Dec. 1, 1887. j 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



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INSTINCT. 



TN the Forest and Stream of Nov. 10, "Potomac" an- 

 J_ swers the question "What is instinct?" by saying that 

 "it is merely an inheritance born of and embodying the 

 experience of ancestors." Instinct is unquestionably an 

 inheritance, and to a certain extent is born of and em- 

 bodies the experience of ancestors; but why "merely"? 

 If we still hold to the theory that species were created as 

 they are, with power of variation and change within cer- 

 tain limits, can we imagine that the first individuals of 

 species were without instincts and did not have to live by 

 the exercise of instincts as well as those which came after 

 them! Did not the first pair of robins probably proceed 

 to build a nest at a particular season and of particular 

 form in a suitable place, under the promptings of an im- 

 planted instinct; and the first swarm of bees proceed to 

 gather wax from flowers and make cells in which to store 

 their honey in hexagons, and so arranged as to require 

 the smallest space, from the same reason? Or, if we adopt 

 the later theory, that the Creator of the world has per- 

 formed and is still performing his work by a process of 

 development, having put in operation certain forces which 

 work by fixed laws and which developed the present high 

 types of species, including man, from the lowest forms as 

 germs, is it not the fact that instinct disappears in direct 

 proportion to development? Man lives much less by in- 

 stinct than the animals next below him, and in his own 

 species gives us the exhibition of the lower and less de- 

 veloped peoples living less by and depending less on their 

 instincts. 



Also, on the principle that instinct is not originally im- 

 planted, but "merely an inheritance bom of and embody- 

 ing' the experience of ancestors," how shall we account 

 for the case of the solitary-bee, which makes its cell, de- 

 posits its egg, provides food for its young when hatched, 

 and then dies, as did its parent before it? In such a case 

 it is simply impossible that the offspring should be bene- 

 fited by any experience gained f rom the parent. And 

 even in the case of hive-bees, which build their cells so 

 wonderfully, and birds which make their nests so differ- 

 ently, as the eaves swallow, the kingfisher, the oriole and 

 the chip sparrow, it is impossible, to my mind, to conceive 

 of powers like these as "merely born of and embodying 

 the experience of ancestors. Dr. Carpenter says ("Mental 

 Physiology," p. 56), "This designation (instinctive) is now 

 properly restricted to actions which, being performed 

 without any guidance from experience and executed in 

 precisely the same manner (when the circumstances are 

 suitable) by all the individuals of a species, must be re- 

 garded as proceeding from an innate or constitutional 

 tendency," and I suppose Dr. Carpenter's view is that of 

 all the later authorities. 



I am glad ' Potomac" has brought up this subject, not 

 for the sake of discussion, but that contributions of fact 

 may be obtained from the personal observation of the 

 readers of Forest and SrxtEAM. » Monatiquot. 



GROUSE IN CAPTIVITY. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Will you permit me to say that I think I deserve no lit- 

 tle credit for keeping so quiet about grouse since my ex- 

 periences of last summer? But the subject will come up 

 afresh whenever an opportunity to write presents itself. 

 One of my hen grouse died in September from some 

 strange wasting "disease, the result of which manifested 

 itself in a non-assimilation of food, and the bird slowly 

 starved to death. When picked up she had wasted away 

 to mere skin and bone, showing how large a fund of vital- 

 ity the grouse evidently has to draw from. This hen sat 

 some four weeks and when she came from the nest in the 

 extremely hot summer did not seem to rally from the ex- 

 haustive drain that nature makes on a?ian life at such 

 times. I think the difficulty was somewhat increased 

 from the fact that she had a broken leg which prevented 

 her exercising as birds in confinment ought to do. Avery 

 similar case was that of one of my hen quails a summer 

 or two ago. This last named bird (then two years old) 

 had been hatched and reared in confinement, and during 

 the summer laid thirty-two eggs, replenishing her nest 

 three different times as the eggs were taken away from 

 her. She was ailing for two or three weeks, becoming so 

 feeble toward the last that she could not walk, and dying 

 only when there was no longer any flesh to feed upon. A 

 Forest and Stream expert gave it as his opinion that the 

 quad died of chronic inflammation of the bowels, after 

 making an examination of the bird, but said he was in 

 doubt as to the cause of the disease. 



