130 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 26, 1907. 
Henry watched the hatching fly a minute, and 
then remarked, “Perhaps it is a buff cochin, 
but it don’t seem to me as if it was very well 
bred.” 
I informed them that it was a ^‘professor,” 
and Jim suggested, “Maybe it is, but his mind 
must be wa'ndering.” 
“I believe,” Robert observed, “that the thing 
would work best on blind trout, and I wouldn’t 
be much surprised if bull-heads would rise to 
it in muddy water.” 
“Perhaps it will be interesting in a scientific 
way,” Henry put in, “as throwing some light 
on the origin of species, since it is certainly a 
most unnatural production.” 
“I can’t quite agree with you there,” Jim re¬ 
plied, after some deliberation. “When you take 
into account Terry’s face, the feather duster, and 
the man who is doing the tying, the product 
is, I believe, precisely what might be expected.” 
And so they went on with their bickering un¬ 
til at the end of about two hours I had a 
couple of flies, which had the distinction, of be¬ 
ing the only ones of their kind in existence, 
beside never being the subject of covetousness. 
However, the effort had not been entirely with¬ 
out compensation, for while the others were 
chaffing me, the lad who brought our milk had 
leaned on the corner of the table and watched 
the performance with a Yankee boy’s keen in¬ 
terest in anything new. For him our stay had 
been a period of great temptation. It. was cer¬ 
tainly a trial to a boy to come each night and 
morning to a camp where lazy fellows were 
joking, where guns, fishing-tackle and dogs 
were in abundance, and then have to go directly 
back home in answer to a command to weed 
■in the garden. At times he was not able to 
tear himself away, often lingering until some¬ 
one came alter him. This was one of those oc¬ 
casions. 
I felt m a measure to blame for having been 
the cause of his detention, and knew that I 
owed him something to compensate for the cor¬ 
rection he must stand. Just as the work was 
finished I heard hasty footsteps, and seeing the 
boy raise his head and listen, I handed the 
flies to him, pointing in the direction of the 
other path. Instantly two bare legs were in 
motion, and when the pursuer came there was 
no tardy boy loitering there. 
Our tramping ground covered about four 
miles in length, on the Esopus, extending prin¬ 
cipally up stream from the mouth of the Bush- 
kill. and these observations refer only to that 
section. 
So far as any of us ever saw, there were no 
caddis worms, of the variety which look like 
broken bits of small twigs, in either the Esopus 
or the Bushkiil. We watched carefully for them 
from the middle of May until well into July, 
but never saw one, yet there were numerous 
other streams nearly as large as the Bushkiil 
which flowed into the Esopus, in two of which 
at least we found this sort of caddis worm 
particularly abundant. In one of these streams 
they were so plentiful that in a pool not more 
than one hundred yards from where it emptied 
into the Esopus, it was impossible to step with¬ 
out treading on numbers of them. We were 
unable to account for this peculiar distribution 
by the theory that the water was too- swift in 
the. main stream, for the tributary brook was 
fully as swift.; in fact, a regular little torrent. 
Of the variety of caddis worms which build 
little gravel dens on the stones of the bottom, 
there was an unlimited quantity in the Esopus. 
A curious little bit of life we found in the 
Bushkiil toward the latter part of June. One 
morning I was wading down this stream when 
a peculiar marking on many of the stones in 
the bottom of the rifts attracted my attention. 
It looked as if some one had taken bits of 
heavy black silk thread about one-fourth of an 
inch in length and laid them carefully all over 
the stones. The threads were parallel and all 
equal distances apart, being separated from 
each other bv about their length. They were all 
lengthwise with the current, and so far as could 
be seen, motionless. I picked up one of the 
stones, and to my surprise as quickly as it left 
the water, every little silk thread became a tiny 
coil about the size of the head of a pin. Still 
every coil was just so regularly placed as the 
threads had been, and just so far from every 
other coil. By the use of a small pocket glass 
I discovered that each thread was a little black 
worm or leech, fastened at one end to the 
stone. When taken out of the water it curled 
around the end which was fastened. The anchor¬ 
ages were just far enough separated from each 
other to allow the worm to swing clear around 
a circle of which it was the radius without 
touching any of the others. So accurately had 
the little creatures solved this geometric prob¬ 
lem that when they were in the water stretched 
at full length with the current it gave the ap¬ 
pearance of regularity which I have already 
mentioned. 
In still another instance did the calculation of 
an insect seem marvelous to us. Early in July 
white spots began to appear on certain large 
jrocks which stood up out of the water. These 
spots were six inches to two feet above the 
surface of the water, and were always on the 
sides of the stone, never on top. If there hap¬ 
pened to be a little hollow in the side, so that 
some protection from storms was furnished by 
it, the spots would be much more plentiful 
there, often a dozen or more to a square foot. 
They were about the size of a silver quarter, 
but quite irregular in outline. It looked as if 
a piece of lime as large as a bean had been 
soaked until very soft and then thrown against 
the rock. When the white coating was gently 
removed it was found to cover two layers of 
very small, neatly packed light green eggs, ob¬ 
long in shape, standing with one end toward 
the rock. 
The curious feature about it was that the in¬ 
sect which laid the eggs there seemed to have 
an excellent idea of the size of rocks. Only the 
largest rocks were selected to be used as incu¬ 
bators, but no attention was paid to whether 
they extended high above the water or not. 
