of an extinct fossil 
creature. For 15 years I have owned a 
summer home on the Au Sable near the 
mouth of the South Branch, and I never 
saw a grayling. Every old guide and 
fisherman is full of tales about them, 
their beauty, their great numbers, their 
lovable qualities. My father-in-law, Mr. 
Charles D. Joslyn, has told me of two 
men in the seventies killing 2,000 gray- 
ling in one week on the Au Sable. But 
no one has seen a specimen of this fish 
in that wonderful stream in a good many 
years. In the early days there were no 
brook trout in the Au Sable. They were 
planted there, and in a few years there 
were myriads of them. Then there were 
no more small grayling seen, and the 
large ones were caught out of the river. 
By 1893 the brook trout were so thick in 
the Au Sable that when a Chicago man 
offered 10 cents each for live brook trout 
for the World’s Fair, a man named 
Knight, as he himself has told me, used 
to fish with five flies on a leader, and not 
bother to retrieve single fish at all, but 
only double and triple drags and he sent 
5 000 live brook trout to Chicago. For 
>tars there w r as an eight-inch limit on 
trout, and at that the catches were large. 
Then the rainbow trout was intro- 
duced, and later the German brown. For 
the last few years there has been a 
hatchery at Grayling. Now the brookers 
are scarce. During the war the powder 
factories polluted the water with chemi- 
cals at Grayling. The business of mak- 
ing a living for many people has prohibit- 
ed any fishing for me for some years. 
Like Abraham Lincoln’s ginger-cake, I 
don’t suppose there is anyone who likes 
it so well and who gets so little. But 
my wife and children spend every sum- 
mer on the Au Sable, and my wife, who 
is one of the best fly-fishermen in Michi- 
gan, writes me that she gets about ten 
German browns and rainbows for every 
brooker she puts into the crate. So the 
cycle of fish life revolves, and so one 
guest crowds out another. 
Doubtless God might have made a bet- 
ter home for game fish than the Au 
Sable, but doubtless God never did. 
Spring-fed, clear as the River of Life 
itself, never rising or falling much, the 
river is ideal, and the fish need only to 
be half protected, to remain a joy to 
our children’s children; and as has been 
repeatedly proven, the water can be 
quickly restocked. 
The trees that line the banks fall in 
and form natural hiding places. For 
years there was a summer cottager just 
above me who was a perfect curse to the 
river, for he spent his time clearing out 
the logs and brush along the edges, so 
that he could cast without getting his 
fly caught in the bushes. He wanted the 
river to look like a canal. I bought three 
miles of riparian land to keep him from 
trespassing, but he vandalized just the 
same. Now he comes no more, for which 
praise God from whom all blessings flow. 
Give the river a chance, and it will take 
care of itself. Crawford county, in 
which there are 50 miles of the Au Sable, 
is very sparsely settled. Innumerable 
creeks make splendid nurseries for the 
little fish. Thousands of canoeists run 
the river from Grayling down every sum- 
mer, but they do not get many fish per 
man. The casting is too difficult among 
the branches that overhang the stream. 
The rainbows and German browns grow 
to be as big and domineering as a re- 
form governor. But the days of the good 
little brooker, about nine or ten inches 
long, are pretty nearly done for, and the 
last man who ever saw a grayling there 
will, in a few years, be as dead as the 
elk that used to roam those sand-hills, 
or as the little gray fish with the big 
dorsal that first gave the river its fa- 
mous reputation. 
Fred Irland, Washington, D. C. 
TWO-HEADED SNAKE 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
A FEW days ago I met on the streets 
a friend of mine, Mr. Burton, and 
he said: “I have something at my house 
that will interest you.” This “some- 
thing” was a two-headed snake. 
The facts are as follows: Burton was 
up at Pender Island, some twenty miles 
north of here, on one of his many field 
trips, to study and observe. He met a 
lady there who said she had a two-head- 
ed snake. Burton went at once and ex- 
amined it and found it had only been 
killed a very short time. The lady had 
caught it alive and consulted with a male 
acquaintanec as to the best disposal of 
the snake. This fellow foolishly told her 
to kill it and put it in preserving fluid, 
which she did. 
The snake is about seven inches in 
length and the two heads are of the same 
size and perfect in every way. Burton 
states that when he examined it first, the 
heads had quite an inclination outwards, 
and separate necks distinctly visible. 
Later, after being in the preserving fluid 
(which was some crude stuff at first) 
the necks had contracted and the heads 
were lying side by side, and the whole 
snake was very soft and flabby, and very 
difficult to handle at all. 
Burton says that when he found the 
snake had been caught alive and then 
killed he nearly cried. Think of what 
great interest the live snake would have 
been, to have observed its manner of feed- 
ing, progression and general behaviour. 
I thought the incident would be of in- 
terest to you and to hear from some read- 
er who is learned on snakes concerning it. 
The snake is the common garter snake. 
I may add that Mr. Burton spends a 
large part of his time in the open ob- 
serving and studying animal nature, and 
is a particularly well-trained and accu- 
rate observer. He is an authority on 
British Columbia birds and has a very 
valuable collection of eggs. 
J. H. McIlree, Victoria, B. C. 
MURDER OF BLACK BASS 
To the Editor of Forest and Stream: 
QN Sunday, August 22, 1920, Mr. E. J, 
N-' Howard and the writer went to Can- 
ton, Missouri, rented a fisherman’s boat 
and rowed to the dike on the Illinois side, 
arriving there at 8:00 o’clock of as per- 
fect a bass morning as ever dawned; just 
enough air to ruffle the surface; just 
enough “snap” in the air to put fight in 
the bass. The dike was constructed of 
rock and willows to deflect the current 
into the main channel and extends from 
the Illinois side to an island in the cen- 
ter. It is very popular with sportsme* 
within a radius of fifty miles, and has 
been the one sure place for miles upon 
miles of river where one could feel rea- 
sonably sure of getting the beloved fight- 
ing fish. 
The water pouring over the dike at the 
breaks was just the right depth. We 
fished almost continuously all day, over 
every inch of water using a wide variety 
of lures, with both fly and casting rods 
and landed one bass. 
At ten in the morning Mr. Howard 
found where an enormous quantity of 
dead gars had been dumped on the sand. 
Their eyes indicated that they had been 
placed there early in the morning. He 
suggested that in view of the fact that 
although the day and water were so 
perfect, yet the bass did not strike, that 
some one had been in there with a tram- 
mel net, dumping the gars on the sand. 
When we returned the boat to the fisher- 
man he toldrns we could buy some black 
bass from the local fish company and led 
the way to their cleaning and storage 
shed where we saw one large ice box 
