FOREST AND STREAM. 
179 
eee 
posited, issure. The salmon, like the trout, usually choose 
a spawning place below an eddy; here there is generally a 
fine bed of gravel which has been gathered from different 
parts of the stream and deposited clean and fit for the re- 
ception of the fish’s eggs. Here also, the smothering saw 
dust gathers, and either kills the embryo (if it has keen 
aliowed to develop so far), or to use a Hibernicism, nips it 
in the bud. Or if we suppose that through some combina 
tion of currents a certain spawning bed has escaped the 
suffocation to which the rest have been doomed, then in- 
stead of being stifled, the ova is killed by fungus generated 
by the minute particles of dust which soon decay. 
There is but one remedy for this; the saw mills and tan- 
neries should be compelled to dispose of their rubbish in 
some other manner, and this river should not be allowed to 
become a mere sewer. To give an idea of the amount of 
saw dust that comes down the Hudson every year, I will 
give a description of the deposit at one spot: Between the 
two freight houses of the Albany and Boston railroad at 
Greenbush, there is.a ditch or canal eight hundred feet long 
and six feet deep at ordinary low tide; this canal is filled at 
its eastern end every spring during the freshet, and the 
cumpany are obliged to remove it every summer, and their 
scows carry off thousands of yards of almost pure saw dust 
from this place. This canal is cut through an island on the 
eastern shore of the river, and this dust is only the small 
portion that comes down the shore and strikes in behind 
the island at Bath and is deposited at the eastern end of the 
canal. 
“Not having examined the river to its sources, I cannot 
say how far this evil extends, nor if there may not be some 
small tributary that is free from it; if there is, then in my 
opinion all that will be required to try the experiment is a 
few fish ways and some stock. 
Albany is going to take water from the river for drinking 
and other purposes, and would very likely prefer to have 
Troy and other cities above refrain from polluting it as 
much as possible, but allows its own sewers to pour in dye 
stuffs and other poisons. 
A few years ago there were analine works there which 
discharged their refuse into the river and struck the fish 
that came in contact with it with instant death; these have 
been removed, but I have noticed other dye stuffs in the 
discharge of the sewers which are probably more or less 
poisonous. 
Some think that the steamboats will scare salmon from 
ascending the river, but it seems hardly possible, for a 
gravid fish is not so easily scared and will often face 
dangers at spawning time that it would not at any other. 
“‘Piscator” says that the Croton is a good spawning 
grourd, and that he knows that ‘‘tue upper waters of the 
Hudson are splendidly adapted for salmon, to say nothing 
of many large brooks running into the river above Lansing- 
burgh.” chy 
The experiment is certainly worth trying, for inthat way 
only can it be determined, no matter how much we may 
write about it. Yours truly, FRED. MATumr. 
Oo 
FORESTS AND ANIMALS. 
——ee ae 
UROPEAN travellers in this country frequently al- 
« lude to the American forest as remarkable for its soli- 
tude and deficiency of animal life. The scarcity of ani- 
mals, I would remark, is not peculiar tothe American wild- 
erness. The same fact has been observed in extensive for. 
ests both in Europe and Asia; and in proportion as the 
traveler penetrates into their interior, he findsa smaller 
“number of animals of every species. Birds, insects, and 
quadrupeds will multiply, like human beings, in a certain 
ratio with the progress of agriculture, so long as there re- 
mains a sufficiency of wild wood to afford them a refuge 
anda home. They use the forests chiefly for shelter, and 
the open grounds for forage: the woods are their house 
and the meadows their farm. 
I had an opportunity for observing these facts very 
early in life, when making a pedestrian tour through sey- 
eral of the States. I commenced my journey in autumn, 
and, being alone, I was led to take notes of many things, 
- which, had any one accompanied me, would have escaped 
my observation. After passing a few weeks of the winter 
in Nashville, I directed my course through Tennessee and 
Virginia, and was often led through extensive ranges of 
forest. I never saw birds in any part of the United States 
so numerous as in the woods adjoining the city of Nash- 
ville, which was surrounded with immense corn fields and 
cotton plantations; but, while walking through the country 
I could not help observing the scarcity of birds and small 
quadrupeds in the woods, whenever I was ata long dis- 
tance from any village or habitation. Sometimes night 
would draw near before I reached a hamlet or farm-house 
where I might take lodging. On such occasions, the si- 
lence of the woods increased my anxiety, which was im- 
mediately relieved on hearing the cardinal or the mocking- 
bird, whose cheerful notes always indicated my approach 
to cultivated fields and farms. 
