June 3, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
857 
The value of the salmon is illustrated in a state¬ 
ment that whereas thirty miles of the North Esk 
brings only $2,500 in rentals from salmon fisher¬ 
men, two miles of this river further down rent 
for $25,000. 
Of the spawning habits of salmon, Mr. Mal- 
loch says: 
“About the middle of November they leave 
the pools and come on to the streams. Here 
they select a bank composed of sand and gravel 
which is not very liable to shift throughout the 
season. Here the female digs into the gravel 
with her tail, turns on her side and gives a few 
scoops among the gravel, turning it up with 
each movement and making the water quite dirty. 
1 he spawn, which is being deposited all the time, 
falls to the bottom and is covered up with each 
stroke. This process is renewed every five or 
ten minutes, the fish working upstream all the 
time. If the gravel is easy to work, the spawn¬ 
ing bed thus scooped out is often a foot deep; 
and by the time spawning is completed, the fish 
will have turned up the gravel to the extent of 
two or three yards upstream and about two feet 
across stream. 
“The spawning beds can always be detected 
by observing the light color of the gravel which 
has been newly exposed, contrasted against the 
darker-colored part on each side. The whole 
process of depositing the spawn in the gravel 
to the depth of ten or twelve inches occupies 
from three to fourteen days, according to the 
state of the weather and the water. So eager 
are the fish to spawn in their own river that I 
have observed them begin five minutes after they 
entered. If, on the other hand, they are pre¬ 
vented from spawning by being delayed in pools 
during low water, they retain their spawn for 
weeks longer than they would have done had the 
water been suitable for their reaching the spawn- 
ground. Very often one fish begins to spawn 
where another left off. and one follows another 
in this way until the spawning bed is tw r enty or 
thirty yards long. 
“While the female is working, the male, if 
undisturbed, remains beside her, and occasion¬ 
ally pushes her sidewise off the bed for a second 
or two. If another male comes near, however, 
he rushes after him with his mouth wide open. 
Although this is repeated each time an intruder 
comes near, they seldom take hold of each other. 
On carefully examining a bed after a fish has 
spawned, or when it is spawning, one mav see 
a considerable quantity of spawn at the lower 
end of the bed, uncovered with gravel. This 
may be either washed away by the first flood, 
or eaten up by trout or sea trout.” 
While salmon may spawn at any time, day 
or night, Mr. Malloch says they are most active 
from sunset to midnight. “Grilse,” he adds, 
often spawn with salmon, sea trout with grilse 
and trout with sea trout, in a season favorable 
for fish running up.” 
The volume is an exceedingly interesting one, 
and the illustrations are very fine. 
Book Exchange. 
No doubt there are many of our readers who possess 
old books, and others who would be glad to possess 
them, and we are, therefore, making: a special place in 
our advertising columns, which may be called a book 
exchange, where those who wish to purchase, sell or ex¬ 
change second-hand books may ask for what they need, 
or offer what they have. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
Here is a new' one, which would seem to show 
that no matter how much you have studied and 
'practiced firearms and shooting, the reporter 
knows more about such things than you may 
hope to learn in a life time. In the Times this 
appeared: 
But the money doesn’t worry me so much as those 
guns. You see, I am a cripple, and can’t help myself, 
as other men can, and that is why I always carried two 
revolvers. My right arm is paralyzed, and so I had the 
guns made to order, splendid weapons, equipped with 
a left-wheel break and especially constructed with the 
view of being handled with the left hand. The thief took 
both those fine guns, and I could hit a bullseye at sixty 
yards with either of them. 
Many of the old model revolvers are loaded 
from the right-hand side and the cylinder re¬ 
volves to the right. With the new model 
solid frame revolvers the cylinder is tipped out 
to the left, and in some of them the cylinder 
revolves to the left. If the man who lost his 
guns ordered them made with “left-wheel 
breaks”—whatever that means—it is possible the 
manufacturer sent him a couple of new model 
revolvers, and he, seeing that the cylinders were 
left-handed, so to speak, fancied they had been 
made to order. If so the maker's sense of 
humor was satisfied, and the owner’s fondness 
for made-to-order guns gratified. He could have 
ordered one “right-handed” and the other “left- 
handed,” and the two would have been as twins. 
