FROM A SINNER'S DIARY. Monday-Rained. It's always pleasanter to go somewhere when it's pleasant. The eavespouts here in California run preciousness, like maple sugar evaporators at home, and it's bottled up for summer use and doled out by the teaspoonful for laundering hair.

Tuesday-As pretty a sunset as I ever saw. Red as blood, halfway up the sky-a peace emblem likely.

Wednesday-There goes a meadow lark. His voice sounds natural, but his words don't.

Thursday-Went to the San Gabriel Mission Play. After Father Junipero died off in Act Two I expected to get salvation and never sin any more; but after Act Three I saw him out smoking, and after I'd stood around and adored him awhile I knew I should go on in the same old way-no use striving to meet him when he ain't even dead yet.

Friday-Heard Schumann-Heinck. She looks at the admiring world across a (not always) calm Pacific bosom. Her face is as red as mine is in berry time when the 'phone is humming, "Can I have a bushel early in the morning, Nette?" and I'm trying to fill all the orders. And she mops it with a smaller, whiter handkerchief, though-and when she blows she blows real farmerishly. "Why, God bless her old heart!" it seems as if everybody must say, as soon as she heaves in sight. She does not shrink, from that time, but swells continuously. Her mouth will be closed so there's only room at one corner for the little blade of a penknife, yet the melody will be coming out like soap bubbles. She'll calmly watch it float to the ceiling, wheedle it down, and dive and catch it before it breaks. You'd like to live in direct range of

the pop-wide-open grins that she throws broadeast as freely as though they didn't cost $2.50. Saturday-Went to see the diving horse. She's 28 and has been diving 32 years, the man he said. And, I goll! She hates the whole show business, 'specially the girl in red tights that sets on 'er back. They escort her up into the wings and stand her with her hind feet way up, like a giraffe if his head was on the other end, so after awhile she has to jump, 'cause she never would on a level. 'N' she stands there 'n'wags 'er head, 'n' the man pertends she's bowin' at the audience, 'n' they clap 'n' yell, 'n' she's so begusted she licks out 'er tongue 'n' noses the net, 'n' wags ag'in, then more claps, 'n' she looks way down at the ornery water, 'n' takes her time. When the girl in red, 'n' the other one in red, 'n' the one in black, 'n' the clown dive, the snare drum tattoos while they pause on the brink 'n' the big drum hollers "Oh!" precisely with the splash. But no muffled, or other wise, drums fer her. She'd let 'em pound their infernal heads off while she c'nsidered. 'N' everybody knows she would. The man he says, "Old Powderface dives when she's ready. You can't hurry her." At that she thinks they're enjoyin' it too much, so she looks way down fer the last time 'n' begins to fall off; 'n' when she hangs way over, most straight, she kicks out enough so she won't 'light on 'er head, 'n' she 'n' the red girl go clear under 'n' come up snortin', begusteder 'n ever.

She's learned five other horses t' dive, but 'twas 'cause she hated 'em. She wouldn't learn such tomfoolery t' ennybuddy she liked.

Sunday-A man took me motoring among the Santa Ana orange, lemon and walnut groves. Saw a ranch with 109,000 acres in. The rancher's father won it on a horse race. It was then

worth a few cents an acre. The get-rich-quickwithout-work West! To-day you have $100,000; to-morrow you haven't street-car fare! This rancher sold 2,000 acres awhile ago on a contract, thinking the men couldn't pay for it. Wow! They now have 1,000 into lima beans and 1,000 into oranges and lemons, and have refused $2,000 an acre for it!

What ails me! The man explained the wondrous new school houses and I never saw 'em. But when he said: "You see they haven't the lawn fixed yet. It's into barley to kill out the Bermuda grass." "Show me some," I answered. "That's a new kind; whereas school houses and lawns are old." And he did, explaining it joint by joint, much to my interest. Sometimes I fairly think it pays to be nice to strangers, when the stranger is me. I was already corralled, lassoed and hog-tied, and this man branded "California" on me for life. Lynette Freemire.