. That this scarcity of animal life is not peculiar to Ameri- 
can forests, we have the testimony of St. Pierre, who 
says of the singing birds: ‘‘ It is very remarkable that, all 
over the globe, theyNiscover an instinct which attracts 
them to the habitation of man. If there be but a single 
hut in the forest, all the singing birds in the vicinity come 
and settle around it. Nay, they are not to be found, ex- 
cept in places which are inhabited. I have traveled more 
than six hundred leagues through the forests of Russia, but 
‘never met with small birds except in the neighborhood of 
villages. On making the tour of fortified places in Russian 
Finland, with the general officers of the corps of engineers 
with which I served, we traveicd sometimes at the rate of 
twenty leagues a day without seeing on the road either vill- 
age or bird; but when we perceived the sparrows flutter- 
ing about we concluded we must be near some inhabited 
place. In this indication we were never once deceived.” 
It may be remarked, however, that birds and quad- 
rupeds do not seek the company of man when they congre- 
gate near his habitations, They are attracted by the in- 
many of our game birds. 

creased amount of their means of subsistence that follows 
the cultivation of the land. The granivorous birds, no less 
than the insect eaters, are benefited by the extension of ag- 
riculture. Even if no cereal grains are raised, the culti- 
vated fields would supply them, in the product of weeds 
alone, more sustenance than a hundred times the same 
area in the forest, 
white men in this country, birds and small quadrupeds 
must have congregated chiefly about the wooded borders 
of prairies, on the banks of rivers, in fens and cranberry 
meadows, and around the villages of red men. 
America was colonized and occupied by civilized people, 
and the forests were swept away with a rapidity unpreve- 
dented in the history of man. Every pioneer was a hun- 
ter, provided with guns and ammunition; every male mem- 
ber of his family over seven years of age was a gunner and 
a trapper. 
The sparse inhabitants of the forest, which, if unmolested— 
as in the early period of European civilization—would have 
multiplied in proportion to their increased means of subsis- 
tence, have been, on the contrary, shot by the gunner, en- 
snared by the trapper, and wantonly destroyed by boys for 
amusement, 
ted. 
until some species have been nearly extermi- 
searce than they were in the primitive forest. The small 
birds alone whose prolific habits and diminuative size were 
their protection have greatly multipled. 
There are many species of birds which we associate with 
the wild-wood, because they breed and find shelter there: 
but if we watched their habits, we would learn that even 
these solitary birds make the cultivated grounds their princi- 
pal feeding-places. Such are the quail, partridge, and very 
The quail and the partridge are 
omnivorous, but, like our common poultry are more eager 
to seize a grub or an insect than a grain of corn. A potato 
field is hardly less valuable to a flock of quails than a field 
of corn, and affords more sustenance to the snipe and the 
woodcock, than any other grounds. But these birds, as 
well as others, have diminished as those natural advantages 
have increased that should promote their multiplication. 
fiven our sylvias and thrushes, the most timid of all the 
winged tribe, birds hardly ever seen, except in lonely wood 
multiply with the clearings of the country, and the in- 
creased abundance of their insect food. 
thrushes, that shun the presence of man, and will become 
silent in their musical evening chants if the rustling of the 
bushes indicates the approach of the human footstep, are 
more numerous in the woods of Cambridge, than in any 
other part of the country. These are chiefly of maple 
filled with underbrush, and afford the birds a harbor and a 
shelter, while the adjoining fields, in a state of the highest 
tillage, supply them plentifully with their natural food, con- 
sisting of worms and the larve of insects. The timid 
habits of these solitary birds are their chief protection. They 
will not expose themselves to observation; and, on the ap- 
proach of a human being, they flee to the woods where 
they arc concealed from the youths who destroy all sorts 
of small game. Birds of this species continue to grow 
more numerous, while the red thrush and cat bird are con- 
stantly diminishing in numbers, because they breed outside 
of the wood, where they are easily discovered.— Woods and 
By- Ways 6f New England. 
