338 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
the mouth of Black Brook we separated, and in different di- 
rections penetrated the flooded woods in search of ducks. For 
b quiet half hour I proceeded through alternate patches of 
meadow aDd wooded freshet, then debouched upon a broad 
expanse of shallow, wind-ruflled water, coruscant in the 
bright sun. In the dim distance I spied the figure of a soli- 
tary duck under the lee of a reedy point With single pad- 
dle I approached. The distance narrowed to some fifty yards, 
a charge of No. 6 did the work, and I had the satisfaction of 
boating a dusky duck. 8ome twenty minutes later a pin tail 
passed on wing, and I heard quacks just ahead. Noiselessly I 
moved forward. Suddenly a pair of mallards flushed scarce 
twenty yards away. Both barrels spoke. The first bird 
dropped dead. The second towered high in air, then, setting 
his wings, shot with the speed of light to water. Both were 
dead when I retrieved them. After two ineffectual shots at 
long range, I joined Fred on the river. lie had been as for- 
tunate as myself, having secured one black and two wood- 
ducks. 
_Our little diversion over, we paddled hard, passing Colom- 
bia, Hanover and Swinefield, and reaching a known camp- 
Bile at dusk. The canoes again provided us with couch and 
shelter, and we spent the night in refreshing sleep. 
The first peep of dawn found our camp fire alight and 
breakfast in preparation. The sun had not yet put in an ap 
pearance when we left the bank. About seven o'clock we 
passed Pine Brook. The sudden appearance of two canoes 
at his very elbow rather astonished un old duck-shooter en 
Bconced on a reedy island. At noon we partook of a good 
dinner, garnished with apples from a neighboring orchard. 
During the afternoon we fired several shots, bagging a black 
•duck, a teal, an owl, four snipe, and a dozen of blackbirds 
At six o'clock we encamped at Little Falls. After a hot sup- 
per we lay down on our blankets, feet to the fire, and slept, 
first agreeing that we should move on at the rising of the 
moon. Shortly after eleven, Fred awoke me, and twenty 
minutes later we were afloat. A moonlight paddle of some 
seven miles and we passed through sleeping Paterson. Then 
a long, monotonous stretch of canal seemed to mock our sleepy 
efforts to put its weary miles behind us. At last we arrived 
at 8tonehouse Plane and portaged to its foot. At daylight we 
had just cleared from Bloomfield lock. At seven o'clock we 
carried from the canal to a pond. A few minutes of paddling 
and we drew out for the last time at the house of a friend. 
Depositing the canoes in his barn, we shouldered our guns 
aad game and proceeded homeward. Satisfied with the trip, 
we undoubtedly were ; but could we have had cloudless skies 
and favoring, gentle breezes, instead of beating rain and 
northerly gales, the pleasure of the excursion would certainly 
have been greatly enhanced. Magua. 
Tboptino in the Boardman River, Michigan.— A Grand 
Rapids correspondent, H. B- W., relates the experiences of 
himself and a friend, who put a skiff into the Boardman 
River about eight miles below Kalkaska, early last June, and 
fished down toward Traverse City. The first morning they 
took 33 trout to one rod and 44 to another, and the like suc- 
cess continued throughout. The first portion of the route 
was much obstructed by fallen timber, but the fish were in 
great abundance, rising to the fly readily, so that it took no 
effort to kill them. Many large fish were taken with angle 
worms and flies. On the morning of the second day the tim- 
ber completely barricaded their farther passage by boat, and 
so they abandoned her. They found the stream filled with a 
mass of felled timber for several miles ; nevertheless they 
found many eligible fishing places. At one place where the 
water had been set back by a heaver dam, the pond seemed 
alive with trout jumping at flies, snd they took two and even 
three fish at a cast. In one pool a trout was caught which 
measured inches, and in another a single rod took 10 
fish in as many minutes. "We conclude our correspondent's 
narrative in his own words : 
Having decided to reach the R. R. at Mayfield that day, 
and being in an unknown country and wilderness, we took 
our course by the compass and traveled along steadily, passing 
many beautiful 6mall lakes abounding in pickerel and bass, 
and the woodB with deer. By noon we looked down the 
Valley of the Boardman four or five miles, and saw a clearing 
which we concluded must be where the Traverse State road ; 
crossed the river, and hastened on toward the first sign of 
civilization we had seen since leaving Kalkaska. At one 
o’clock we reached the house we had seen, and, after par- 
taking of a hearty dinner, including desert of strawberries 
and cream, we again entered the 6tream and fished down to 
Mayfield. Here we stopped with Mr. Dowdy, a genuine 
sportsman, who keeps a comfortable hotel for the convenience 
of those wishing to spend their time fn fishing and hunting in 
season, and who is not only thoroughly posted regarding the 
best localities for trout, bass and pickerel fishing, but who 
keeps a full kennel of deer and foxhounds, and knows where 
they can be used within an hour’s tramp. When we made 
our appearance in the evening he was taking care of a large 
bearskin that had been worn by old bruin only the day before 
Mr. Dowdy at once gave directions to have our trout taken 
care of and packed in ice and have them in readiness for the 
next morning's express to send them to our homes. The next 
morning we took the train for home. We often think of that 
trip and promise to again visit the Boardman River this 
summer, but not go as far up as we did las; year. 
