Oct. 9. 1909.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
591 
sportsmen who have endeavored to preserve 
the fish and game in lakes and ponds larger 
than the ten acres which make them, so it has 
always been claimed, “great ponds” within the 
meaning of the statute. In one case a man in 
Hollis bought all the land surrounding a small 
pond and stocked it with fine trout. To pro¬ 
tect the fish while they were growing the pond 
was closed to fishing for a number of years. 
Then one Legislature repealed the act clos¬ 
ing this particular pond, and there was at once a 
rush of sportsmen to it when the season opened. 
Within a few weeks what it had taken years 
and many hundreds of dollars to accomplish 
was ruined, the fish were caught in immense 
numbers and the man from outside the State 
offered his estate for sale and hasn’t resided 
upon it since. 
What constitutes a pond anyway? This will 
be one of the questions the courts will have to 
decide. Does the word pond mean a body of 
water, free of obstruction and clear for at least 
a good portion of its surface, or does it mean 
any lowland where there may happen to be a 
few' small puddles covered with lilypads and 
rushes? Of such a character is the so-called 
Great Pond on Cape Elizabeth. It will be a 
difficult question for the courts to settle. 
There are some people who would hesitate 
to name Great Pond, so-called, as a pond 
anyway, and there will be as many 
people who claim that it is a pond for all 
practical purposes. At any rate, the ducks 
like it well enough to return to it year after 
year and get shot at for their pains. For the 
wildfowl have always made this one of their 
resting places on their way to the South and 
North in the varying seasons, and perhaps it 
dbesn’t make so very much difference to them 
whether they are shot at from behind costly 
blinds by city gunners, using up-to-date repeat¬ 
ing shotguns, or by the farmer’s boy lying on 
an old blanket on the dew-covered bank and 
hidden by the rushes, whose weapon is the 
muzzleloading shotgun his grandfather once 
brought down ducks with upon the waters of 
this very pond. 
PASSING OF THE TRAPPER. 
The forward march of civilization has 
reached the wilds of the Canadian north, and 
trappers report that their business is rapidly 
becoming unprofitable on account of the fre¬ 
quency of the settlements. That state of af¬ 
fairs is to be expected and the wonder is that 
the situation has not become more acute long 
ago. It is remarkable that the business has 
continued profitable. 
History has repeated itself in this as in all 
other things. The advance guard of civilization 
was years behind a class of hardy trappers who 
earned their livelihood in the solitude of the 
forests by taking animals for their furs. As 
civilization advanced the number of trappers 
became larger and the amount of game dimin¬ 
ished until there was no longer a profit to be 
had from the business. 
It began with Maine and Massachusetts and 
continued to the westward until the United 
States was no longer tenable for the trapper. 
The Hudson’s Bay Company preserved the 
frozen north of Canada for half a century after 
the United States had ceased to be a profitable 
hunting ground, but the onward march of the 
lailroads and the ever-restless wave of home- 
seekers has at last advanced to the very out¬ 
posts of the Hudson’s Bay territory. Gold and 
wheat have been the lodestones and the trap¬ 
ping business suffers. 
Where will we get our furs in the future? 
We will raise them. For farming, skunk farm¬ 
ing, cat farming and the hundred and one other 
kinds of animal raising will take the place of 
the trapper and his gun. Other fur-bearing 
animals will soon be taught to eat out of the 
hand of man just as the domestic animals of 
the farm have been doing for centuries. Man 
will simply enlarge his control of the lower ani¬ 
mals, enlarge his control over the fur-bearing 
as well as the food-bearing animals.—Kennebec 
Journal. 
TANK FISHING IN CEYLON. 
The tank fishes of Ceylon are in almost every 
respect identical with the varieties found in the 
low country ponds and rivers. And while, with 
one or two exceptions, such for instance as the 
murral and Etroplus suratensis, attain to a 
larger size in rivers than in tanks, the majority 
of tank species run to a very large size them¬ 
selves. Practically nothing beyond an occas¬ 
ional magazine article, has been published with 
regard to tank fishing in Ceylon of which very 
little seems to be known, so that a few notes 
on this particular subject, it is hoped, may be 
of service to the lover of rod and line who 
chances to visit the tank regions of the island 
and desires to angle in those interesting forest- 
fringed ancient reservoirs. They are practically 
virgin waters for fishing, and one can fish in 
them the whole day long and secure very large 
baskets. 
Their waters teem with fish from the giant 
bottom feeding wallagoattu and other siluroids, 
large eels, predatory ophiocepcali, dainty gud¬ 
geon and butter fish, various carp and barbel to 
the small inhabitants of the upper strata of 
water—clean fish for the existence of which 
clear water is absolutely essential and coarse 
varieties which can exist in the clear as well 
as the foulest water. 
Though the murral, or loola, is a desirable 
fish and met with largely in the tanks, the first 
place should undoubtedly be given to the carp 
of which there are several species running to 
large sizes, quite different from their ignoble 
namesake in England, Cyprinus carpio. 
The general reader is familiar with minor 
species like the common carp ( Barbus dorsalis ) 
and the black spot ( B. make cola ) which run up 
3P2 ounces, but it is not generally known that 
there are some excellent kinds, for instance, the 
South Indian carp (Labio dussumieri ) which 
scales five pounds and affords excellent sport 
with a light rod; the olive carp ( B. chryspoma) 
which runs up to 1% pounds and probably the 
white carp ( Cirrhina cirrhosa ) 5 pounds. Carp 
should be fished for with paste bait on the bot¬ 
tom, with a light red and find tackle as for 
roach. A small fish on hook is readily taken 
by the larger fish, carp, of course not becoming 
predaceous until they become very large. They 
are active feeders and make a sharp dash. 
