Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 109, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 May 1913 — Top of the Sea. [ARTICLE]

Top of the Sea.

There are many pleasant pursuits open to the sea fisherman besides fishing. “In Sea-Fishing,” Mr. C. O. MlnchIn tells of the interest of the plankton, or floating life of the ocean. The upper waters contain eggs of fishes; crustaceans in their larval stages, and hosts of various things too numerous to catalogue, many of which are of great beauty both of form and color. It requires no hard labor and no costly apparatus to collect, for a tow' net is easily made and as easily worked. A ring of stouts brass or painted iron wire about a foot tn diameter is fitted to the mouth of a bag of fine muslin some two feet long. This is suspended evenly by three or four cords of equal length to an ordinary hand-line, and towed behind a boat moving not faster than a mile an hour, or lowered from the end of a pier when the tide is flowing. '■ At intervals the net can be taken up, and the contents washed, out into • a large pickle bottle of clear sea water. Then they can be picked oqt, one by one, with a glas tube, or pipette, and transferred to a small vial of spirits for preservation and examination at leisure. None of them will live out of the sea. Many can be well examined with a strong hand magnifying glass, but others, such as the fish eggs, require the powers of a microscope.—Youth's Companion.