wand Rapid*, Midi. jj. jj yy 
Report of the Fish Commissioners of New 
Hampshire, June Session, 1878. 
T HE Fish Commission reports are changing in character. 
For a series of years we have had statements of the 
work done in different States. Now, pages of these valuable 
aad interesting public documents are being filled with reports 
of the rich results of these labors. The time of sowing and 
waiting has given place to the happy harvest home, and as 
we have ever expressed our interest in the work as it pro- 
ceeded, we now take especial pleasure in adding our compli- 
ments and congratulations to those States which are receiving 
the benefit of intelligent activity in this division of their 
economic interests. 
The appearance of the salmon in the Merrimack, the Con- 
necticut, the Housatonic, the Delaware, the Susquehanna, 
the Hudson and the Mississippi, are facts full of significance, 
and, as we have before remarked, the most effective possible 
arguments for the increased united efforts of State and Gov 
ernment fish-culturlsts. 
In the gratification at Ibis general promise of effort reward 
ed, the New Hampshire Commissioners have every reason to 
participate, and it is therefore with great pleasure that they 
herald in this last report the return of salmon to the Merri- 
mack. The long-needed and finally accomplished alterations 
in the Lawrence (Mass.) Fishway have allowed the unob- 
structed ascent of these fish, and they have been seen in the 
upper waters of the Merrimack and in the Pemigewassett in 
large numbers. This event has already been recorded in this 
journal, and was referred to not long since in the abstract of 
the Massachusetts Report, where the observations of the Su- 
perintendent of the Lawrence Fishway in May, June and 
July, and the subsequent observations of other parties, con- 
firmed the passage of these fish in quantities sufficient to in 
sure their regular appearance in the future. 
As to other fish, the commissioners have procured during 
the past season from the Holyoke, Mass., hatchery, 200,000 
young shad, which were evenly divided between the Winne- 
pesaukee River at Tilton, and the Coutoocook at Contoocook- 
ville. Of California salmon 100,000 eggs were hatched at 
Livermore Falls, and distributed to Baker's, Contoocook and 
Pemigewassett rivers. Twenty thousand land locked salmon 
eggs, 15,000 Range-lev Lake trout and 5,000 California trout 
were hatched for the State at the Massachusetts Hatch- 
ing House, aud have been distributed to the waters be6t 
adapted to thfir growth. A large number of ponds have beeu 
stocked with black bass, and the report states that these fish 
are distributing themselves much faster than the efforts of the 
Commissioners could accomplish it. Apropos of the pugnaci- 
ty of this fish wo extract a page of the report : 
“ The writer of this report spent the first week in March at 
Fishkill Landing, on the Hudson River, where he made the 
acquaintance of Mr. W. G. Van Buskirk, the master mechanic 
of the Dutchess & Columbia railroad, who has paid a great 
deal of attention to the habits of the bass and who fully con- 
firms our previous ideas as to their voracity and pugnacity. 
Mr. Van Buskirk told the writer that he had repeatedly seen 
them ‘drive’ pickerel of twice their size, and says they will 
whip any fish of their weight that swims. 
“ He al6o stated, that, to the best of his knowledge, the 
female bass would not take the hook during the spawning 
season, and said he had himself experimented on them by 
tempting a large bass, who was hovering over her spawning- 
bed, successively with live bait aud grub-worms, the only re- 
sult being that the bass took the bait gently in her mouth and 
carried it outside of the nest, where she dropped it. He then 
dropped a bare hook and sinker into the nest, and she quietly 
took up the sinker and carried them out and dropped them as 
before. 
