FOREST AND STREAM. 





























roe ieee Vows 
c ~ ~ ANC ES - ~ ——— 
WEEKLY JOURNAL, 
DEVOTED TO FIELD AND AQUATIC SPortTS, PRACTICAL NATURAL HisTory, 
Fish CULTURE, THE PROTECTION OF GAME, PRESRVATION OF FoRESTs, 
AND THE INCULCATION IN MEN AND WOMEN OF A HEALTHY INTER® ST 
IN OuT-DOOR RECREATION AND STuDY: 
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ee AT ee 
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NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SUPT. 18, 1873. 

To Correspondents. 
bade be 5 
All communications whatever, whether relating to business or literary 
correspondence, must be addressed to THE FoREST AND STREAM PUB- 
LISHING ComPANY. Personal letters only, to the Manager. 
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Managing Editor. 


Calendar of Events for the Current Week. 
5 
Fripay, Sept. 19—Kansas City Association, Mo.—Central Pennsylva- 
nia Association, Altoona, Penu.—Winfield Union Fair, Herkimer Co., 
N. Y.—Agricultural Fair, Bangor, Me. 
SarurDAY, Sept. 20—Boat clubs, foot of 133d street, Harlem—East Sag- 
inaw Fair, Mich.—Grand Rapids, Fair, Mich.—Kansas City Fair, Kansas 
City, Mo. 
Monpay, Sept. 22—Topeka Fair, Kansas—Wavyerly Fair, New Jersey— 
Milwaukee Fair, Wis. 
TuEsDAY, Sept. 23—Prospect Park Association, Brooklyn, N. Y.—St. 
Paul Fair, St, Paul, Minn.—North Adams Fair, Hoosick Valley, Mass.— 
North Eastern Fair, Waterloo, Ind.—New York Western Fair, Rochester, 
N. Y.—Pennsylvania Central-Fair, Erie, Penn.—Somerset Central Fair, 
Skowhegan, Me. 
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 24—Prospect Park Association, Brooklyn, N. Y.— 
Albany Agricultural Fair, Albany, N. Y.—Murfreesboro Fair, Central 
Tennessee. 
TuunspAy, Sept, 25—Prospect Park Association, Brooklyn, N. Y.—St. 
Paul Agricultural Fair, Sf Paul, Minn.—Somerset Central Fair, Skowhe- 
gan, Me. 



A WORD IN SEASON. 
rat SEF 
WO very valuable papers the Forresr AND STREAM 
has given to the public since its birth, both of which 
relate to regions almost unknown and until recently unex- 
plored by sportsmen. One descriptive of Anticosti Island 
was concluded in our last number; the other, relative to 
the Nepigon, remains to be completed. We trust our 
readers will appreciate their value, and realize that they 
may at some day not distant, be of practical utilty for ref- 
erence. Through our numerous available channels of in- 
formation, we are enabled to supply gentlemen sportsmen 
with an unlimited fund of knowledge pertaining to the 
shooting and fishing grounds of America, of which most of 
them have hitherto been ignorant, and we can conscien- 
tiously assure our readers that this paper will not reach 
the climax of its effort and of accorded merit until it is 
made as indispensable a s/ne gua non to our own people as 
the London ‘‘ Feld” and ‘ Land and Water” are to the 
gentlemen of England. In the course of the two com- 
ing months we shall he placed in a position to redeem 
this pledge. » 
We wish, moreover, to impress upon the public that the 
material of this paper is made up directly from resources 
which are. tributary to its requirements, andnot from mat- 
ter collected from contemporary journals in the interest of 
out-door sports. The aid that we have secured from official 
and semi-official sources, as well as from private contributors, 






