122 



NATURE 



{June 5, 1879 



spots of red and black upon particular parts, wera exceedingly 

 bright and beautiful. When one compared the whole appear- 

 ance to that of a clean fish, it was wretched and disagree- 

 able ; it was lank ; the belly empty, flabby, and of ?. dirty 

 yellow ; the jaws at a considerable distance in the mi Idle, 

 the under jaw with a large protuberance standing perpendicular 

 upon the extremity ; the upper jaw with a hole almost quite 

 through (and I am told in some quite through), in which, when 

 the jaws were shut,the protuberance lodged. Not one fin entire ; 

 the scales and skin being in many places destroyed, presented 

 the appearance of foul ulcers. The gills were full of the Lernaa 

 salmonca: ; such salmon are called Kipper, or foul fish. 



The cruves in the ri\'er Devron are (following the windings of 

 the river), about a mile and a half from the sea. In the sandy 

 places below the cruves, where there is a sufficient depth of 

 water, a great many salmon spawn. In those places they are 

 seen raising considerable hills of sand, probably to cover and 

 protect the spawn.' They are likewise seen frequently pushing 

 and striking one another ; and the fishermen assert that they 

 have many battles : their conjecture is that the battles are occa- 

 sioned by the males endeavouring to get at the spawn in order 

 to devour it, and the females endeavouring to defend it. About 

 these hilh they remain during the winter, and until the young fry 

 appear, unless forced off by a torrent, probably in order to keep 

 the hills in repair and to defend the spawn from the many 

 enemies ready to attack it. Quare, — Are not the form of the 

 jaws, the foul ulcers in the skin, and the destruction of the fins 

 owing to the above-mentioned operations? Qucere, — If salmon 

 spawned in the sea, would they not be found more or less in the 

 condition of kipper? But in this condition they are never found 

 out of the rivers. 



Linnaeus says of the Lern^a Salmonea : " Habitat in branchiis 

 salmonum ; ergo etiam marina : " this latter is certainly a mis- 

 take ; for these Lernaa are never found with us out of the rivers ; 

 and several sensible fishermen have assured me, that salt water 

 proves absolute destruction to these animals. 



Salmon, at a certain time during their stay in the sea, are in- 

 fested by another animal of that genus, called by Linrusus MoNO- 

 CULUS, which is as really a marine, as the other is a fresh-water 

 animal. This species seems to me to be undescribed by authors 

 and very distinct from the AT. pitdnus of Linnaus, which it in 

 some measure resembles. In a few hours after a salmon has 

 entered the river, not one of these MoNOCULi are to be found 

 upon it. Qutrre, — Have we not in these vermes a provision 

 made by the Author of Nature for forcing the salmon from the 

 sea into our rivers, and from the rivers back again into the sea ? 



Inherited Memory 



Yoi;r correspondent "A. B." has propounded a theory which 

 would satisfactorily explain a good many facts in natural history 

 which have hitherto been extremely perplexing. I am strongly 

 inclined to believe that in some of our birds, at any rate, the 

 knowledge of localities i, inherited. About thirty years ago I 

 lived at a farmhouse, my father's home ; the house stood alone 

 in the country ; my father also occupied some premises in a 

 village, about half a mile distant. On these premises there was 

 a large, very old dovecot containing blue rock pigeons. 



My brothers and I wished to establish a similar dove-cot at 

 the farm, and prepared a suitable room for the purpose. In 

 the first instance we caught, one winter's night, about fifty of 

 the old rock pigeons ; these we confined for five or six weeks, 

 but when liberated they of course flew straight home. We next 

 took a number of fledged young ones out of the nests. These 

 had never been outside the old dove-cot, but when sufficiently 

 strong they all flew away, as the old ones had done. 



Discouraged, but still determined to succeed, we next bought 

 a number of tame pigeons, and when they began to sit we put 

 eggs of blue rocks under them, taking their own eggs away. 

 Several were reared ; but as soon as they were strong enough to 

 dispense with the care of their foster-mothers, they one after 

 another deserted them and returned to the ancestral dovecot. 

 A few years after this the premises where the old dove-cot 

 was situated were altered, and the way into the dove-cot quite 

 stopped up. The pigeons were sold and driven away. 