HAVE been looking over back numbers of various sporting magazines and was surprised to see so few articles on ice fishing. I wonder what the reason is? It can't be that there are no articles written on this winter sport, for in some localities there are hundreds of men and boys who take part in this sport and surely some of them write up their experiences. I think the solution is that the editors think ice fishing pretty tame sport and refuse to print most of the articles. course I may not be right. I know it is great sport and am going to try and tell my readers, so that they can try it.

Of

First, I am going to describe the outfit that one needs, and then I will tell you of a trip that I made last winter and of the success that we had. The first thing is line. We used a medium heavy line, about the same as you would use on a pole for pickerel. I can't tell how much line you will need, as that will depend on the number of holes you cut and the depth of the lake or pond. The size of the hooks will depend on how large the fish run, about 1-O will be big enough for the average pickerel or pike. The hooks should be attached to the line with a wire leader, as pickerel will wear the line off after you catch a few.

Signals are next in order, and you may purchase them of your sporting goods dealer, or make them yourself. They can be made out of

PART OF OUR OUTFIT.

umbrella ribs, but an easier way is to take a piece of wood about the same as is used on bunches of shingles, perhaps a little longer. Nail a piece at right angles to this and in the middle of it. Have the end that you put the flag on, about ten inches long and the end that you attach the line to about three inches long. You should have eight or ten of these.

The best bait for pickerel is live minnows; you can get these of some fisherman that lives near the lake, or of your sporting goods dealer, or you may be able to get them yourself. Next is a shovel, ax and ice chisel. One can cut a hole with an ax; but if the ice is eighteen or twenty inches thick, it is a great deal easier to do it with an ice chisel. You should have some kind of a skimmer to clear the ice out of the hole; one can be made out of an old pan by punching a lot of holes in the bottom, or you can use a pail.

Now if there is a lot of snow on the ice, deep snow, snow-shoes are handy; if the ice is smooth, skates are fine if you can skate. If you can't skate, it is well enough to have ice creepers on your rubbers, as they will save you from a tumble.

Just a word about clothing. If it is a cold day and you are fishing in an exposed place, you want to put on all the clothes you can stand up under. A heavy pair of woolen pants and a heavy sweater and mackinaw will keep the cold out, a cap that covers the ears and woolen mittens or gloves for the hands. For footwear, about two or three pairs of woolen stockings and leather top rubber shoes are about the best thing. Of course there are days when one may fish in his shirt-sleeves; but on a warm day you are more likely to get wet, so it is better to have a cold day for fishing.

I think I have made it clear, what one needs for an outfit for ice fishing; of course one may vary it to suit himself and the location.

One day this winter I received a letter from my hunting and fishing chum, Jack. He said fishing was good in the lake and for me to come up as soon as I could. He said to bring nothing but a camera, as he had everything else. Two days after receiving the letter I was at Jack's house, ready for a fishing trip. The lake was about two miles from Jack's house and he suggested that we make the trip on snow-shoes, as the snow was good depth and we would need them on the lake. All we had to carry was some food, as Jack had hired a cottage on the shores of the lake for the winter, and the outfit was all there.

We planned to stay over night and come back the next afternoon. We left Jack's house about eight o'clock in the forenoon and I tell you it was fine tramping over the fields and pastures. after being inside for weeks.

It was a little warmer than I liked for snow

A FAIR-SIZED PIKE.

WAITING FOR A BITE.

We

shoeing; but for all that we enjoyed it. found the cottage just as Jack had left it a week before. We soon had a fire going in the kitchen stove and we thought we would get cur dinner early and then have a long afternoon for fishing. We both got busy preparing dinner and soon had it ready. How good it tasted! Baked beans (the home kind that we brought from Jack's), bread, butter, doughnuts and a mince-pie; coffee and real cream, also from Jacks. Jack farms some when he isn't hunting and fishing. We didn't hurry about our eating, if there were six and eight pound pickerel out in the lake waiting to be caught. Jack said we would leave the dishes until night, as we would have a long evening and one could wash them while the other was getting supper.