and reliable authority onmost of the subjects that come 
within its scope. Our subscription list already includes some 
hundreds of leading naturalists, sportsmen, and “ gentie- 
menin general,” most of whom, in sending their favors, 
affirm that they have never yet been subscribers to any 
sporting journal (so called), and that this paper exactly 
meets their views ,and requirements. Our sole ambition 
is to merit a continuance of their confidence and approval. 
$< 0 ——_—_—- 
MIGRATIONS OF FISH. 
oe ee ee, 
N Sweden, in 1556, there was a Land-stotning. That is, 
the fish, having emerged from the deeps, appeared in in- 
calculable numbers in the Skargard, and thus continued un- 
til 1587, a period of thirty-one years, when they as sudden- 
ly absented themselves. During the period of glut, the 
fisheries are described as having been more productive 
than at any other on record. Old chroniclers state ‘“ that 
for a space of fifty or sixty miles the shores of the main 
land, and the adjacent islands, were scattered with curing 
and salting-houses, many of them two and three stories 
high, and inhabited by vast multitudes of people who had 
congregated there from various and distant parts, and 
whose sole occupation was in connection with the fisheries. 
That herrings were there so very abundant that thousands 
of ships came annually from Denmark, Germany, Fries- 
land, Holland, England, and France to purchase fish.” This 
would not seem to be a very exaggerated account, as from 
the small town of Marstrand alone, no less than 600,000 
tunnor, or some 2,400,000 bushels were yearly exported. 
The disappearance of the fish in 1587, which reduced the 
fishing people to penury and misery, was, according to 
the belief of the age, foreboded by the capture of a herring 
—the queen of the family, as it was supposed—of such 
enormous size, that two men could with difficulty carry it 
suspended on a pole! During a space of seventy-three 
years, the herring appeared again, but in small numbers, 
when, in 1663, there was another arrival, though not com- 
parable to that of 1556. In 1774 was the last great advent 
of herring, which lasted until 1804. In 1808, herring again 
as mysteriously left the coast, and have never again visited 
it inan overwhelming way. Swedish naturalists, deputed by 
the Government to account for the absence of the fish at 
that time, imputed it to various reasons. Among them 
‘to the noise and uproar when the fisheries were flourish- 
ing, caused by the tens of thousands of congregated people, 
which noise, in calm weather, or when the wind was off 
the land, might be heard miles and miles at sea; the enor- 
mous quantity of refuse of all kinds cast out from the cur- 
ing and boiling-houses into the sea, which on sinking, de- 
stroyed all submarine vegetation, and masses of which re- 
sembling floating islands, emitting a dreadful stench, 
which might, at times, be mét with far away from land. 
Though more than half a century has since elapsed, the 
places where this filth deposited itself in any considerable 
quantity, are still quite visible, and by the fishermen called 
tod-botinar or death-spots. 
These interesting facts just stated we have compiled from 
various sources. We have not avery high opinion of the 
astuteness of the Government naturalists of that day, al- 
though as respects one of the causes attributed—that of the 
putrid offal—it doubtless had a decided effect to diminish 
the quantity of fish. The chief reasons, probably, were 
the great destruction of fry and lesser fish by the small size 
of the meshes of the nets and the use of a drag net of gi- 
gantic proportions, which swept the bottom and destroyed 
all the grass and plants amongst which herrings are accus- 
tomed to spawn. 
The whole subject of the migration of fishes is most in- 
teresting, though their movements are not more mysterious, 
perhaps, than the migration of deer, buffalo, and other 
wild animals, only that they are -hidden from observation 
by the*unsearchable element in which they live. The whole 
family of fishes is divided into pursuers and pursued, and 
the instinctive effort to escape may lead the pursuit to lo- 
calities far beyond the climatic and natural range of the 
pursuer. Change of temperature in the water has also its 
most important effect, and the same organic laws that have 
made some races of land animals extinct, and driven others 
far beyond the boundaries of old established haunts, ope- 
rate equally upon the denizens of the sea. Caprice, too, 
has something to do with changes of habitat, and we can- 
not think it more strange that the salmon should desert 
rivers that it has resorted to for generations than that wolves, 
deer, or wild turkeys should suddenly disappear in this 
place and present themselves in that. 
Bluefish, and many others both nomadic and stationary, 
have made an unexpected appearance on our northern 
coasts from time to time, and we have already remarked in 
previous numbers of this paper that several species pecu- 
liar to equatorial and semi-tropical waters have, within two 
or three years, been met with here. Perhaps the tempera- 
ture of the sea is changing in this latitude. As regards 
pursuit, however, if we could determine the advent of the 
food fish by the coming and going.of the small fry, an im- 
portant and useful scientific point could be gained; but, as 
it happens, the shoal of bluefish, herring, or mackerel in 
salt water, or the whitefish, herring, and salmon-trout of 
the lakes do not incessantly follow one single shoal of small 
fry until they have incontinently consumed them. The 
mood may take the pursuer to suddenly dart off in a differ- 
ent direction after other fry, and so, after following this 
chase and that for a time indefinite, the haunts that knew 
them familiarly once may be deserted for a long period of 
consecutive years, or, possibly, ‘‘know them no more for- 
is calculated to make the Forrsr anp STREAM an accepted | ever.” ‘ 