For nearly twenty years blue rocks continued to visit the old 



premises. Some of them built on a ledge in an old gateway, 



that being the place in which it was possible for them to find 



nest- room the nearest to the old dove-cot. These occurrences 



' Br. Zool. Ui. 4ta ed., p. 252. 



seem to point to remembrance of localities in the race as well as 

 in individuals, and "inherited memory" would, I think, best 

 account for all the fads of the case. James Ellis 



The Gynsills, Leicester 



A Golden Eagle and a Decoy — Audacity_of a Hawk 



Whilst staying a few days at Manhattan, a little town in 

 Kansas, I spent some hours in the office of a dentist. Dr. C. 

 Blackley, who is also an ornithologist, having stuffed a goodly 

 number of the birds of the state. He was then occupied with a 

 fine specimen of the common pelican {Pelicanus communis) one 

 of a flock of over a thousand that passed over the town in the 

 month of April, some of them alighting in the neighbouring 

 marshes. These birds are not unfrequent visitors to these far 

 inland regions, and I have known them shot and brought to me 

 from the alkali lakes in Colorado, both regions from 600 to 800 

 miles from the sea. The doctor told me an amusing incident of 

 a day's wild goose shooting in the vicinity. He took with him to 

 one of the ponds frequented by wild geese, a stuffed specimen of 

 the Canada goose, to act as a decoy. Having firmly planted his 

 bird in the sand with its wooden platform well covered over, he 

 lay behind the bushes awaiting a shot. Suddenly there was a 

 ru>h of wings, and like a flash of lightning a golden eagle swept 

 down on the decoy, knocking the bird over, and tearing out 

 some of the stuffing. The eagle then sat down near his prey, 

 staring with amazement at its remarkably quiescent character, as 

 well as at the strange wooden appendage attached to its claws. 

 Deeming there was something uncanny about such a goose, and 

 there might be danger in the neighbourhood, he prudently flew 

 away. Unfortunately a branch of a tree prevented the sports- 

 man from shooting the marauder. 



(I can vouch for the truth of this story ; the doctor showed the 

 goose and where it had been struck). 



A few days after this, when in the village of Morrison, 

 Colorado, I was struck with the audacity of one of our smallest 

 hawks. I was standing on a lumber pile in the middle of the 

 street, when I heard a scuffling of wings, and a squeaking ; the 

 latter proceeded from a small prairie squirrel, about the 

 size of a rat, who was making the best of his way to a 

 hole in the lumber, hotly pursued by a tiny hawk, whose 

 body was no larger than that of his prey. The squirrel just 

 escaped into the hole by the tip of his tail, the hawk unable to 

 stop the impetus of its onset, dashing right against the lumber- 

 pile, within six feet of where I was standing. I jumped down 

 in pursuit, but totally regardless of my presence, the plucky little 

 bird made another swoop at his prey, who had again made a 

 sally from another hole. I knocked the hawk down this time 

 with my hat, and the squirrel escaped under the wood pile. 

 This took place in the centre of a little village street, with 

 bystanders within a few yards of the occurrence. 



The hawk resembled the female sparrow-hawk {Falco 

 sparverius). A. Lakis 



School of Mines, Golden City, Colorado 



INTELLECT IN BRUTES 



NOW that the discussion on this subject in NATURE 

 seems to be running dry, perhaps a few conclud- 

 ing remarks by one who has not hitherto taken any part 

 in it may be admitted. 



The discussion was started by Mr. Nicols recording a 

 case of the gnawing of water-pipes by rats. This is not 

 at all an unusual thing for rats to do, and I cannot see 

 that the fact of their doing so, in order to obtain the water, 

 would imply so incredible an amount of sagacity as some 

 of the other writers in Nature appear to suppose. The 

 water can be heard within the pipe, and if the rats are 

 thirsty, it seems a sufficiently simple device to gnaw the 

 pipe. Of course it may be an open question whether 

 they gnaw the pipe for this purpose, or for the mere sake 

 of gnawing, or for any other purpose ; but that a rat 

 should have sufficient intelligence to gnaw through 

 a water-pipe, supposing the animal to require water 

 obtained in this way, I think there can be no doubt. 



The discussion was enlivened by Mr. Henslow introduc- 

 ing certain general propositions as to the features wherein 

 animal intelligence differs essentially from human, and it 