It will be remembered that some three or four weeks 

 ago Mr. Edward A. Swift, an enthusiastic hunter and 

 naturalist of Elmira, N. Y., wrote a note to Forest and 

 Stream mentioning the capture of a male grouse which 

 had flown into a house near tha* city, whereupon I wrote 

 to Mr. Swift. The letter was not a begging one, but I 

 straightway received a reply in which he kindly offered 

 to send the bird to me. There must have been something 

 between the lines that I did not perceive. The bird Iras 

 been in my hands now a little more than two weeks, and 

 although only very recently captured, he now comes up 

 to be fed when called, and seems quite disposed to adjust 

 himself to his new situation. He is a very fine specimen, 

 perfectly sound and uninjured, and still retains enough 

 of his native pride to impel him to erect his ruff and 

 spread his beautiful tail when any stranger comes near 

 the coops. My remaining hen moulted nicely, and the 

 two make as handsome a pah- as one could wish to see. I 

 cannot see but that her plumage is as fine and regular as 

 that of the wild bird, except that his tail is fuller and 

 longer than hers. 



Speaking of distinguishing the sex of the grouse by the 

 plumage and other markings, I am inclined to believe 

 that perhaps the surest test for the male bud is the me- 

 tallic lustre which seems to be always present on the ruff 

 of the adult. Next to that perhaps is the orange color 

 which appears in the superciliary membrane of the eye 

 in the male bird — a faint shade in the fall, but much 

 more intenes in the spring as the breeding season ap- 

 proaches. In the bird while still alive the feathers grow 

 down so closely to the eye in many cases as to hide the 

 trace of color' from ordinary observation. My friend, 



Mr. J. L. Davison, of Lockport, N. Y, has held that in 

 the female grouse the two central tail feathers have the 

 black band near the end broken and irregular instead of 

 a pure black sharply defined as in the case of the others. 

 But in the Elmira bird the two central feathers have the 

 broken irregularly marked band, although the specimen 

 is undoubtedly a male. The courage and temper shown 

 by the male birds form, I think, a good test, and the sex 

 will almost always betray itself in this way to a careful 

 observer. 



The coops are outdoors as usual, with parts of them 

 covered, while the remainder is open to the sun, the 

 rains and snows. I do not anticipate any difficulty in 

 wintering my grouse if no accident happens to them, and 

 if things go right shall have a vigorous healthy pair of 

 breeding birds in the spring. In this respect 1 shall he 

 more fortunate than last spring, when the male bird, 

 which only came to me that same month, had been seri- 

 ously abused by a pah- of English pheasants, with which 

 lie had been closely confined "for some time, and was in 

 no sort of condition to become the father of a family. It 

 is altogether possible that this condition of the sire may 

 have had something to do with the failure of the chicks 

 to break a way out of the shell, although this is merely a 

 surmise. Jay Beebe. 



Toledo, O., Nov. 19. 



WHY TROUT CULTURE FAILS. 



AT a meeting of the Biological Society in Washington, 

 on Nov. 19, Col. Marshall Macdonald, of the TJ. S, 

 Fishery Commission, referred to the notably successful 

 propagation of Salmonido?. in European waters, which he 

 compared with the almost total failure in American 

 watei's, and attributed the want of success in this country 

 to causes which have become patent only after many 

 years of persistent experiment and close observation. 



In England, France, Holland, Australia and New Zea- 

 land all varieties of Salmonido?, whether indigenous or 

 transplanted, thrive under artificial culture. Introduced 

 American species — quinnat, salar, irideus, fontinaUs, or 

 what not — do well there; but in our own streams, where 

 small fry of Salmonido'. have been planted by the hun- 

 dred thousand , all disappear inevitably and systematically, 

 and only individuals are ever seen or heard of afterward. 

 There are two or three marked exceptions where success 

 has triumphed through absence of destructive causes. 

 Mr. Macdonald tells us what those causes are. Let us 

 hear. They are no other than the predacious little cottoids 

 and darters with which most streams abound, and whose 

 presence has hitherto generally been presumed favorable 

 to propagation of Salmonidce. Indeed, some fish breeders 

 have introduced large quantities of these diminutive 

 fishes into clear streams to serve as food for their salmon 

 and trout when the latter shall become grown. Fatal 

 misapprehension! The observant Mr. Macdonald told in 

 what a brief period one single dar er, which had been 

 placed in an aquarium, got away with and swallowed no 

 less than twelve fine trout fry of the size and age usually 

 employed for stocking streams; and inferentially a hun- 

 dred thousand fry would serve a thousand of these rapa- 

 cious cottoids and darters hardly a day under favorable 

 opportunity for capture. Sometimes, by some extraor- 

 dinary chance, a few trout have escaped the massacre and 

 grown to full size and maturity, but such survivors are so 

 few as to prove of no practical service in replenishing 

 depleted streams. It is obvious now that such a method 

 is only a waste of time and effort. 



