4,51 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
1872.] 
dammed and screened, 'will serve. Almost every 
estuary furnishes a multitude of little bays that 
could be used as pounds for raising this fish. A 
bulkhead of stones or plank is made across the 
narrowest part, leaving a channel three or four 
feet wide for the water. The channel should be 
filled up to low- 
water mark, or a 
little above, and a 
screen made o f 
strong iron rods be 
put in the channel, 
as shown on p. 450. 
This screen consists 
of a frame of 2 x 3 
joists, three feet 
long and two feet 
high. The iron rods 
are five eighths of 
an inch in diameter, 
and the space be¬ 
tween them is three 
eighths of an inch. 
It is desirable that 
the water should be 
eight or ten feet 
deep in some parts 
of the pound, and 
that there should be 
a regular flow of the 
tide, both to admit 
food and to keep 
the water cool in 
summer. If the water is shoal, and the tide 
does not come in, the fish will suffer from 
heat, and some of them will die. If the water 
is kept fresh and cool, a large number of fish 
may be kept in a comparatively small inclosure. 
They may be fed with any kind of fish or 
fish offal, daily, or two or three times a week. 
Along the shore where the menhaden fishery 
is prosecuted, this fish makes the favorite food. 
Bass eat voraciously from May to October, and 
then go into winter quarters. They grow quite 
rapidly in these pounds if well fed, and growth 
is mainly a question of 
food. A four-pound 
bass will in three years 
reach the weight of 
eighteen pounds. Every 
one can see that this in¬ 
dustry must be exceed¬ 
ingly profitable in the 
shore towns, where there 
are the requisite facili¬ 
ties for making the in¬ 
closures and procuring 
the young bass and their 
food. There is not only 
the profit of the growth 
of the fish, but of the 
increase of price, which 
is not infrequently quad- 
ru, :ed in winter. The 
menhaden can be bought 
at the fish-works and 
from the boats for from 
one to two dollars a 
thousand, weighing from 
five hundred to a thou¬ 
sand pounds, according 
to condition. This cheap, 
unmerchantable fish is 
transmuted by the bass into a table luxury 
thatsclls readily in winter at twenty-five cents a 
pound. The business is not yet organized 
or transacted on a large scale, but enough 
has been done to demonstrate its feasibility. 
Nothing as yet has been done for the protection 
of this fish. It is hunted by all methods and at 
all seasons of the year, and its numbers are 
greatly reduced. There ought to be laws passed 
in all the sea-board States prohibiting its cap¬ 
ture in rivers during the spawning season—say 
from June 1st to July loth. If they could have 
STRIPED BASS. 
six weeks’ close time they would rapidly multiply 
and soon be restored to their former abundance. 
Trapping the Foz. 
The well-known Fox belongs to the genus 
Vulpes , of which there are several species, differ¬ 
ing but little in their habits and characteristics. 
The Red Fox of America (Vulpes fulvus) is 
the common fox of this country. This species 
is widely distributed, and in some localities quite 
numerous. The fox burrows in the ground, 
where the young are bom in early spring, 
some four to six in number. The remains of 
birds and animals killed by the mother-fox 
are often found scattered near the entrance. 
These burrows are seldom dug by the fox 
himself, his usual practice being to eject some 
unlucky woodchuck from its tenement, which 
is enlarged to a size that will admit his body. 
He is the cunning thief who makes such 
havoc among the inmates of the poultry-yard. 
In ancient times the Fox was represented in 
prose and poetry as a model of craft and cun¬ 
ning, and at the 
present day he fully 
sustains the reputa¬ 
tion for sagacity 
that was accorded 
to him of old. His 
sense of hearing is 
so acute, his sense 
of smell so delicate, 
that to take him 
in the hunt or catch 
him in a trap re¬ 
quires considerable 
skill and knowledge 
of his habits. So 
instinctively cau¬ 
tious is this animal 
that it is witli diffi¬ 
culty lie can be in¬ 
duced to approach 
a trap, even when 
baited with the 
choicest morsels. 
It is smell more than 
any other faculty 
which seems to 
guide him, and so 
excessively keen is this sense that he will detect 
the work of the human hand unless skillful 
efforts have been made to hide its presence. 
The method adopted by the most successful 
fox-hunters is to, set the trap in some spring or 
small rill, thus covering up or washing out with 
water the traces which are the occasion of so 
much caution on the part of this sagacious and 
highly-sensitive animal. Taking a hoe, the trap¬ 
per proceeds to some small stream, ascends it, 
walking in the water, to find a convenient place 
to commence his work. A place is selected as 
near as possible to where 
the fountain springs 
from the earth; it will be 
less liable to freeze on 
the approach of cold 
weather, and will be less 
affected by the rise and 
fall of water. With the 
hoe the banks of the 
stream are excavated, 
making a pool some four 
feet in diameter, and from 
three to five inches in 
depth. No more earth 
is removed in digging 
than is absolutely neces¬ 
sary ; all turfs and clods 
are pushed beneath the 
water, and the whole 
made to assume an ap¬ 
pearance as natural as 
possible. This pool is 
called by trappers “a 
bed.” If made several 
days before wanted for 
use, so much the better. 
Returning in the stream 
for a distance of five 
or six rods, in the same manner as the bed was 
approached, the trapper prepares for setting the 
trap. First the bait is carried between forked 
sticks, and placed in the center of the bed, a 
third part or more remaining above the surface 
of the water. The trap should have a small 
FOX-TRAP. 
