50 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 13, 1912. 
A New Aquarium in Philadelphia. 
Philadelphia has an aquarium after fifteen 
years’ unremitting effort on the part of a small 
band. The nucleus of a very large institution 
is now opened to the public, in Fairmount Park, 
in one of the buildings formerly occupied as the 
Fairmount Waterworks. 
An ordinance passed councils last March, au¬ 
thorizing the construction of an aquarium, and 
directing the o d turbines and pumps to be sold, 
and the money applied toward construction and 
maintenance. More than six months after the 
enactment of this measure, the then mayor of the 
city—John E. Reyburn—called in conference 
William E. Meehan, who had recently resigned 
as commissioner of fisheries. At the conclusion 
of the conference Mr. Meehan was requested to 
take in hand the construction of the work. 
There were no funds then available, although 
there would be shortly. There were a number 
of tanks given the city by the State—tanks that 
had been used for the Commonwealth’s display 
of fishes at the World’s Fair at St. Louis. The 
waterworks consisted of three buildings-—two 
pumping or machinery houses and one old man¬ 
sion. As the junk men who had purchased the 
machinery had not cleared the two first men¬ 
tioned buildings, so Mr. Meehan gave his atten¬ 
tion to the mansion, where there was a hall 
about fifty feet square. Having no money, he 
persuaded the Pennsylvania Fish and Game Pro¬ 
tective Association to guarantee the cost of the 
lumber, and he himself risked the putty, nails, 
glass and other materials. The City Bureau of 
Water furnished two mechanics, and the Bureau 
of the city proper two painters and two car¬ 
penters, and these were all the assistants. 
At the end of the month they had a staging 
erected around three sides of the room, and 
nineteen tanks set and framed in with lumber. 
These tanks were from four to five feet long, 
and in them were placed, on the 24th of Novem¬ 
ber, nineteen species of Pennsylvania fresh water 
fishes. Two large tanks, six feet long each, were 
set in the middle of the hall, and one of them 
devoted to alligators and terrapin, and the other 
to fancy breed of Japanese goldfish. 
The new institution, small as it was, was im¬ 
mediately received into public favor. Forty-six 
thousand people visited the new aquarium in De¬ 
cember. On Sundays the crowds are at times so 
large that the people are forced to get into line, 
reaching several hundreds of feet away from the 
door. The mayor has been overwhelmed with 
letters expressing satisfaction at the establish¬ 
ment of the aquarium, and urging its expansion 
at the earliest possible moment. 
Although still on a small scale, the aquarium 
is being continually added to, and from nineteen, 
the number of species on exhibition has increased 
to thirty, or more than one-half the number of 
fishes in Pennsylvania worth exhibiting. 
When the aquarium was opened to the public, 
Mr. Meehan, the former State fish commissioner, 
was appointed director by Mayor Reyburn, and 
Mr. Rudolph Blankenburg, immediately on his 
succeeding to the mayoralty in December, prompt¬ 
ly reappointed him. An ordinance is now pend¬ 
ing in councils to equip one of the two old 
pumping stations as a salt water aquarium. The 
building is no feet long and fifty feet wide, and 
will hold thirty-five tanks and four pools of 
large size. It is hoped to have the building com¬ 
pleted and in operation by June. A tentative 
contract has been placed for 300 fishes from 
Bermuda and Key West. As soon as that build¬ 
ing is completed and in operation, it is hoped 
to secure a supplementary appropriation so that 
the permanent fresh water aquarium may be 
ready for occupation by October. This building 
is 200 feet long, 50 wide, and has a capacity for 
seventy tanks and eight or nine pools, or 105 
tanks for the two buildings, about twenty more 
tanks and six more pools than the present capa¬ 
city of the New York aquarium. 
It is intended to retain the tanks in the old 
mansion, and build another above them with a 
gallery, and turn that building into an aquarium 
for minnows and small fishes, with a total capa¬ 
city of about fifty tanks. There is a second story 
to the mansion which it is intended to fit up as 
a goldfishes room, which it is hoped will be 
occupied .by the Philadelphia Aquarium Society 
as a permanent exhibit. Outside the building is 
a huge fore-bay, nearly 300 feet long and sixty 
feet wide, and this it is intended to transform 
into a great seal pool. This will be done the 
first thing in the spring, as councils has made 
an appropriation therefor. Bonifacius. 
Fishing in California. 
