April 22, 1905,]; 
FOREST AND StREAM. 
^1^ 
Albino Brook Trout. 
Notes of an Experiment at the Adirondack Hatchery. 
BY G. E. WINCHESTER, FOREMAN. 
During the hatching period of 1902 there were pro- 
duced at this hatchery out of one milhon brook trout 
eggs about forty pure albinos, and about ten others 
which were of a bluish silvery gray tint. These lish 
were at once placed in a separate compartment, and 
given the best possible attention. They proved to be 
unusually weak fry, and died from time to time until 
only two of the albinos and two of the others were lelt 
on Aug. 30, 1903. . 
At this time the albinos had attained a creamy white 
color, dotted with crimson spots, and had pmk eyes. 
The others had the natural eye, and showed only taint 
crimson spots with markings on the back and sides 
that were more of a barred appearance than mottled. 
All four of the fish had the natural form, and showed 
the instincts of the parent fish. In September, 1903. 
the four fish were exhibited in a small tank at the 
State Fair at Syracuse, where they attracted consider- 
able sttcntion. 'f.l 
As the two 'albinos were male and female, it was de- 
cided to use them for experimental purposes, and the 
eggs were taken on Nov. 10, 1903- The fish were then 
at the age of 20 months, they weighed about one-half 
pound, and the female was the larger of the two. A 
total of 630 eggs were produced by the albmo female, 
which were treated as follows: 527 of the eggs were 
fertilized with milt from the albino male, and 103 of the 
eggs were crossed with milt from the natural male 
trout. Also 424 eggs of the natural female trout were 
crossed with the milt of the albino male. _ 
On Feb. 15, of the first lot but 65 eggs remained; of 
the second lot but 55, and of the third lot 418.. It 
was then evident that few n any of the pure albino 
eggs would hatch, and but few of the eggs crossed 
to the natural male, while it was expected that a large 
percentage of the eggs taken from the natural fish 
and crossed with the albino male would live. _ 
The pure albinos and the crosses began hatching 
about the same time, March i, and finished hatching 
on March 13 Of the pure albinos (627 eggs) 32 fish 
hatched and lived, or about 6 per cent. Several of these 
were imperfect, but it was hoped to raise most of the 
perfect ones. They resembled the parent albino fish, 
but were unmistakably weak and delicate. Out of the 
103 eo-gs taken from the cross of the female albino with 
the natural male, 43 fish hatched, or about 42 per 
cent. Of these several were imperfect, but the others 
were notably stronger than the pure albinos, and re- 
sembled the parent male more than they did the female 
fish Of the opposite cross of 424 eggs from the 
natural female fertilized by the albino male, 416 hatched, 
or 98 per cent. All these were perfect fish, and as 
strong apparently as any natural brook trout. They all 
resembled the female or natural brook trout, and none 
showed the albino cross. , , , • , 
On April 13, or thirty days after the hatching, the 
record stood as follows: Pure albinos living, 20, or 
about 62 per cent.; cross bf albino female with natural 
male, all dead; cross of natural female with albino male, 
all living. . , ^ 
The bluish-gray pair did not spawn, and are ap- . 
parently barren fish. ■ , • , i. 
The albino female now measures 9 inches m lengtti, 
and the male 6^ inches. „ . , 
The bluish-gray fish are 7 and 8 inches long re- 
spectively for the male and female. 
The male albino died soon after the exhibit at the 
State Fair at Syracuse, in September, 1904. 
Some Bird Names. 
BY ERNEST INGERSOI.L. 
We now come to the geese and ducks. 
The former name is evidently descended through 
Teutonic channels from a remote Aryan source, which 
has given anser to the Latin and gans to modern Ger- 
man. Gander is a wrongly constructed English mascu- 
line, by what Scheie de Vere denominates "an abuse _ of 
language": and geese is one of those few remaining 
plurals, like mice, women, etc., which are formed by a 
change of the radical vowel. In Arctic America all 
geese are "wavies," which I take to be a corruption of 
the Cree or Chippeway (Algonkin) name of these birds, 
doubly derived from their word for "white" (the plum- 
age), which also stood in this language for "north" (the 
place of white snow), whence the geese came. 