* * * 
Brown spends his vacations among the cow¬ 
boys of the West, and the balance of the year 
in telling his friends in the Western vernacular 
that the East is no p ace to live in. Once he 
attempted to persuade them to discard their 
motor cars and other toys and ride horseback. 
Now and then one fell before the tempter, got 
a big hat and spurs, borrowed a California sad¬ 
dle, and hired the nearest thing resembling a 
cow pony to be found. On one occasion Brown 
made up a party for a certain Sunday, but when 
he came to order the one horse that, in the 
whole countryside, resembled the cayuse of his 
dreams, he found that it had been pre-empted 
by one of his converts. Ele had the big saddle, 
the wide hat, the spurs and the silver-inlaid and 
braided bridle, hair rope and high-heeled boots, 
but no cayuse. 
He was desperate, so he took the only beast 
the liveryman had that was stout enough to bear 
the great sadd’e. This was Dolly. And Dolly 
is worthy of description as she appeared that 
morning. White in places where harness marks 
had not removed the hair; feet like inverted 
jardinieres; legs intended to support and pro¬ 
pel her half ton of ill-proportioned bone and 
flesh; a gait that moved her at least two feet 
horizontally to every foot vertically. As a cow 
pony she was less attractive. Her only fau’t, 
the black who brought her said, was that she 
was “skeered of buzzwagons.” 
The cavalcade proceeded. The craning of 
necks would have delighted Brown another time, 
but just then he was not wholly happy. They 
took a long steep hill at a walk. Half-way up 
Brown noticed that Dolly's ears were tilted back¬ 
ward in the angle of attention. From far away 
came a familiar buzz; it grew louder every sec¬ 
ond, and Dolly handled her feet in a way not 
practicable in plow harness. The motor -car 
driver threw in another clutch—whatever that 
means—and Dolly waltzed into a thicket on two 
legs, landing in a field. As she came to earth 
Brown, flustered, forgot that his spurs were for 
ornament only, and when they came in con¬ 
tact with Dolly s tug-worn sides, she made two 
jumps and landed in the middle of the road 
right in front of the car. What caused it Brown 
does not know nor care, but just as the monster 
was “browsing off Dolly’s stumpy tail,” to quote 
Brown, a tire blew up. 
The benzine buggy became a thing inert. What 
Dolly did and Brow’n tried to do I leave to your 
imagination; it was worth seeing, but I cannot 
describe it, for it happened in a cloud of dust. 
* * * 
Captain A. W. Money, who lived for many 
years in the United States, and who has lived 
also in the far East and in England, his native 
land, is quoted by the County Gentleman as say¬ 
ing that, although he has keenly enjoyed shoot¬ 
ing driven game in England, his preference is 
for other kinds of shooting. 
Shooting driven birds, says the veteran, “does 
not and never has compared with shooting where 
there is nothing artificial and where you can do 
as you please; begin when you like, leave off 
where you like; go where you like, and eat 
where you feel inclined; carry your own gun, 
load it yourself and be content to use one only; 
own your own dogs, work them yourself and 
carry your own game, as done in America.” 
And the paper referred to says in comment 
that "a vast amount of English game shooting 
is done in just the unceremonious kind of way 
that Captain Money describes. It is regarded 
as so unremarkable that nobody thinks of re¬ 
marking it. But the paper in question,, in try¬ 
ing to correct a popular error as to Americans’ 
viewpoint, falls into one on its own account 
when it says: “In America there is no tax to 
stop a man from owning or using a gun, and 
if he wishes to go after game he can do so 
quite easily without trespassing.” 
It is true that we impose no direct tax on the 
possessors of firearms, but the States where non¬ 
residents can shoot game without paying a 
license fee are exceedingly few, and the resi¬ 
dent license fee plan is extending gradually all 
over the country. 
* * * 
Some of the Hudson River boatmen are char¬ 
acters. Most of them will pile into a boat or 
jump off a pier in a jiffy if in doing so they can 
relieve persons in distress. One of them rowed 
several miles one Decoration day, most of the 
distance against a strong flood tide and a stiff 
breeze, assisting a small boat sailor who had 
capsized, only to find, when the grateful 
one sought to remunerate him for his timely 
help, that the bathing suit he wore had no 
pockets and the boatman got no reward. But 
the latter only laughed as he said, “Oh, that’s 
all right. Glad to he’p you.” 
Grizzly King. 
