Birds and All Nature, Vol. VI, No. 3, October 1899

"There are many aquatic insects double brooded, or under favorable circumstances, of a succession of broods. Imitations of such can be used throughout the summer months. There are many insects that do not breed in water, yet are successful baits. As a rule, insects that appear in large numbers, whether they belong to land or water, are the proper ones for imitation. Solitary specimens, although dear to the heart of an entomologist, are eyed by the fish with haughty indifference. Water is a great attraction for all insect tribes. The banks of streams constitute the favorite hunting-ground for insect collectors, where they compete with the fish, those practical entomologists, in collecting. Some insects come to drink, others in search of prey, for insects are cannibals, while very many are the sport of the winds. It is probably the bright sheen of the water that draws the fluttering moths into its depths. All nocturnal insects have a strange infatuation for glistening light. What the attraction is for some is beyond the ken of mortals. A Tipulidæ bibri marci, or in piscatorial language, the hawthorn fly, an insect whose life is beneath the surface of the earth eleven months of the year, comes crawling, creeping out of the ground on warm June mornings appareled in new livery. After resting awhile on low herbage, all, as if guided by one impulse, fly to the nearest stream. We have kept those insects for weeks in confinement, and they would neither eat nor drink. But every morning for hours they congregate over streams. Keeping time with the ripple of the water, they hold a May dance; darting hither and thither, occasionally touching the water to go down the current, or else down the throat of a fish.

When these bright creatures are holding high carnival above, the trout positively refuse other enticement. The larvae of moths is a favorite fish food, and consequently successful bait. Hibernating larvae are drawn from their retreats in warm spring days, and continue the pilgrimage they commenced the previous fall. In their wild journeyings on and on before spinning the pupa shroud, they fall victims in attempting to cross streams.

Hairy caterpillars feeding on the trees are blown off by the winds, or their silken thread is broken, as they hang under the leaves in shelter from the rain. Imitations of those known to the American by the familiar term of hackles are to be used after winds or during rain storms; also that compromise between larvae and image known as the hackle fly. No bait has ever been used that has given as general satisfaction as this anomaly. It is a common remark that fish will not bite before rain. The reason is probably that food is never offered at such times. The natural instinct of the insect forbids its leaving the water or flying abroad if rain is threatening. The breathing-pores are situated on the outside of the body near the insertion of the wings. They are soon clogged and closed up by the water, and the down washed from their bodies; their wings draggle and become powerless, and they suffocate flying in midair. This is the reason winged insects on touching water drown so easily. Insects do not invariably appear at the same times. A cold spring will retard their development for months, while an unusually warm spring or summer will hasten their appearance. Insects in the water are the most affected by changes of temperature. Any guide for a fly-fisher would be almost useless unless this important point were remembered. English works can never become positive authorities for our climate. Insects which appear there in vast quantities are rare here, and vice versa. Some that are single-brooded there are doubled-brooded here. Some that appear there in one month visit us at another, while we have many alluring baits here that the classic waters of the British Isles would regard with bewildering amazement."

In fishing with worm for bait, good fishermen say, it is better to choose a still, cloudy day indicating rain, as the fish are then hungry for insects. An expert trout-fisher will begin at the head of a stream and fish down it, always keeping some distance from the bank to avoid alarming the fish.

The speckled beauty, as the brook trout is universally called, as a food fish is by many considered unsurpassed, the flesh being firm and well flavored. Others, however, regard it as only an occasional delicacy.

CUBA AND THE SPORTSMAN

DEER, WILD BOAR, AND MANY SPECIES OF GAME BIRDS FOUND IN ABUNDANCE – WATERS TEEM WITH FISH

WHILE Cuba offers such a haven to the invalid, it is a paradise to the sportsman, wild game and fish of all kinds being abundant.

Parties of gentlemen on horseback, with their pack of hounds, hunt the fleet-footed deer. It is a common thing for a small party to kill eight or ten deer in a day.