——_——<to 
INSECT AND ANIMAL MEDICINE, 
+ 
NSECTS once formed a class of medicines, considered 
very effective in certain cases, and time was when the 
doctor would order a dose of three gnats or three drops of 
lady-bird milk, just as he might order three grains of calo- 
mel in our day. Wood-lice, ants, and beetles used to be 
prescribed for the toothache. The sacred beetle is eaten 
by the women of Egypt and regarded as an emblem of fer- 
tility. The oil-beetle exudes a deep yellow oil from the 
joints of the legs, which was esteemed diuretic and used in 
rheumatic complaints. In some cases the effects attributed 
to these curious remedies may possibly be produced by 
them, as fcr instance when Turkish women eat, cooked 
with butter, the blaps suleata (a sort of beetle) with a view 
to the development of fat; but when the same remedy is re- 
presented as an antidote against earache and the sting of 
, 
the scorpion, we are less inclined to believe in its efficacy. | 
In Atwood’s “‘Historv of Dominica” we are told that the 
fat of snakes is esteemed an excellent remedy for rheuma- 
tism and sprains; and by the vulgar in Persia a hard green 
substance about the size of a bean, found in the body of a 
certain species of serpent, is reckoned an infallible cure for 
the bites of venomous reptiles. Among the ancients ser- 
pents’ flesh was in high repute as a medicament, and was 
also used for food, like the flesh of the turtle. On the con- 
tinent of Europe vipers have still a place in the popular 
pharmacopoeia, and Mr. Simmonds asserts that the Italians 
to this day “occasionally regale themselves with a jelly 
made of stewed vipers.” In Guatemala lizards eaten alive 
are supposed to cure cancer. 
As late as 1618 lion’s fat belonged to the materia medica 
of the British pharmacopwia. Among the ancients, Galen 
prescribed it as an antidote for poisons. The smell of it 
was said to drive away serpents. The Roman physicians 
had great faith in remedies derived from this animal. 
Pliny enumerates the following: First, as a cosmetic, the 
fat mixed with oil of roses gives delicacy to the complex-' 
ion; and secondly, as an unguent, it cures affections of the 
joints. The gall mixed with water cured weak eyes; mixed 
with the fat, and taken internally, it wasa remedy for 
epilepsy. Quartan fever was cured by giving to the patient 
the heart roasted, but quotidian fevers were treated with 
the fat and oil of 10ses. The natives of the Malay peninsula 
eat tiger flesh, believing it to be a specific for ail diseases, 
besides imparting to the one who pertakes of it the animal’s 
courage and sagacity. 
Discarded from the service of the physician, a few mol- 
lusks have found a resting place in the popular materia 
medica. Slugs and snails were anciently and in some parts 
are to this day a popular remedy in constimptive complaints. 
They are sometimes made into a mucilaginous broth; some- 
times swallowed raw. Snails are to this day kept on sale 
in London markets for this purpose. 
——_——— ee 
THE ART OF FRYING FISH. 
——_+>__—_. 
EVERAL kinds of fish are fried when small: such as 
small trouts or troutlets, carps, tench, sun-fish, pike, 
pickerel, flounders, white-fish, black and blue-fish, perch, 
porgy, mullet, weak-fish, herring, bass, and the like, and 
smelts, which never grow above the frying size. 
When fish or anything else is cooked in a frying-pan 
Before there were any settlements of 
Instead of increasing in a ratio with the supplies of 
their natural food, many tribes of them are now more 
The vesper 
with just fat enough to prevent it from burning, it is not 
fried but swutéd, there being two very distinct ways of 
frying. To fry, means to cook fish or something else im- 
mersed in boiling fat. To sauté, means to cook fish or 
something else with just enough fat to merely cover the 
bottom of the pan; for instance, small fishes are fried, but 
omelets are sawtéd; potatoes are fried, but parsnips are sautéd. 
Many inexperienced cooks make mistakes on that account; 
they read in some cook books that such article of food is 
good fried, and set to frying it when it should be sautéd and 
vice VErsM. 
The fat skimmed from the surface of broth, which is 
beef suet, the trimmings of steaks or roasting pieces of 
beef melted as directed below, are better for frying pur- 
poses than lard, not flying all over as lard does. 
The fat skimmed from trimmings or from around the 
kidneys of beef, is cut in small pieces, put in an iron pot, 
and sect on a rather slow fire. As soon as it begins to melt, 
ladle off the melted part and turn it into a stone or crockery 
jar, which you cover when cold. Put it away in a’cool, 
dry and dark place. A careful cook never needs lard for 
frying purposes, but has always more fat than is necessary, 
out of boiling or roasting pieces, and that skimmed on the 
top of broth, sauces and gravies. Some cooks will not take 
the trouble to melt it when the mistress allows as much 
lard and butter as is asked for. 
It is an error to believe that by using much fat to fry, 
the articles fried will taste greasy; if there is not fat enough 
in the pan to completely immerse the objects fried, they 
will certainly taste greasy. It will be the same if the fat is 
not heated enough. It is heated enough when jets of smoke 
ooze out of it, or, when on throwing drops of water in o it, 
it makes a crackling noise. 