For our fishing operations we selected a place in front of the cottage and cut twelve holes; we didn't need heavy sweaters on while we were doing that.

The ice was about twenty inches thick. We used the ax to start with and finished with the ice-chisel. One has to be very careful, or he will lose the chisel. Your hand will get cramped and you are liable to let go. The way I did was to tie a cord into the middle and around my wrist and it saved the chisel from going in

once.

After we got the holes all cut and the ice

CUTTING THE HOLE IN THE ICE.

MINK FARMING IN MAINE.

VEN since the original garment worn in the Garden of Eden became inadequate for human needs, furs have been constantly in use as a covering for the human body. The prehistoric man, pursuing his quarry with primitive weapons, robbed it of its skin and fashioned rude garments to protect, himself against the inclemencies of the weather, or decorated his new robe with ornaments to proclaim his rank and prowess. In the Middle Ages the lawmakers wore ermine and sable; the wealthy landlord added furs to his wardrobe; the Norseman threw a shaggy hide about him as he went forth to battle, or tanned it into a shield to resist the blows of an antagonist.

It is no wonder that, with the immense operations of the Dutch fur trader, the Hudson's Bay Company, the exploiting of the Northwestern territory and the constant trapping of wild animals by cunning devices and alluring baits for the past hundred years or more in the United States, that we read as a plain and simple item of news in a daily publication that the skin of a silver black fox recently sold for $2,700, although weighing no more than a pound. A fur dealer of wide repute who is forced to advertise extensively to secure material, states it as his belief that in five to ten years there will not be more than a third of the wild fur bearing animals in existence there are today; and this means more than is evident on the surface. Not until recently has the attention of the governments of this country and Canada been drawn officially to the need for artificial propagation of fur bearers, but they have awakened to the fact that this is an extremely profitable business if rightly conducted, and after a complete survey, have issued bulletins endorsing the proposition of fur farming and extending valuable information to those desiring to engage in the business.

During the past eight or ten years there has been a rush, especially in the western section of New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island to get into the fox farming business, and hundreds of companies have risen, flourished and made enormous profits in selling breeders. It is evident that during this time scarcely any pelts have been purchased. It has been as far as Canada and eastern Maine is concerned, a race to produce good breeding animals to sell to some other prospective fur rancher; he to transfer their progeny to another, and so on, all along the line. This made the element of speculation a large one and big fortunes from a single pair are a fact that cannot be controverted.

In all this time, however, the would-be fur farmers have overlooked, in their eagerness to breed valuable fox families, one of the most

sought-for fur bearing animals-the mink, although its possibilities were touched upon by the government bbooklets issued by Canada and the United States in 1913-14. During the former years continued reports of success in breeding mink gained circulation. Ranch-bred mink are much more tractable than wild ones and bring double prices. It did not need any government endorsement to show that large profits could be made if breeding could be successfully carried on, and a few mink ranches have begun to appear along the Canadian and State of Maine border. It is still of course, an infant industry, and partly an embryo proposition as yet, because not enough mink have been reared to standardize the prizes for breeders, which are. as might be expected, quite high, as a breeding mink is estimated to have an earning capacity of $50 a year providing her young can be sold on a pelt basis alone.

A LEAP FOR A MEAL.

Mink breeding is apparently the poor man's opportunity, for there are not enough ranchraised breeding-minks to be purchased to start

a capitalistic business. In other words, large sums of money cannot be invested in it at present.