The wild boar is plentiful, and sometimes, if cornered, dangerous, especially the old master of the herd, called "un solitario," which will tear a dog to pieces or make a green hunter climb a tree; but a Cuban easily kills him with a machete. The island boar sometimes weighs 200 or 300 pounds and has huge tusks, often five or six inches in length. The meat of the female is much relished by the natives. Wild dogs and cats, wild cattle, horses, and jackasses abound. But the jutia, peculiar only to Cuba, which looks like a cross between a squirrel with a rat's tail and a rabbit, and which lives in the trees and feeds on nuts and leaves, is the great delight of the Cuban.

Fowls are in great numbers. Wild guinea hens and turkeys are found in flocks of from 25 to 100. The whistle of the quail and the flutter of the perdiz, or pheasant, are heard on all sides in the rural and mountain regions. Ducks in abundance come over from Florida in the winter and return with the spring. Wild pigeons, with their white tops and bodies of blue, larger somewhat than the domestic bird, offer, in hunting, the greatest sport to gentlemen who will be restrained within reason. In the early morning the pigeons generally go to feed on the mangle berries when ripe, and which grow by the sea or near some swampy place. I have known a party of three persons to kill 1,500 of the pigeons within a few hours. Robiches, tojosas, and guanaros are found in the thick woods.

Mockingbirds and blue-birds, orioles, turpials, negritos, parrots, and a thousand kinds of songsters and birds of brilliant plumage flit from tree to tree.

The naturalist Poey says there are 641 distinct species of fish in the Cuban waters. Among those that delight the sportsman are the red snapper, lista, manta, gallego, cubera, surela, and garfish. The sierra, which weighs from forty to sixty pounds, is extremely game, as is the ronco, so called because it snores when brought out of the water. For heavy sport, fishing for sharks, which are good for nothing, or the gusa, which weighs from 400 to 600 pounds and is excellent eating, offers abundant exercise. It is a daily occurrence to see schools of fish numbering from hundreds to many thousands, each fish weighing from one to four pounds, swimming around the bays and harbors waiting for a bait. Any American who enjoys good fishing can find his fondest dreams more than satisfied in Cuba.

Delicious shrimps, crabs, lobsters, oysters, and clams abound. The lobsters have no claws and weigh from two to eight pounds. They are caught at night in shallow places along the sandy beach, a torch, harpoon, and net being the necessary outfit. Some of the rivers abound in alligators, but few hunt them. —Field and Stream.

NIAGARA FALLS

NIAGARA FALLS, the grandest cataract in the world, belong in part to the state of New York. Here the water of the great lakes, west of Ontario, is poured over a precipitous cliff about 160 feet high in two immense sheets, called the American and Horseshoe falls, separated by Goat Island. These falls received the name Niagara from the aborigines, Ni-a-ga-ra meaning the "thunder of waters." The roar created by the fall can be heard, under favorable conditions, at a distance of fifteen miles. There are three distinct falls. The Horseshoe fall, so named on account of its crescent shape, is the largest, covering a distance of 2,000 feet and having a fall of 154 feet; the American fall, 660 feet, and the Central fall, 243 feet in width, each have a fall of 163 feet. The volume of water is perpetually the same, no amount of rain or snow making any apparent change. This is conceded to be the grandest natural feature in the world, providing a water power the limit of which is incalculable.

Many of our readers have visited the falls in the summer season and doubtless all of them have read descriptions of them, more or less disappointing; everyone is familiar with the numberless photographs and engravings that have been made of them. Of course, no adequate idea of them has ever been given to the imagination. The writer has seen them many times and must confess to a want of sympathy with that feeling of wonder and bewilderment which many people claim to experience when first beholding them. It would be interesting to compile a list, if it could be done, of exclamations made on first viewing Lake Erie, as it really is, tumbling over a gigantic cliff. Charles Dickens is reported to have been unable to utter a word for many seconds, and there does not appear to be an adjective of sufficient potentiality to hold the idea of its majesty. And yet there are falls greater than these in the world. Dr. Livingstone, alluding to Victoria Falls in Central Africa, declared that of all the wonders of the lands he had visited he had seen no such stupendous spectacle as they. The chasm into which a mile-wide sheet of water plunges has been plumbed to twice the depth of Niagara.

