° 1912 J Bryan, Yelloiv Canary of Midway Island. 339 



THE INTRODUCTION AND ACCLIMATIZATION OF THE 

 YELLOW CANARY ON MIDWAY ISLAND. 



BY WILLIAM ALANSON BRYAN. 



We are accustomed to look on the common Yellow Canary 

 {Fringilla canaria) and the numerous varieties that have been 

 artificially produced from it as a cage bird pure and simple. It is 

 the belief of many that through centuries of confinement and 

 domestication they have lost the power to sustaining themselves 

 should they be given their liberty and forced to shift for themselves 

 in the open. It is urged that through hundreds of generations they 

 have become so modified and adapted to cage environment that 

 liberty means nothing to them and that they must perish miserably 

 before they would be able to adapt themselves to the conditions 

 existing in the larger and freer world of which they see and know 

 so little. 



It is a matter of considerable satisfaction therefore to be able 

 to lay before the readers of 'The Auk' some of the facts kindly 

 supplied me by Mr. D. Morrison, through the courtesy of Captain 

 Piltz touching on the liberation and subsequent acclimatization 

 and establishment of a colony of yellow canaries on the little low 

 isolated island of Midway. 



For the benefit of those who may never have heard of Midway, 

 it may be well to state that the Hawaiian group as a matter of 

 convenience has been divided into the Windward or inhabited 

 islands and the Leeward or uninhabited chain. Midway belongs 

 to this latter division of the group and save Ocean Island, it is the 

 farthest removed from Oahu of the list of small low islands that 

 stretch away from Honolulu towards Japan in a northwesterly 

 direction. It is something over 1000 miles distant from Honolulu 

 and as its name implies it is near the geographical center of the 

 North Pacific for which reason it is now used as a relay station for 

 the Commercial Pacific Cable Company's wire across this great 

 ocean. 



As a matter of fact Midway is made up of two small patches of 

 sand known as Eastern and Sand Islands. These islets are sur- 



