FOREST AND STREAM 
25 
ALBINO RAINBOW TROUT. 
By Dr. Leonard Keene Hirshberg, A. B., M. A., 
M. D. (Johns Hopkins). 
RUE albino rainbow trout are a possibility 
of the near future. They will be bred at 
the New York Aquarium and developed at 
one of the fish hatcheries. It will be the first 
time any attempt at scientific breeding of an 
albino food fish has been made. Sportsmen may 
not be able to wet a line in waters containing 
them for several years, if at all. 
Some twenty such trout now occupy a tank in 
the Aquarium. They are all “sports” from sev¬ 
eral schools of otherwise regularly colored rain¬ 
bow trout, products of the Vermont State hatch¬ 
eries and presented to the New York Aquarium 
as freaks of the fish world. Chalk white they 
are, with pink eyes, and so true albinos. 
Should these fish show any indication of being 
with spawn, Capt. C. H. Townsend, Curator of 
the Aquarium, will have them stripped and see 
if they will reproduce white trout or “throw 
back” to the color of their parents. Should they 
produce parti-colored trout, which they probably 
will if the Mendel law of heredity applies to 
fish as well as to fowls and anim'als, two other 
generations of fish, with careful selections of 
parent fish, will have to follow before the pure 
white and true albino type of trout can be cer¬ 
tainly fixed. As an experiment in Mendelism, the 
breeding o'f albino trout will be worth while from 
a scientific standpoint. 
That the creation of a breed of albino trout 
would be of commercial value is wholly problem¬ 
atical, hardly possible, unless the trout could be 
confined in waters that none of their natural en¬ 
emies could reach. Nature’s principal means for 
a trout to evade its enemies—the protective col¬ 
oration—would be missing and the fish would fall 
victims to natural enemies should the fingerlings 
or yearlings be distributed in streams where there 
are other fish. But in the well-sheltered and 
screened ponds of the State fish hatcheries there 
is every chance that they would live as long as 
the darker colored trout. Fishermen believe they 
would retain their natural gameness, breed true, 
and be no more susceptible to disease than any 
trout. But they would be the objects of ready at¬ 
tack from hawks, snakes and other birds and 
beasts of prey who occasionally like a fish diet. 
With such perfect facilities as it has at its com¬ 
mand for trying out the Mendelian law as ap¬ 
plied to fishes, it is hoped by sportsmen and nat¬ 
uralists interested in fishes and fish culture that 
the Zoological Society will carry the proposed ex¬ 
periment through to a definite end. The law has 
proven true with birds and minor beasts, but nev¬ 
er has been tested scientifically with fishes, as 
there has been no pressing scientific or commer¬ 
cial reason for doing so. 
A veteran fisherman said that he never knew 
of an albino trout being taken with a fly, though 
he has offten seen small albino trout in artificially 
hatched batches that have been distributed in the 
streams. It has always been something of a mys¬ 
tery to him why none have lived long enough to 
be taken. He has shot albino prairie chickens in 
Iowa, an albino partridge in the Adirondacks just 
south of Loon Lake, near what is now called 
Lake Kushaqua and saw a party that killed an 
albino deer near the Richardson Lakes in Maine. 
How these and other albinos of their breeds hap¬ 
pened to survive while the white trout vanished 
seems rather strange. 
Central Park lakes have furnished the nearest 
approach to proof that a breed of albino fish, nor¬ 
mal in every other way—which the white cave 
fishes are not—can be developed. The pearl roach 
which breeds there and is not known elsewhere 
in the world is a near-albino, but not a perfect 
one. A tank of these peculiar fish is in the south¬ 
west gallery of the Aquarium. These have a 
white skiny scales with the irridescent coloration 
of mother of pearl shell, and pink tipped fins and 
tail. The eyes are the dark eyes of the common 
roach of the country streams and not pink as in 
the true albino. 
The pearl roach is a graceful, shimmering, and 
dainty fish, and was accidentally discovered in a 
little pond where it has bred for twenty-five 
years, probably longer. That pond was stocked 
with common roach when it was built, for it is an 
artificial “lake,” though fed in part from the 
same underground stream that caused so much 
trouble when the present home of the New York 
Athletic Club was in process of erection. The 
presumption is that a number of “sports” or ai- 
bino roach must have appeared in some school 
hatched in the early history of the lake, and that 
the pearl roach are the descendants of these 
“siports” through natural processes. Save in col¬ 
oring they differ in no detail from the common 
roach. Therefore they are a distinctive type which 
reproduces itself certainly and naturally. Had a 
scientific selection of parents been made in the 
early stages of the development of this type, fish 
culturists believe there would have been develop¬ 
ed a perfectly true albino roach instead of the 
present hybrid. 
What the roach has done for itself under ideal 
surroundings that is with no enemies to interfere 
with the development of the type, pisciculturists 
believe could be done with the rainbow trout un¬ 
der the very favorable conditions for trying out 
the experiment existing at the Aquarium. So a 
true albino trout is a certainty of the future. 
CLOSER PROTECTION FOR BLACK BASS. 
Several fish and game protection and propaga¬ 
tion bills will be introduced at the coming legis¬ 
lative session in Ohio. The fish and game divis¬ 
ion of the state agricultural commission will be 
behind them. 
Two bills in the interest o‘f bass fishing have 
been drafted and it is expected they will be of¬ 
fered by Representative A. H. Etling of Wayne 
county. These measures limit the size and num¬ 
ber of bass that may be caught. 
“Whoever in any one day takes or catches 
more than eight black bass or more than thirty- 
six calico bass or strawberry bass, croppies or 
rock bass, in any o'f the inland waters of the 
state, shall be fined not less than five dollars nor 
more than twenty-five dollars, or imprisoned, not 
more than ten days, or both.” 
The other bill provides that no black bass less 
than ten inches in length shall be taken, and that 
none of the other kinds of bass shall be taken 
that are less than five inches in length. This in¬ 
cludes the strawberry bass and the croppie or 
rock bass. These varietes of fish may only be 
taken with hook and line, with bait or lure. 
Another bill which it is proposed to offer will 