While very difficult to breed from the wild state, ranch-raised mink breed very readily. It was this knowledge that caused a native of Maine, Franklin C. Tibbetts, to undertake the business with the help of a small company organized and incorporated in January, 1915. At first blush it might have seemed impossible to produce mink under the circumstances. Mr. Tibbett's home sits within a few feet of the electric car tracks and is surrounded by other houses. He had, however, a fair sized lot in

ANTICIPATION.

the rear, and after constructing a ten-foot wire enclosure, with the bottom wired under ground at right angles to a distance of two feet from the walls, he procured twenty ranch mink from different sources, from which he has now a family, old and young, of sixty; an increase of two hundred per cent. Good prices have been offered for any and all these animals, but they have been refused, as Mr. Tibbetts intends to thoroughly go into the business of mink ranching, having come to the conclusion that there is more money and less risk in this branch of the fur business than in fox farming.

Mr. Tibbett gives his entire attention to the little animals, and has discovered things about their nature that the Government fails to mention in its booklets. They do not make good pets; they are vicious among themselves and born "scrappers," as well as being hoggish to a great degree. The smallest mink will drop his piece of raw meat to try and steal the portion of another, only to have his own filched by a brother, and buried in a remote corner, from which, perhaps it may be dragged a moment later by a fourth.

The mink is one of the puzzles of the animal

WET. BUT HUNGRY.

kingdom, and he rarely does what is expected of him. On occasions he will put his queer little face close to yours, while coiled up, snakelike, with one or two others in a nest of hay and look you fairly in the eye with a ludicrously thoughtful air. At other times at the approach of a human he will rush furiously about the enclost re and start a general scamper, or dart into a hole in the ground, immediately turning around and peering out as if to ask "What are you going to do about it?" He can transform himself into half a dozen shapes. Naturally long and lithe, he can bristle his body into a fretful, brushy mass, or he can pull his length into half, and lean up against the wire, looking like a stick of stove wood, with feet as knots and his nose resembling the slash of an unskillfully cut tree. He can stretch almost unbelievably, and can go through a crack. He can jump like a squirrel, or act as clumsy as a

mud turtle.

He is the chameleon of the fur bearers; a comedian and a puzzle.

In none of its books on the subject of fur farming has the Government ever presented any adequate pictures of mink, and it is no easy piece of work to secure them. The pictures presented in this issue of Fur News were obtained after incredible trouble, the wasting of dozens of plates and hours of time. On repeated occasions the camera man was either too quick or too slow, but he persisted, until he secured several characteristic pictures, as well as some freakish ones.

Mr. Tibbetts reads everything printed on the subject of fur ranching. He says that the principal difficulty in breeding mink is that the males are apt to kill the females in the mating season but that he has thus far escaped any casualties from this cause. As his first pair were bred from domesticated or ranch-raised animals, he thinks this may have had something to do with i. "Many amateurs," says Mr. Tibbetts "have killed their mink with kindness and attention. They should of course, have plenty of room. fresh water in large quantities and feeding time should be regular. Family rows need not be interfered with often, as they are spasmodic and usually terminate quickly, except in the breeding season, when a sharp watch must be kent over them."

CONTEMPLATING AN EASY VICTIM.

Fish, raw meat and small live animals, mice, rats or rabbits, are the foods most employed, and Mr. Tibbetts has a Belgian hare pen close by. which affords food for his sixty sharp-toothed charges from time to time. The owner has dabbled

IN A STIFF, AWKWARD POSE.

in raccoon breeding and has some fine and extremely tame pets, but has devoted his entire time for the past nine months to mink as a Lusiness and feels that his "ranch" in the heart of a city of 60,000 people promises to be a succcss. He "farms" or cares for mink owned by other ranchers, taking as his pay a percentage of the increase. In this way he hopes to build up a steady income, although not owning the parent mink. This ranch is the only one in the western end of the State and is attracting much attention from many who have been or expect to be engaged in the fur raising industry. Mr. Tibbetts' mink family is increasing; his animals are in the best of health. Sooner or later he is going to see their value greatly enhanced, and in the meantime he feels that there is no danger of a glut in the mink market or a decline in the demand, so that he is satisfied to let well enough alone.

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