The "brant" is always said to be the "burnt"-goose, 
and to be so called from the charred or sooty black of its 
plumage, the word easily suffering this change in popular 
speech, as might be shown by numerous parallels in mod- 
ern Scotch and provincial English dialects. In the old 
English and Scandinavian tongues hrani meant steep- 
ness, as of precipitous chfifs; but there is nothing in the 
habits of these fowls to attach such a word to them. The 
name of another species, with which this is closely asso- 
ciated, the barnacle goose, recalls an old superstition that 
these birds were hatched from the big barnacles that 
stud the rocks of northern Europe. 
The duck is, of course, "the diver," or creature that 
ducks. "But drake is an entirely difYerent word; it is 
contracted from ened-rake or end-rake, a masculine form 
of the Anglo-Saxon ened, a duck. In Swedish, and is a 
duck, znd' middrake is a drake; in German, ente is a 
duck, enterich, a drake; the first part of the word being 
from' the stem of the Latin anas (anat-) a duck, and the 
suffix is allied to the Gothic reiks, ruling, mighty, and to 
ric in 'bishop-ric'. So that drake means 'duck-king*." 
(Wharton). Two French words are interesting in this 
connection. Canard, the modern French word for duck, 
seems to have come from an older word for goose, chang- 
ing its ornithology more than its form : as for mallart 
(our mallard), that is merely a male duck, and originally 
had nothing to do with any one species, as the English 
and Americans apply it; but it was always, probably, re- 
stricted to wild ducks. 
' The list of Anatida; holds many old E'narlish names. 
The gadwall or "gad well" seems to have struck the per- 
son who called it so as a good "gadder" or goer. The 
pintail duck is sometimes called "pile-start" in Massa.- 
chusetts, which is. in reality only a synonym; and 
"wigeon" is often spelled with a d. This is wrong, for, 
according to Mr. Wharton {Zoologist, 1882, p. no), it is 
descended from Pliny's name vipio, in a manner anal- 
ogous to pigeon from pipio. The shoveller takes its 
name from its spatulate beak: and "teal" is said to come 
from the same root as the verb to till, or cultivate. Pro- 
fessor Skeat says that "the original sense was merely 'a 
brood,' or a 'flock.' and its use as a specific form was 
accidental." It is a curious fact that from the Latin 
sound-name of this duck, querquedula, came the modern 
Mexican name "cerceta," and also that of an English fal- 
con, which was trained to fly at teal and hence came to 
be called a kestrel. A local name in New Hampshire for 
the redhead or pochard is "quindar," which may ^ be a 
corruption of French-Canadian canard. "Bell-bird" and 
"whistler" are heard in New England for the noisy 
Bucephala clangula, while its brother-species (5. alheola) 
is usually called "buffle-head"— a shortening for "bufifalo- 
head." There is no need of adding duck to "eider" in 
speaking of that famous down-producer. Eider is an 
ancient Icelandic name, but the early writers speak only 
of its eggs, as the down did not- become an article of 
value until its introduction into British trade in the fif- 
teenth century. The scoter is "the scudder" ; and the 
scaup received its name from its love of shellfish, a bed 
of which was a "scaup" in old Scotch. In America 
"sheldrake" is a synonym of the merganser (mergus and 
anser, diving goo'se) or "gooseander," but formerly, in 
the Old World, this name belonged to Harelda glacialis, 
the long-tail duck of northern waters; the word is prop- 
erly shield-drake, and denotes the shield-shaped mark 
upon the bird's breast. "The singularity of its_ cry has 
caused it, in the countries it frequents, to receive some 
oecuHar names, indicative of the sounds emitted; thus 
In the north of England and in Scotland, it is known by 
the whimsical appellation 'Coal-and-candle-light' ; in the 
United States, Wilson informs us, it goes by the title of 
'South-southerly' ; in Kamtschatka the natives call it 
'a-au-gitche' ; and the North American Indians 'caccawee' 
and 'ha-ha-way.'" So writes Selby. "Old Injun" (male) 
and "old squaw" are common names in New England, 
reminding us of "lord and lady" given popularly to the 
odd little "harlequin" {Histrionicus torquatus) in ad- 
miration of its fine feathers. 