San Francisco, Cal., Jan. i. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: Anglers are paying attention to 
striped bass and steelheads, and some very sat¬ 
isfactory catches have been made. The striped 
bass have been difficult to locate, but some un¬ 
usually large ones have been taken. Mr. Mc¬ 
Cormick, of Napa, recently secured two in Napa 
Slough No. 2, weighing thirty and forty pounds 
respectively. Frank Anderson, of Vallejo, se¬ 
cured a thirty-three pounder off North Vallejo, 
and J. C. Wallace, of the San Francisco Striped 
Bass Club, landed a thirty-two pound bass in 
Schultz Slough. Wallace now has the distinc¬ 
tion of having landed the largest bass of the 
season secured by a member of the club. 
Striped bass fishing on the Russian River has 
been good. L. W. Andrews landed a forty-four 
pounder and a twenty-five pounder, and A. 
Simpson secured a thirty-five pounder. 
A run of silverside salmon is looked for. Two 
years ago a shipment of 20,000 fry was liberated 
in Lagunitas Creek, and it is now time, accord¬ 
ing to the accepted rule, for the fish to be re¬ 
turning. Some have been seen, but none has 
been taken. 
After action had been postponed for several 
weeks in the hopes that a heavy rainfall would 
make the work unnecessary, an artificial open¬ 
ing has been made in- the bar at the mouth of 
the Russian River. Already steelheads are mak¬ 
ing their appearance in streams further south. 
The habits of striped bass in California waters 
are still far from being understood, and this 
season several incidents have been noted that 
are out of the ordinary. Some time ago a fisher¬ 
man at Monterey noticed bass in large num¬ 
bers in the bay there and market fishermen 
made a big haul. After remaining for a few 
days, the big school of bass suddenly disap¬ 
peared, and not one has been taken since. The 
fishermen there declare that the fish must have 
come from the ocean, as there are no bass in 
the streams emptying into the Bay of Monterey. 
The season for taking salmon eggs has been 
closed for some time. At Redding the United 
States Government has taken twenty-seven mil¬ 
lion eggs this year. Seven million were secured 
at Baird, on the McCloud River; ten million 
at Mill Creek, and ten million at Battle Creek. 
The first lot of salmon eggs placed in the State 
hatchery near Sacramento were ruined by 
mineral salts used in the hatching troughs, but 
a second lot of 50,000 has been hatched suc¬ 
cessfully. The experiment will be made of 
liberating the fry on the lower stretches of the 
river instead of on the headwaters. 
W. H. Shebley, who for the past twenty years 
has had charge of the fish hatchery at Sisson, 
has been appointed general superintendent of 
State hatcheries. 
The securing of stranded fish in the San 
Joaquin Valley and the planting of these in the 
various streams of the State has been in charge 
of A. D. Ferguson, of the Fresno office, who 
estimates that 450,000 to 500,000 fish, mostly 
black bass, were saved by timely work. 
Golden Gate. 
A Finny Acrobat. 
Chattanooga, Tenn., Jan. 3. —Editor Forest 
and Stream: Early last spring a gentleman of 
this city brought me several small perch he and 
his little boys had caught in one of the small 
lakes in the neighborhood. I put them in an 
aquarium of about forty gallons capacity. At 
first they were very timid, running for cover 
on the approach of any one and eating nothing. 
After some days they would dart out and cap¬ 
ture a bit of worm and disappear like a flash. 
They finally became so tame that they wou’d 
come to the surface of the water and take food 
from the hand, showing a good deal of rivalry 
as to who should get the food first One day 
I had been catching flies for them, and in do¬ 
ing so mashed one so that it stuck to my finger. 
I was trying to shake it off, when one of the 
fish jumped some two inches and caught it from 
my hand. From that time I made them jump 
for what food they got. The first jumper whom 
I named “Jack,” soon outstripped all the others, 
finally reaching a point where he would jump 
fourteen inches out of the water and strike a 
fly about once in three jumps. Failure did not 
seem to discourage him at all. Robert Bruce 
was not in it for trying again. I then began 
holding a stick and holding food above the 
stick; when he would carefully measure the dis¬ 
tance and leap up, catch the food, and fall on 
the other side of the stick. After a while he 
would sometimes jump over the stick even when 
there was no food in sight. 
Frequently I would put food on a piece of 
floating plank for the turtles that occupied the 
aquarium with the fish. Jack would go up close 
to the plank and throw himself easily sidewise 
(Continued on page 64.) 