Ground baiting is a great help, and if you are 
camping out it will be well to treat a suitable 
spot for a day or two. 
Then we come to our friend the pike-like 
murral. Though attaining to a large size in 
the rivers and swamps a length of 2}4 feet and 
scaling 5 pounds they will not be found to aver¬ 
age more than two or three pounds in the tanks. 
The murral takes a small live bait very freely, 
and daping with a frog is also very good, while 
the fish may also be spun for with a small fish 
or even a 1 y 2 inch spoon. A light roach or 
labeo rod with fine tackle is just the thing to> 
get capital sport with. A species of murral not 
found in our rivers, but confined to the tanks 
only, is O. marulius, armed with a mouthful of 
well-defined teeth. The murral must be fished 
close to the banks. As its eyes are set on the 
top of its head for the special purpose of look¬ 
ing upward, the bait, if a live one, should be 
weighted to remain about two or three feet from 
the float. Like the pike the murral basks in 
the sun at the surface and roams about at times 
in search of food, while at other times lying 
hidden motionless among weeds. 
Another excellent fish for the camp fare _ is 
the Indian gudgeon, the veligowa of the Sin¬ 
halese, which attains to 1Y2 feet. Hugging the 
sandy bottom it remains perfectly stationary in 
one place even on taking the bait and there¬ 
fore affords no sport whatever, coming away 
like a dead fish. Small fish bait is essential for 
this gudgeon and a light rod and fine tackle. 
A worm or prawn is also taken, but not so 
readily as a tiny fish. 
Turning to the recognized bottom feeders we 
have the enormous wallagoattu, the valaya of 
the Sinhales, which runs up to four and five 
feet in length and turns the scale at 100 pounds. 
A stout hand line with a dead fish on the hook, 
weighted and thrown into the tank bed in the 
evening, is sure to take in one of these monsters 
who will give plenty of sport. Young fish from 
five to fifteen pounds can be taken at any time 
of the day with a stout pike or salmon rod and 
light tackle spinning with a small fish or a 1 14 - 
inch spoon. Then we have the allied magura 
which only faces a bait in the evening, a tiny 
dead fish, prawn or worm, and gives good 
sport, as also the anguluwa and the poisonous 
stinging siluroid to be fished for similarly. 
The angler at the tanks is always assured of 
sport. He will find them full of fish, and even 
in the middle of the day, the very worst time 
of fishing, fairly good bags may be made. Small 
fish for bait can be readily captured with a fine 
mesh landing net. Most of the tank fish are 
good eating and form an agreeable addition to 
the camp menu.—Coxon Spinner, in The Ceylon 
Sportsman. 
FOREST FIRE DESTRUCTION. 
Forest fires are causing considerable damage 
in many parts of the country at present. It 
will be several months before the total destruc¬ 
tion is known, for the fire season has consider¬ 
able time to run. In figuring out this year’s 
losses it will be natural to make comparison 
with losses for last year which, according to 
Treadwell Cleveland, Jr., in the Yearbook of 
the Department of Agriculture, will cause 1908 
to be long remembered. 
“A dry season, combined with what seemed 
to be even more than the usual indifference to¬ 
ward small fires which might easily have been 
extinguished at the start,” says Mr. Cleveland, 
“caused destructive conflagrations in practically 
every State, with losses aggregating $100,000,000. 
In comparison with the havoc wrought else¬ 
where the damage done to National forests was 
exceedingly slight. Had fires raged within the 
forests as they did outside they would have de¬ 
stroyed timber worth $30,000,000, enough to run 
the forest service for six years. Moreover, it 
is practically certain that most, if not all, of 
the damage which was done might have been 
prevented had the forests been fully manned. 
“Finally, the estimates of loss made by the 
Service Forests are particularly searching and 
take full account of the injury done to young 
growth. Commonly, estimates of loss from 
forest fires are based upon the damage done 
to standing timber and to property. They do 
not reckon the usually far greater loss in injury 
or destruction of young growing stock.” 
The methods by which the Government keeps 
down the fire losses on the National forests in¬ 
clude : 
1. Constant and systematic patrol by picked 
forces of rangers and guards. 
2. The construction of roads, trails and tele¬ 
phone lines which facilitate the massing of large 
fire-fighting forces. 
3. The construction of fire lines which,_ in 
some instances, check the spread of fire with¬ 
out human help. 
4. The equipment of the forests with fire¬ 
fighting tools and other supplies necessary in 
fighting fires. The supplies of tools are kept 
at convenient points at all times, in order to 
have them easily accessible to forest officers in 
case fires break out. 
c;. Co-operation with railroads, timber land 
owners and settlers in fire protection, in this 
way making it possible to protect both the lands 
of the companies and the Forest Service at a 
much smaller cost to the Government than would 
be the case were the National forest lands alone 
protected by the local officers. 
Just as the practice of forestry is_ important 
in the movement for the conservation of all 
natural resources, so is the protection of the 
forests from fires important in the furtherance 
of rational forest work; in fact, forestry in 
many instances means nothing more than con¬ 
servative lumbering and the prevention of forest 
fires. Uncle Sam realizes that only through 
the wise use and care of the forests will it be 
possible to make natural timberland permanently 
productive. The practice of forestry does not 
mean abbreviating the use of the land. Instead, 
conservative lumbering and protection of the 
young growth from fire will bring about a 