The Niagara River is the channel by which all the waters of the lakes flow toward the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It has a total descent of 330 feet. The interruption to navigation occasioned by the rapid descent of the Niagara River is overcome on the Canadian side by the Welland Canal; on the American side the communication between tide-water and the upper lakes was first effected by the Erie Canal. The river flows in a northerly direction with a swift current for the first two miles and then more gently, with a widening current, which divides as a portion passes on each side of Goat Island. As these unite below the island the stream spreads out, about two or three miles in width, and appears like a quiet lake studded with small, low islands. About sixteen miles from Lake Erie the river grows narrow and begins to descend with great velocity. This is the commencement of the rapids, which continue for about a mile, the water falling in this distance about fifty-two feet. The stream terminates below in a great cataract. At this point the river, making a curve from west to north, spreads out to an extreme width of 4,750 feet. Goat Island, which extends down to the brink of the cataract, occupies one-fourth of this space, leaving the river on the American side about 1,100 feet wide and on the Canadian side about double this width. A cave, called the Cave of the Winds, is formed behind the fall, into which, on the Canadian side, persons can enter and pass by a rough and slippery path toward Goat Island. As already stated, there are many cataracts which descend from greater heights. The sublimity of Niagara is in the vast power displayed by a mighty current flowing down the long rapids and finally plunging in one uniform sheet into the abyss below. Dangerous as it appears, the river is here crossed by small rowboats. For seven miles below the falls the narrow gorge continues, varying in width from 200 to 400 yards. The river then emerges at Lewiston, N. Y., having descended 104 feet from the foot of the cataract. A suspension bridge was constructed in 1855 by Mr. Roebling, for the passage of railway trains, and eighteen feet below the railway it also sustains a carriage and foot track. From this bridge a fine view is had of the falls. Other bridges have since been built, among them a cantilever.

Geologists say that the gorge through which the Niagara River flows below the falls bears evidence of having been excavated by the river itself. Within the present century changes have taken place by the falling down of masses of rock, the effect of which has been to cause a slight recession of the cataract and extend the gorge to the same distance upward toward Lake Erie. Table Rock, once a striking feature of the falls, has wholly disappeared. Father Hennepin made a sketch of the falls in 1678, a facsimile of which shows that many striking features have disappeared. In 1750 the falls were visited by Kalm, a Swedish naturalist, whose description of Niagara was published in 1751. He alludes to a rock having fallen down a few years previous and indicates the spot in his sketch. Lyell estimates the retrocession of the falls to be about a foot a year.

Of late years the extraordinary power of the falls has been adapted to the production of electricity, which has been distributed to various cities and towns within a radius of 100 miles. Street cars and machinery of every kind are run by them, and, by new devices and more powerful dynamos, it is believed the field for the successful utilization of this great force is almost without limit.

HOW THE WOODPECKER KNOWS

How does he know where to dig his hole,The woodpecker there, on the elm tree bole?How does he know what kind of a limbTo use for a drum, or to burrow in?How does he find where the young grubs grow —I'd like to know?The woodpecker flew to a maple limb,And drummed a tattoo that was fun for him."No breakfast here! It's too hard for that,"He said, as down on his tail he sat.Just listen to this: rrrrr rat-tat-tat.Away to the pear tree out of sight,With a cheery call and a jumping flight!He hopped around till he found a stub,Ah, here's the place to look for a grub!'Tis moist and dead rrrrr rub-dub-dub.To a branch of the apple tree Downy hied,And hung by his toes on the under side.'Twill be sunny here in this hollow trunk,It's dry and soft, with a heart of punk,Just the place for a nest! – rrrr runk-tunk-tunk."I see," said the boy, "just a tap or two,Then listen, as any bright boy might do.You can tell ripe melons and garden stuffIn the very same way – it's easy enough."– Youth's Companion.