What then can be substituted with better assurance of 

 ultimate success? 



Mr. Macdonald says we must plant 4in. trout, and turn 

 the tables on the rapscallions. Salmonido} of the size 

 mentioned will eat up the cottoids and darters (every 

 mother's son of them, as well as darters) and grow fat 

 and fulsome on them! 



It has been charged against grown trout as one of the 

 incidents of failure to replenish streams hitherto, that 

 they eat up their own fry, but this is disproved. Nature 

 has provided for their sure protection, else there could 

 be no reproduction from year to year. It has ordained 

 that the troutlets shall stick to the bottom, and so long as 

 they do so the big fish seem to pay no attention to them. 

 They do not seem to see them . Their attention is sky- 

 ward, toward the surface. But, if ever any adventurous 

 mite of a trout attempts to explore the upper waters and 

 skirmishes about in the same aquatic plane as his elder 

 and bigger relations, aimless and inadvertent, lo! he is 

 incontinently snapped up and devoured. Just so it is 

 with men and "kids," the waifs and tenderfeet. They 

 put themselves in the way of greedy and rapacious men, 

 and have only their own temerity to blame. 



With respect to the notable failure to propagate Cali- 

 fornia salmon in Eastern waters, Mr. Macdonald assigns 

 an altogether different reason. These fish spawn in July, 

 August and September; and when they seek the upper 

 waters of their native streams, on the Pacific slopes, for 

 the purpose of depositing their ova, they find a progress- 

 ive colder temperature as they approach the spring heads 

 and snow-fed sources; but during the corresponding 

 months in Atlantic waters, whenever they would leave the 

 ocean to ascend the stream, lo! they find a constantly 

 rising temperature, which sometimes reaches as high as 

 80 degrees. The ocean is actually cooler than the rivers, 

 so that they decline to leave it and go up stream. They 

 never seem to have re-entered their native streams 

 where they were hatched and reared until the time of 

 their first departure for the brine, and the question arises 

 as to what becomes of them. Mr. Macdonald thinks they 

 wander about the ocean, leading a purely nomadic exist- 

 ence, though he can hardly guarantee them a long life 

 and a happy one, for it must be but a question of time 

 when they will fall a prey to the innumerable predacious 

 creatures which inhabit the deep, and be eaten up by them. 



Certainly the testimony of Mr. Macdonald is of great 

 importance, supported as it is by observation and experi- 

 ment, and fishculturists will be likely to profit thereby 

 hereafter. Perhaps the assertion that one acre of water 

 may be made as valuable as two acres of land will yet be 

 borne out by appreciable results. Charles Hallock, 

 Washington, D. C, Nov. 22. 



Melanerpes Carolinus (Linn.) in New Jersey.— I 

 have added to my cabinet of bird skins that of a male red- 

 bellied woodpecker, taken at Keyport, N. J., Nov. 23, 

 1887. — L. S. Foster (New York. Nov. 29.) 



HOW THE DRUMFISH CROAKS. 



DR. W. E. HAMILTON, of Pittsburgh, Pa., in writing 

 for the bulletin of the U. S. Fish Commission, says: 

 "My observations with regard to the croaking ©r grunt- 

 ing noise made by the drum fish family have been con- 

 fined to the fish known here as the 'perch' {Haploidono- 

 tus gnmniens). This fish, as is well known, is furnished 

 with a masticatory apparatus in the gullet, and the lower 

 division of this has its upper surface flat and triangular 

 in outline, and studded all over with spheroidal 'teeth,' 

 if they may be called genuine teeth. The upper division 

 is composed of two parts united by a ligament; their 

 lower surfaces are also supplied with similar teeth. The 

 divisions of this apparatus have powerful muscles 

 attached to them by which they can be pressed together 

 and moved laterally on each other. By this process the 

 fish masticates the crustaceans on which it feeds. When 

 this action takes place, the teeth coming in contact and 

 gliding over each other produces the croaking of the 

 perch. 



