THE ALBINO BROOK TROUT. 299 



game; in fact, he thinks the young are more lively than those of the brook trout. 

 Mr. Fullerton tested their gameness and ability to secure food by throwing 

 minnows to Scotch, German brown spotted, rainbow, native brook and albino 

 trout and steelhead salmon. The albino got their minnows quicker than the 

 other varieties. At St. Paul they have tried experiments in crossing back, taking 

 the female native brook trout and the male albino, also vice versa, but they have 

 never been able to propagate any white ones from this experiment. They always 

 tone back to the original. 



Commissioner Meehan, of the Department of Fisheries, State of Pennsylvania, 

 writes as follows: "Several years ago a few albino trout appeared in a hatchery 

 at Corry four or five years in succession. One year there were about one 

 hundred, but in other years there were not more than half a dozen. This was at 

 least twelve or fifteen years ago, when the annual output of the hatchery was 

 about a million and one half. Since then they have not appeared at Corry, 

 and there has never been any albinos at the other hatcheries. They were all hatched 

 from impounded fish eggs, and never from wild fish. You will notice from the 

 above that the percentage of albinos was very small. They were all pure albinos 

 with pink eyes. Apparently the albino thrived as well as the ordinary trout, 

 except that their growth was not as rapid. We have never had albinos among 

 fish other than trout. We are now raising about seven millions of trout annually, and 

 from the fact that we find no albinos among them their rarity is indicated." 



Hon. W. H. Venning, for twenty-two years Inspector of Fishing and Fish 

 Hatcheries in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, writes that he never saw an albino 

 trout, and that my letter asking for information was the first intimation he had 

 that such a fish existed. 



Correspondence with many noted fishermen indicates that if albinos exist 

 among wild fish they are rare, as none of these gentlemen ever saw one. 



(Jlbintsro and Color in Animal^. 



Albino is a term first applied by the Portuguese to the white negroes of West 

 Africa, but now applied to any individual in which there is a congenital deficiency 

 of pigment in the skin, hair, iris and choroid of the eye. The skin is abnormally 

 pale, the hair is white or pale flaxen, and the iris is pink. Animals thus 

 affected are albinos. The absence of pigment in the iris renders the eye of an 

 albino sensitive and partially blind in the sunlight. Mr. Livingstone Stone thought 

 that his albinos were blind ; but probably it was only the absence of pigment in the 

 iris which caused them to appear blind. Albino brown trout raised by the State 