Birds^ Sense of SmelL 
. From Nature. 
A STUDY of the habits of flesh-eating birds shows that 
if they possess the sense of smell at all, it is not 
sufficiently acute to enable them to use it in finding 
food. All observers are agreed that when a carcass is 
hidden,- by never so slight a screen, 'it is safe from the 
attacks of vultures and other carrion-seekers; but the 
most remarkable proof of the inefifectiveness of the 
sense (if it exist at all) is afforded by experiences 
which Dr. Guillemard was good enough to relate to 
me. Many times it has happened, he tells rne. that, 
having shot a wild beast or other game which was 
too heavy to carry home, he has disemboweled it, and 
has hidden the carcass in the hole of an "ant-bear." 
On returning with natives to carry it to camp, he has 
found a circle of vultures standing round the spot where 
the offal had been thrown, completely unaware of the 
carcass -within a few yards of their beaks. Of observa- 
tions proving the possession of the sense I know none, 
unless we are willing to accept as evidence the belief, 
which is very general among fanciers, that birds are 
attached to the smell of anise, and the similar belief 
of gamekeepers in some parts of the country that they 
are attracted by valerian. It is said that pigeons rnay 
be prevented from deserting the dove-cote by smearing 
their boxes with oil of :anise. Poachers are supposed 
to lure hen pheasants from a wood by anointing gate- 
posts with tincture of valerian. 
With the view of testing the smelling powers of 
graminivorous birds, I placed a pair of turkeys in a 
pen which communicated with a large wired-in run. The 
pen was closed by means of a trapdoor. _ In the run 
I placed, each day, two heaps of grain, right and left 
of the trap-door, but so far in front of • it that they 
made with it an angle of about 50 degrees. Various 
substances which give out a powerful odor were placed 
under one of the heaps, alternately the right and the 
left. The birds were lightly fed in the morning in their 
pen. At 2 o'clock the trap-door was raised, and they 
were admitted to the inclosure. It was curious to note 
that after the first few days the hen almost always came 
out first (in the last ten experiments this rule was 
broken but once), and invariably went to the heap on 
her right; the cock following went to the heap on the 
left. The cock usually tried the hen's heap after feed- 
ing for a short time from his own, but the hen never 
trespassed upon the preserve of the cock. In the 
earlier observations I placed beneath one of the heaps 
a slice of bread soaked with tincture of asafetida, es- 
sence of anise, oil of lavender, or sprinkled with valeri- 
anate of zinc or powdered camphor. When the birds, 
plunging their beaks into the bread, took some of the 
tincture or essential oil into the mouth, the head was 
lifted up and shaken, but they immediately recom- 
menced to peck at the grain. They were completely 
indifferent to 'the presence of camphor or valerianate 
of zinc. In several cases in which these substances 
were used, they consumed the bread. As a turkey does 
not steady the thing at which it is pecking, with its 
foot, but, seizing it in the beak, shakes it violently until 
a piece is detached, it is probable that most of the 
powder was shaken from the bread. 
As these experiments gave absolutely negative re- 
sults, the birds showing neither preference for nor re- 
pugnance to any of the odorous substances used, I pro- 
ceeded to stronger measures. The grain was placed 
upon a 7-inch cook's sieve, inverted. The odorous 
substance was placed beneath the sieve. Each of the 
following experiments was repeated three times, first 
with a small quantity of smed, then with a great deal, 
and lastly with as much as possible. It is only necessary 
to describe the final tests. Four ounces of carbide was 
thrown into the saucer of water and placed beneath one 
of the sieves. There was no reason to think that the 
birds were aware of the existence of the acetylne which 
was evolved. The saucer was filled with bisulphide of 
carbon. The hen turkey finished her meal. When the 
grain was exhausted she knocked the sieve over with 
her foot. Both birds then lowered their beaks to with- 
in half an inch of the colorless liquid, which they ap- 
peared to examine. It is perhaps unfortunate that they 
had already satisfied their thirst at the water-trough. 