Still, with the most plausible, theoretical accounting for’ 
of facts, it does seem singular that these immense shoals of 
fish, incredible in number and extent, should visit certain 
points on the seaboard and inland coasts, not periodically, 
but'sporadically; and their advent is always recorded as a 
marvellous phenomenon of the times. The most extraor- 
dinary of these octurrences ever mentioned was witnessed 
on the southern shore of Lake Superior about the 10th of 
June, 1870, just off the harbor of Marquette. <A letter of 
that date, in our possession, says:—‘‘The lake was filled by 
a large body of salmon-trout. They presented a front of 
sixty miles, facing Maquette and extending out into the lake 
to ‘Stannard’s Rock,’ forty miles distant from shore. A 
steamer was chartered, and a party of men, women, and 
children started for the rock; they fished for four hours, 
and took four hundred trout, weighing from six to forty 
pounds each. The next week another party started, and in | 
four hours took eight hundred trout, weighing from six to) 
forty pounds each. It was then discovered that there was 
no use in going such a distance, as the harbor was full of 
them. I and my youngest son took a yawl and started to) 
try our luck in the harbor. In less than three hours we 
loaded her down to the water’s edge. We had small oars, | 
and rowed with one hand and held the trolling line in the 
other. Weused a spoon. One young man went out ina | 
yawl to see how many he could take, and he caught one | 
hundred and fifty and then gave up.” 
This is no fish story, but can be authenticated in a hun- | 
dred ways. The fish filled an area of forty miles by sixty | 
in extent, and were off the harbor of Marquette two weeks, | 
The prevailing winds during the visit of the shoal came | 
from the southwest, with occasional thunder showers. 
With regard to the feeding of the trout, it was observed 
that most of them threw from their stomachs, on being | 
hauled into the boat, from three to four small herring six | 
or eight inches long. The herring were fresh, and seemed | 
to have been taken but a few minutes before the trout were | 
caught. It is possible that this shoal of trout followed a 
shoal of herring, feeding on them as they travelled south, 
as that appeared to be the direction in which they were | 
moving. The trout averaged twelve pounds each in weight. 
There must have been millions of them in the school. 
, ete 
ENGLISH EDUCATIONAL SCIENCE COM- 
MISSION. 
pees 
MOST important discussion is now going on in Eng- 
land in regard to the introduction of scientific studies 
into the Universities, and the report which has been just 
published is well worthy of our attention. Especial at- 
tention is directed to the remarks of Sir Benjamin Brodie, 
who stated in order to show what a demand there is to-day 
for scientific laborers of the highest quality,-that in Eng- 
land “‘almost every scientific man is caught up instantly 
for educational purposes, for the objeci of teaching alone; } 
and in the next place avery great draft indeed is made | 
upon Science for economical purposes; I mean for purposes 
connected with practical life. In sanitary matters we have 
numerous examples of the vast amount of work done by 
scientific men for public and practical objects. So that the 
supply of scientific menis not equal to the demand, for 
those objects alone.” 
The smattering of science, distributed in small doses over | 
the English University term of instruction, according to Sir 
W. Thompson, is productive of the smallest possible amount 
of good. The emulation of the student directed to no | 
special point of research, he fails to see the immense advan- 
tages that amore profound knowledge in any particular 
branch would give him. 
Another subject dwelt especially on by the committee is | 
in regard to Fellowships, and the creation of them with 
some small salary suflicient to give its recipient, if not ease, 
at least independence, during a course of scientific research. 
When Mr. Tyndall was in the United States, he told us | 
quite feelingly how hard it was for the man of patient 
study, the scientist who ought to be for years giving the 
best days of his life to the elucidation of some fact, to have 
to eke out his existence through the drudgery of teaching. 
If advantages of this character, such as Fellowships, are 
given in Scotland, such does not seem to be the ease in 
England. The foreign methods adopted in the Heole Pratique 
des Hautes Htudes are particularly recommended. Inregard to | 
it, the Committee state that ‘‘the course pursued by this in- | 
stitution is to take young men who have completed their 
preliminary scientific studies, and allowing them an annual 
stipend to defray the expenses of their maintenance, to place 
them under the care of competent professors, who give 
them assistance and advice in their first researches, and to 
whom they afterwards become useful. This plan appears 
to us so excellent in itself, and at the same time so academic 
in its general character, that we desire to recommend it for 
adoption at Oxford and Cambridge. To insure due atten- 
tion to both classes of students, it would be proper that the 
laboratories intended for training in the methods of research 
should be distinct from those in which more ‘elementary 
instruction is given.” 
There is even, it seems, in conservative England some 
idea of giving Doctorates of Science, in imitation of the 
German universities. That there is a grand awakening on 
this subject of university training is very certain. Slow to 
move tl ough the English may be, some radical changes are 
quite likely to be effected. 
pio ig ge eee 
—On the tip end of ‘ Anthony’s Nose,” Lake George, ap 
pears conspicuously the advertisement of ‘‘ Vinegar Bitters.”’ 
Is this a desecration of nature, or is it according to nature,” 
that this infallible sign should thus assert itself 2 