‘‘He stated that the bass attacked the pickerel by cutting 
their throats, a statement which is in some measure confirmed 
by the observation of a son of the writer, who, while boating 
on Connecticut River last summer, in the neighborhood of a 
long, rocky ledge which forms the Vermont bank for some 
distance and seems to be a favorite haunt of the bass, saw 
two quite good sized pike floating down stream with their 
throats torn open by some unknown enemy. It may not be 
generally known that the Connecticut River has been stocked 
to some extent, for a long time, with the Lake Champlain 
pike, or northern pickerel (not the muskalonge), which es- 
caped from a pond at Northfield, Vt., stocked by the late Gov. 
Paine, in a heavy freshet in 1840 ; and these fish have been 
caught in the eddy below the fall at Bellows Falls, weighing 
as high as seventeen pounds. These pike bad, to a great ex- 
tent, exterminated all the smaller fish in the river, but have 
now got to contest their claim to sovereignty of the waters 
with the bass, whose accidental advent is so far desirable, 
though it remains to be seen what the result will be when we 
succeed in getting salmon and shad again into the upper 
waters of the Connecticut.” 
The New Hampshire Commissioners refer to the favorable 
character of the various reports of different States and Terri- 
tories (of which twenty-seven are now engaged in this work) 
as generally encouraging, Forest and Stbeam and Rod and 
Gon being more than once cited, as indeed it is in nearly every 
report now upon our table. 
H<tiurnl fjis/orrj. 
THE RED SNAPPER. 
One Million Per Day. — Advices from Washington, May 
31, say that over 1,000,000 shad eggs are hatched at Havre 
de Grace, M<L, daily. These eggs are shipped each night to 
streams in the South and Southwest and Missouri. Professor 
Baird says that twelve to fifteen million of young shad will 
have been distributed before the season closes. The salmon 
hatching season begins at the end of July. 
Virginia.— Five hundred thousand shad fry are to be placed 
in the Iiivanna at Charlottesville, and in the south branch of 
the Shenandoah at Waynesboro. At Tabago Bay, on the 
Rappahannock, the agent has had very fair success. He has 
already hatched 1,200,000 6had, and is still at work— the cold 
weather in May prolonging the spawning season. 
Tennessee.— Fifty thousand shad have been put into a 
stream near Huntington. A singular fact in connection with 
the sba I taken in the Cumberland River is that out of the 
thirteen or fourteen fish examined by the State Fish Commis- 
sioner not one was found to have any eggs in them . 
Mississippi.— One hundred thousand shad have been de- 
posited in the Pascagoula River at Meridian. 
Wisconsin — Madison, Map 25.— Thirty-five thousand Mac- 
kinac trout have just been placed in Lake Kegousa, not far 
from this city. One hundred and fifty thousand lake trout 
were also placed in the Nashota lakes this week and the same 
number were shipped to Oconomowoc to be distributed in the 
email lakes in the vicinity. The fish were from the Milwau- 
kee hatching house. Rover. 
—We had the pleasure of a visit from B. F. Shaw, Esq., of 
Anamosa, Fish Commissioner of Iowa. Mr. Shaw is on his 
way to Havre de Grace, Maryland, to obtain shad for the 
waters of his State. We may state that the amount of work 
done by the Fish Commissioners of Iowa has been of the 
most remarkable character, and that they are most zealous in 
their labors. 
[Lutjanus Blackfordii — Goode and Bean.] 
[An interesting account of red snapper fishing on the east 
coast of Florida may be found in Forest and Stream for 
May 25, 1876 ; another article on snapper fishing in the Gulf 
of Mexico was published in the same paper for Aug. 30, 1877.] 
By a singular oversight the well-known red snapper of our 
Southern waters has never been described, and is without a 
scientific name. This is due to an erroneous identification of 
this species with an allied form occurring in the West Indies, 
the Lutjanus ayo , from which, however, it differs in severa. 
important respects. Its closest affinity is with the Lutjanus 
torridus, described by Professor Cope, from St. Kitts, which is 
separated clearly enough however from L. Blackfordii, though 
suspiciously similar to Professor Poey’s L. Oampcchanus. 
It is needless to describe at length the habits of this most 
beautiful fish. It is the most voracious and the pluckiest of 
the Southern fish, and is entitled to a prominent place on the 
list of American game fishes. It attains the weight of forty or 
fifty pounds, and by reason of its brilliant scarlet is the most 
conspicuous fish of our coast. I knew ninety of them to be 
caught in two hours by six men in April, 1878. This was on 
the snapper bank off the mouth of the St. Johns River, Fla., 
in about 13 fathoms of water. These fish weighed upon an 
average 20 pounds, and were sold at Moyport for $1 each, 
packed in ice and shipped to New York. 