"About twenty years ago. for the purpose of endeavor- 

 ing to ascertain by what means the croaking of the perch 

 was produced, I procured from an Ohio River fishercnan 

 a perch weighing lS^lbs., which he declared was the 

 largest perch he had ever caught. I divided the head on 

 one side, and thus exposed its masticatory apparatus; and 

 while moving its grinders as I supposed the fish had done 

 during life when crushing a crawfish, an exact imitation 

 of the croaking of the perch was produced. 1 produced 

 the sounds in a similar manner within the hearing of 

 several Allegheny River raftsmen and Ohio River fisher- 

 men at intervals during the day on which I experimented, 

 without allowing them to know how the noises were 

 made, or that a perch was used for the purpose, and they 

 all declared that it was an exact imitation of the croak- 

 ing of the perch. This noise is made, I believe, only at 

 the season of the year when the perch 'bites' or feeds. 

 The above experiment and others of a similar kind lead 

 me to believe firmly that the croaking of the perch is 

 produced in the manner referred to. I cannot conceive 

 of any way by which the sound coidd be produced by the 

 air bladder of the fish, as its physiological functions and 

 anatomical structure do not indicate its use as a vocal 

 organ." 



Prof, John A. Ryder, in a letter commenting on the 

 above, May 21, 1887, said: "It is now known that certain 

 sound-producing fishes give out noises by grating certain 

 bones together in a peculiar way. An extensive memoir 

 by a Danish author has appeared witliin two years, the 

 Danish title of which has escaped me, but which deals 

 with this question at great length, with fine illustrations. 

 The usual view, that the air is forced from one part of 

 the air bladder to another in the Sciaanoids, seems to me 

 inadequate in the absence of clearly worked-out demon- 

 strations. This group is physoclystous, or has the air 

 bladder entirely closed." 



Minks Gnaw Iron Wire.- Cold Spring Harbor, N. Y., 

 Nov. 20. — When we saw the remains of a wood duck 

 hanging in the picket fence, the deed was charged to a 

 mink, who would no doubt return to the inclosure where 

 some twenty pairs were kept. Six steel traps yielded two 

 minks next morning, both alive and sound of limb. They 

 were put into a box with a partition between them, and 

 the top was covered with wire netting, lin. mesh, No. 19 

 galvanized wire, such as is used for poultry fences. No 

 one supposed that they could get out, as they cannot gnaw 

 wood very well, and they remained quiet the first night. 

 On the second morning the male was found dead with his 

 head through a broken mesh, while the female was loose 

 in the room, both having gnawed the wire cloth. The 

 animals had been promised to Prof. Goode for the Na- 

 tional Museum, and the living one was more securely 

 boxed and sent there. The teeth of the dead male were 

 broken. — Fred Mather. 



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GAME NEAR TOWN. 



WESTCHESTER, Nov. 11. — Along the romantic 

 swales and cliffs of Tibbitt's Creek, bordering this 

 valley, on the opening day of November, *we hunted just 

 out of the city lines and during the morning encountered 

 the first snow storm of the late year. Yet nothing 

 daunted, we hunted the vales from the creek's source to 

 its outlet, and to the two guns and dogs engaged fell the 

 following game: Seven woodcock, thirty-five quail and 

 three wild ducks. 



During the warm days of Friday, Saturday and Mon- 

 day before election, we sought a covert deeply secluded in 

 the hills of our loved Orange county. There in the deep 

 solitude, bordering in river and lake, years ago we fell 

 upon a game preserve known to few. Here we had 

 royal sport, bagging in short forenoon hunts fifty quail, 

 nine woodcock, thirteen ducks and seven ruffed grouse, 

 all in excellent condition. We could have added several 

 foxes and any number of meadow larks, and robins and 

 rabbits without number; a few of the latter Ave put to 

 bag. This paradise was first known to the writer when 

 at West Point under the care and advice of his cousin, 

 the late Gen, Henry Brewerton, superintendent of the 

 Post, 1845 to 1852, when he was by ride transferred to 

 Fort McHenry, Baltimore, and the late Gen. Robert E. 

 Lee, of war renown, superseded to the Post at West 

 Point. Strange to say this preserve still holds the re- 

 nown of old (for it is in its wild virgin state even unto 

 this day) when the late Dick Arden, of Ardeaner was its 

 ardent hunter, with a strain of orange and white setters 

 and Irish reds much heavier than now met with. But 

 we much fear this is the last season, as a syndicate will 

 soon possess our court and make another preserve like 

 Tuxedo Park, under the name of Arden, after the wife of 

 T. T. Parrot, who is the sister of my old companion, the 

 redoutable Richard Arden, Esq., a descendant of the 

 Ardens of Arden Forest, Yorkshire, England, well-known 

 to many army officers, now on the plains in the service of 

 our Government, and correspondent of your most inter- 

 I esting paper. Canonictjs, 



