o04 Recent Literature. Loct. 



dealing with the Pigeons, the scarcity of biographical detail, to which 

 attention was called in our notice of this part, we find was due to the fact 

 that almost nothing is yet known of the life histories of the species thus 

 seemingly neglected. The present Part indicates that the work is to be 

 emphatically revisionary as regards questions of nomenclature and the 

 status of forms belonging to the Australian Avifauna. — J. A. A. 



Pearl on the Relative Conspicuousness of Barred and Self-Colored 

 Fowls. 1 — In this paper are presented statistics of the fowls killed by 

 natural enemies at the Maine Agricultural Experiment Station in 1909. 

 The fowls were Barred Plymouth Rocks, Cornish Indian Games and 

 crosses of these forms. Both the games and crosses were practically 

 self or unicolored birds. The author comments on a note by Davenport 2 

 to the effect that of 24 chicks killed by crows in one afternoon at Cold 

 Spring Harbor, Long Island, all but one were unicolored. Davenport's 

 conclusion on the acknowledged fragmentary data was that the self-colors 

 of poultry tend to be eliminated by the natural enemies and that pencilled 

 birds are relatively immune from attack because relatively inconspicuous. 

 Doctor Pearl agrees with the final phrase of this conclusion and presents 

 four reproductions of photographs which strikingly illustrate the greater 

 conspicuousness of the unicolored birds, at least under ordinary circum- 

 stances. 



Davenport's conclusion will comfort those who believe in the protective 

 value of color patterns which render animals inconspicuous to the human 

 eye, but it is based on a single observation which for many reasons may have 

 been misleading. Doctor Pearl however gives the proportions of barred 

 and unicolored fowls among a total of 325, captured in one year by natural 

 enemies from a flock of 3,343 at the Maine Agricultural Experiment 

 Station. The natural enemies were rats, skunks, foxes, crows, hawks, 

 and cats. Of the total number of birds 10.05 per cent were self-colored. 

 Of all the eliminated birds 10.77 per cent were self-colored. 



Of the self-colored birds 1.79 per cent were eliminated by recorded 

 enemies (chiefly rats). Of the barred birds 2.26 per cent were eliminated 

 by recorded enemies. 



Of the self-colored birds 8.63 per cent were eliminated by unrecorded 

 enemies (chiefly predaceous birds). 



Of the barred birds 7.38 per cent were eliminated by unrecorded enemies. 

 In other words, barred and self-colored chickens were captured by natural 

 enemies about in proportion to their total numbers in the flock. 



The author concludes that for the time and place under consideration, 

 the relative inconspicuousness of the barred color pattern afforded its 

 possessors no great or striking protection against elimination by natural 

 enemies. 



i Am Nat., XLV, No. 50, Feb., 1911, pp. 107-117. 

 2 Nature, Vol. 78, 1908, p. 101. 