When the fat is hot enough, the article that is to be fried 
is dropped into it, and stirred gently now and then with a 
skimmer. When done, it is taken off the pan with the skim- 
mer and turned into a colander, which should rest on a 
dish or bowl to receive the fat that may drop from it. 
If the article to be fried is not completely immersed in 
the fat, the part not immersed will absorb fat, and, as stated 
above, will taste greasy; but if there is fat enough to cover 
it entirely, the intensity of the heat closes the pores, car- 
bonizing the exterior of the article, as it were, and prevent- 
ing it from absorbing any fat. 
if the articles to be fried be tender and somewhat brittle, 
they are put in a wire basket or perforated double bottom 
made for that purpose, and the basket is plunged into the 
fat. The basket is raisea when the articles are fried, and 
held over the pan to let the fat drop; they are then taken 
carefully out of it, placed on a dish, sprinkled with salt, 
and served hot. 
When the frying is done, the pan is put away for a few 
minutes to allow the particles of solid matter that may be 
in it to fall to the bottom of the frying-pan; then it is turn- 
ed ivto the jar, gently and slowly, ro as to retain those par- 
ticles in the bottom, and it is put away for another time,— 
Prof. Pierre Blot in To-day. 
—<j-0<—— 
OURVATHEBRTIECS: 
Sesh g eae 
O have been an honorary secretary of an athletic club 
gh meeting, and to have ‘‘pulled off” not one but many 
of those meetings successfully, argues an amount of zeal 
and activity and a genius for administration in a man which 
ought to render him an object of admiration. But if an 
honorary secretary of a great athletic celebration is re- 
quired to display an unwonted capacity for business and 
organization, what shall we say of, and what praise bestow 
upon, a functionary of that kind who combines with the 
duties of his oftice those other and far more arduous ones 
of honorary treasurer also ? 
For be it known that though our club was only that of a 
large school or college—if you like that title better, as did 
not a few of the parents of the alwmni—our sports, from 
the uniform success that had invariably attended former 
celebrations, had assumed such colossal proportions as re- 
garded the number of ‘‘events” to be competed for, and 
were held in such high repute by the inhabitants of the 
town, that the better part of two days was taken up before 
we could bring them toa conclusion. So interested, in- 
deed, were the principal tradesmen of the town in the suc- 
cess of our sports that many of the more enthusiastic 
among them actually closed their shops during the celebra- 
tion; and, what was of far more consequence to.us, sent us 
such a plentiful supply of articles from their stock as prizes 
for the ‘‘youthful athletes,” that the treasurer found him-, 
self encumbered with an absolute embarras de richesses, and 
was sorely puzzled in the matter otf the distribution of 
these costly presents. 
Of course, the treasurer never refused anything gratuit- 
ously presented by an enterprising tradesman, but the mis- 
fortune was that the presents were all too frequently of a 
kind utterly unfitted for presentation to a youthful and 
successful athlete. One man would send a cornopean and 
case, but though the instrument was the undoubted manu- 
facture of the most eminent makers, though a better could 
not be had for love or money, this particular kind of prize 
was never valued at its true worth, and its lucky recipient 
was almost always one whose savage breast music had no 
charms to soothe. Another tradesman would contribute a 
writing desk, a photographic album, or perhaps that now 
happily obsolete abomination, a postage stamp album. 
These articles, it is hardly necessary to remark, found no 
favor among the stalwart competitors at our athletic sports, 
reminding them, as they did, too strongly of those higher 
and more intellectual pursuits from which they were enjoy- 
ing a temporary release. 
No difficulty was ever experienced with the jeweller and 
the saddler; everything those gentlemen supplied, even 
down to shirt studs and spurs and leathers, always found a 
conspicuous position on the prize list ; and, as it soon oozed 
out, in spite of every precaution against such surreptitiously 
acquired knowledge, to what particular competitions prizes 
of such inestimable value would be awarded, the number 
of competitors for those events was considerably greater 
than for most of the others. For the grand steeplechase— 
a race, by the way, which for a long time, in deference to 
the wish of constituted authorities, we were reluctantly 
and foolishly compelled to describe as ‘‘a race with leaps” 
—in addition to the gold-mounted cutting-whip and spurs 
and leathers, there was also adjudged a silver medal em- 
blazoned with the school arms, and for this race there was 
always alarge entry; but it is singular what little value 
was set upon the medal. It was quite impossible, how- 
ever, to smuggle any other kind of prize into this race, the 

pitee de résistance, so to speak, of the entire meeting.—Gen- 
tlemen’s Magazine, 