A bath sponge soaked in chloroform was placed under 
the sieve, the wire of which rested upon it. The hen 
finished her meal without leaving the sieve. Toward 
the end she pecked very slowly, and frequently raised 
her head and stretched her wings as if partially nar- 
cotized. This experiment was repeated on the cock, 
but I could not detect any indications of narcosis. The 
saucer was filled with hot dilute sulphuric acid, into 
which an ounce of powdered cyanide of potassium was 
thrown. The evolution of prussic acid was so violent that 
I considered the neighborhood unsafe. My gardener, 
who was working thirty yards away, spoke to me of 
the "smell of almonds." For some minutes the cock 
turkey fed with his usual eagerness; then, suddenly, 
he began to stagger round the inclosure, crossing his 
leg's and holding his beak straight up in the air. He 
made his way back into the pen, where he stood with 
head down and wings outstretched. After ten minutes 
he returned to- the inclosure, but did not eat any more 
grain. His comb and wattles were deeply suffused with 
blood. 
In all observations on the sense of smell of animals 
we have an obvious difficulty to face. There is no 
reason for supposing that an animal enjoys an odor 
which pleases us or dislikes one which we find disagree- 
able. My dog appeared to be almost indififerent to 
bisulfid of carbon. He showed, however, great repug- 
nance to chloroform and prussic acid. It is difficult 
to think that an animal which is unable to protect itself 
from the injurious effects of such drugs as these can 
possess the sense of smell. 
Etiglish Starlings in Australia. 
United States Consul-General Bray writes from Mel- 
bourne, Victoria: "The English starlings, first intro- 
duced here from Great Britain for the destruction of 
insects, and protected by law, have completely changed 
their habits, and have now become a serious pest to 
orchardists. The few pairs of these birds brought into 
the State a few years ago have increased to myriads, and 
have become so destructive to the fruit industry that the 
regulations framed for their protection by law have been 
repealed, and energetic steps are advocated for their 
eradication. The fruit destroyed by them includes 
peaches, pears, cherries, figs, apricots,: plums, grapes, 
strawberries, and apples. Both vine growing and fruit 
growing are seriously threatened if the pest is not sup- 
pressed. 
"From many districts reports come that, fruit growing 
will have to be given up unless some radical steps are 
taken. As many as ten cases of apples have been de- 
stroyed by a flock of these birds in less than half an hour. 
Valuable insect-eating birds, such as kingfishers, diamond 
birds, tree swallows, and tree creepers, are being driven 
out of their nesting places in tree hollows by swarms of 
starlings, and before long the birds so useful to the 
farmer and orchardist will be driven out of the State. 
The starling is said to raise five broods in a year and 
multiply with amazing rapidity. In one district three 
years ago not one was to be seen; now there are thou- 
sands. 
"The Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria and all 
other similar associa'tions are uniting in a request to the 
Government to take active steps to eradicate the pest." 
The A«dttbon Society. 
The annual meeting of the Audubon Society of the 
State of New York was held on Thursday afternoon of 
last week at the American Museum of Natural History. 
William Dutcher, President of the National Association 
of the Audubon Society, presided. 
Following the reading of the report of the Secretary, 
Emma H. Lockwood, officers were elected for next year, 
including the old Board of Directors. 
The report of the Secretary says, in part: 
"The Society has practically won the battle in stopping 
the slaughter of song and insectivorous birds for milli- 
nery purposes. This was but an incidental feature of 
the great work at best. It must be remembered that the 
best of laws may be repealed. It is now, therefore, in- 
cumbent upon the Society to build up an impregnable 
wall of public opinion with which to resist any attacks 
in the future." 