The species is named in honor of Sir. E. G. Blackford, of 
New York City, a gentleman whose enthusiastic pursuit of 
natural history and public spirited support of all worthy en- 
terprises need no commendation in the columns of a New 
York newspaper, assuredly not in those of Forest and Stream. 
The U. 8. National Museum is indebted to him for many 
hundreds of specimens of rare fishes. The Fish Commission 
has found in him one of its staunchest friends. Ichtbylogy 
owes to him the addition of several species to the fauna of the, 
United States. 
A full account of this new species will soon be published. 
A brief synopsis of the differential characters is given here : 
Diagnosis.— A. Lutjanus with profile ascending from snout 
with slight concavity in front of eye, to origin of dorsal, thence 
in a long curve to base of caudal ; under profile much less 
arched. Upper and lower jaw of even extent. Height of 
body equal to length of head, least height of caudal peduncle 
equal to one-third the distance from snout to pectoral. Maxil- 
lary falling short of vertical from anterior margin of orbit the 
mandibular, of that from middle of orbit. Eye circular’- its 
diameter G to 7$ times in length of head. Distance of dorsal 
from snout 3 times length of snout. Longest dorsal ray equals 
first anal ray, which is from 2-3 »o G-7 of longest anal ray 
Pectoral inserted at 1-3, anal at 2-3 of the distance from snout 
to base of caudal rays. Caudal crescent shaped, its median 
rays 2-3 of external rays in length. Length of pectoral twice 
that of upper jaw. Distance of ventral from snout equals 
height of body, its length three times that of a second anal 
spine. Radial formula— D. X., 14 ; A, III., 9 ; C. x. 17 x. - 
P. L, 16; V. I., 5. Scales, 50 in longitudinal series, 8 above 
aDd 15 below the lateral line. Color, uniform scarlet, except 
the throat which is silvery. 
A Correction.— In writing in oar last issue about a load 
of red-snappers coming from Florida, we were made to say 
“the first ''instead of “the finest.” The Lutjanus blackfor- 
dii has been seen in the market for quite a number of years 
though without having had any scientific name given to it. ’ 
» — ■# « — 
DEER SINKING AND FLOATING. 
New Westminster, British Columbia, March 20, 1878. 
Editor Forest and Stream : 
In an answer in a late issue to one of your numerous corres- 
pondents, I see you attribute the sinking of the deer when 
shot in the water while In the red coat, and the floating of the 
deer when in the blue coat, to the condition of the animal, 
and not to the buoyancy of the hair. After a series of obser- 
vations and a good deal of inquiry, my experience is that the 
deer in the red coat sinks, while that in the blue coat floats 
without regard to the fatness or leanness of the animal in 
question, and in every case falling within my scope this has 
held good. 1 have seen deer shot while in the red coat sink 
like a stone, and when recovered have found them to have an 
inch of fat on the brisket, and others shot while in the blue 
and so lean as to be almost worthless as food, float like a 
cork. 
This subject has been of considerable interest to me, and 
I have formed the opinion, and hold to it, that the floating or 
sinking of the deer is due entirely to the greater buoyancy of 
the blue coat over the red ; and perhaps I have been in a posi- 
tion to better judge of this than many others. In the locality 
where I have been hunting for the past fifteen years, in ad- 
dition to what deer I have had a hand in killing or killed my- 
self, nearly all the deer secured by still hunting were killed 
in a tract traversed by a large mill flume and ditch, 
which was made the medium of transport, and the invariable 
custom when killing a deer was to make for this ditch, along,- 
side of which was the only path or trail leading out of the 
woods. H the deer was in the blue coat it was thrown in the 
ditch and floated to the mill. The hunter, walking aloDg tbe 
trail, was thus saved from the labor of carrying his game, and 
it made no matter whether the deer was fat or lean, entrails 
in or out, if in the blue coat it floated, but if in the red the 
converse was the case, and if put into the ditch it sank to the 
bottom. 
The hair is much longer and more of it on the deer while in 
the blue coat, and as the hairs are hollow inclosing a certain 
amount of air resembling in a small degree the tube of a 
feather, it follows as a natural consequence that the longer 
these tubes are and the greater their number, so in proportion 