For example, one rock which stood only 
eighteen inches out of water at its highest 
point, but was more than five feet across its 
top, had over thirty nests upon its sides. Near 
it was a boulder which stood more than two 
feet out of water, but was only about two feet 
across, and on it were no nests. Over one 
hundred boulders were within our range of vis¬ 
ion, and we watched them carefully for many 
days, finding that in all instances this sort of 
discrimination prevailed. Not more than 
twenty of the rocks had eggs upon them, but 
the twenty included all those which had the 
broadest surfaces, while not more than half of 
the twenty were as high as many of those 
which were slighted by the insect. 
Often it was not the things that we did as 
they had been planned which brought us the 
most real enjoyment, but some little incident 
that thrust itself in unbidden. One of these 
came the day after the fly-tying experiment. 
In the Bushkiil there were many large trout, 
lying at the bottom of deep but perfectly clear 
pools. We had often seen them, and about as 
often tried to catch them, but they never wanted 
any lure which we had. Henry and I deter¬ 
mined to make one more try at it, and spent 
considerable time rigging up an almost invisible 
set .of tackle. Jim watched us, and commenting 
upon it, said he wouldn’t be surprised if some 
lazy spider stole those leaders to build a web. 
On our way to the creek we came to a little 
clearing in the timber and found the ground 
red with wild strawberries. We stopped to 
pick a few, and as soon as we realized how 
good and how plentiful they were, the fishing 
spirit went out of us in a minute. The first 
cluster we tasted put. us back twenty-five years, 
and we were care-free boys again. “I don’t 
believe it’s a very good'day for fishing any 
way,” I suggested, “let’s line a basket with 
leaves and pick enough for supper.” 
“No, sir!” Henry replied, “I don’t care any¬ 
thing about the fishing, but if I am going to 
pick berries I want a nice shiny tin pail, so I 
can hear the first few drop on to the bottom.” 
“All right, let’s go and get one,” I assented, 
and we started back to camp to exchange our 
tackle for a pail. When we reached there, Jim 
and Robert had gone. Uncle Nick lay in the 
hammock asleep with a newspaper over bis 
face and the dogs only opened their drowsy 
eyes enough to see who it was, and then dozed 
off. We did not disturb them, and were soon 
headed for the clearing again. On the way 
Henry said: 
“It’s all pretty natural except that the old two- 
quart pails used to have rings around them to 
mark off the pints, and a boy could tell how 
fast he was getting along by watching when 
the rings were covered up.” 
So the afternoon was spent, 'and when the 
others came back at night they found us hulling 
our strawberries. 
None of us feeling quite in the mood for 
fishing, after supper we went up to the ob¬ 
servatory, and stretching out at full length upon 
the mossy sod, smoked as we discussed the 
stream; or else said nothing and just watched 
its eternal activity. Across the creek, beyond 
our sight, a dog was barking, and a lone fisher¬ 
man stood -on the shore while his long sunset 
shadow extended out over the glistening surface 
of a little bay. 
“I wonder who it is,” said Jim, “that has as 
old looking a basket as that, and yet don’t 
know any better than to fish for trout in the 
only square rod of smooth water there is in 
sight?” 
“I don’t know his name,” Robert replied, 
“but he has been around here several days and 
always fishes exactly where he could not by any 
possibility get a rise. I met him up by the big 
hole the other day and had a talk with him. I 
was just landing a trout when he came along, 
and he stopped and watched me. He’s a real 
gentlemanly little fellow, but don’t seem to 
know much about fishing. He works at it faith¬ 
fully enough, though, for I have seen him every 
time I’ve been near the creek for a week. 
Curious how some people can’t seem to get 
any idea about where fish are likely to lay.” 
-“If he’s as anxious to learn as all that,” Jim 
remarked, “some one ought to show him a little 
about it.” - 
“That’s just what I was thinking,” Robert 
replied, “and I’d have done it that day only I 
didn’t know then that he was a greenhorn. 
Likely, he was brought up in the city, and never 
had any chance to learn what a stream or a 
trout was like, only when he was taken out 
into the country for a week or two, and then 
it was all so new to him he didn’t get ac¬ 
quainted with it.” 
. “Well,” said Jim, “it’s a shame to see so much 
good energy and patience go to waste, and if 
I thought he wouldn’t feel offended, I’d go 
down and show him where to fish. Guess I 
can fix some sort of excuse to talk with him.” 
and he clambered down the cave-bank while 
we watched the results. 
Of course we didn’t hear anything that was 
said, but we could tell pretty well what was 
going, on by the actions. When Jim reached 
him there seemed to be a few minutes’ talk, 
followed by a sort of general looking the water 
over, with some pointing up and down stream 
by Jim and a careful watching by the fishermart. 
Then they looked at the flies he was using, and 
Jim took one from his hatband and put it on 
the leader. When they had come up stream a 
little and worked out over the boulders well 
into the middle of the creek, Jim seemed to be 
pointing to a swell, just above where the water 
broke around a big rock, and then to a place 
where it eddied a little below the rock. 
The young man attempted to reach them with 
his flies, but made clumsy work of it. Jim 
took the rod, and letting out a little more line, 
dropped- the flies above and beyond the swell, 
drawing them across it. He repeated the cast 
two or three times, and then handing the rod 
back, his pupil tried it with manifest improve¬ 
ment. Nexp-he tried below the rock, but noth¬ 
ing came of it or of several other places they 
tested. After a time a trout jumped just below 
where they were fishing, and we saw them work 
back nearly to shore and out toward the spot 
over another line of rocks. There were some 
more pointings, then a cast, a splash, and the 
reel sang, while the rod bent and yanked. Jim 
watched the bow of the rod and seemed to be 
giving his orders as the line was let out and 
reeled in, during a fight which lasted as much 
