Santa Catalina, more commonly called "Catalina," lies twenty-five miles off the coast of southern California. It is twenty miles long, and between two and three miles wide. It was first inhabited by Indians, of whom many relics and skulls and bones have been found. The principal town, called Avalon, is situated near the southern part of the island in a little cove about a mile wide. The water is so clear that you can see the rocks and fish one hundred feet below the surface—the rocks with their green moss waving to and fro with the tide, while gold and other fish swim lazily about. There is a marble called Catalina which is of grayish color, and is used in building some of our finest business blocks in Los Angeles. This marble is more or less transparent, and is said to be the only kind of hard stone with that peculiarity. Two years ago Catalina was hardly heard of, but now there often are, in summer, five thousand people there.
A. Lazarus, R.T.K.
Los Angeles.
A Young Naturalist's Outing.
Last summer I spent my vacation in Noank, Conn. My chief amusement was fishing. Noank is a fishing-village, and there are many large lobster-cars about. Every day the dead lobsters in the cars were taken out and thrown overboard, forming a great attraction to multitudes of eels. Almost every night some of the boys went eeling off the cars, and came home with a bucket half full of the wriggling things. Every time I came to the house with some eels the boarders would declare, after a glance into my bucket, that they would never eat another eel as long as they lived.
While at Groton, Conn., a gentleman said he'd never eat eel. One morning the landlord asked him if he would have some blue-fish. The gentleman said he would, and found the fish so good that he asked for a second plate. Suddenly the landlord exclaimed, "Sakes alive, man, I have given you eel instead of blue-fish!" The table shouted with laughter, and the gentleman did not appear again until supper-time. The worst of eeling is that eels tangle your line, and when you pick up the eel to get the line off him you have the pleasure of seeing him slip through your fingers. The Noank boys have a way of holding eels by simply pinching them behind the eyes with the thumb and first finger. By taking a boat and anchoring about five hundred feet from the shore I caught flounders, sea-bass, porgies, and now and then an eel. Flounders are hard to catch, because of a bone in their mouth which prevents the hook from getting a good grip. When I did not feel like fishing from a boat I gathered a pocketful of periwinkles, and procuring a small stone to crack them with, went fishing for cunners off some wharf. The cunner is a fish about the size, shape, and color of a perch.
Albert W. Atwater.
Springfield, Mass.
