Sept. 25, 1909.] 
493 
forest and stream. 
tective instinct had probably subsided, but she 
immediately caught and killed the remaining 
little pintail. As she had shown no hostility 
to the other little woodducks, for there were 
several broods of them, she must have con¬ 
sidered the little pintails intruders. 
Several new varieties of wildfowl had, from 
time to time, been added to the collection, and 
canvasbacks and redheads were the ones most 
highly prized. The canvasbacks, though ap¬ 
parently mating, did not lay, but this year for 
the first time the redhead duck laid five eggs, 
and as she seemed likely to prove a careless 
setter, the eggs were placed under a hen, and 
in due time four little redheads were hatched. 
Through a careless oversight the little brood 
was left in a cellar the first night and three of 
the ducklings were killed by rats. The re¬ 
gaining little redhead was placed in a wire in- 
tlosure in a corner of the pond with his foster- 
liother. Ere long the little fellow discovered 
hat the wire screen extended only about a 
oot under the water, and swimming up toward 
he screen, he dove, and, coming up outside, 
mused himself chasing flies and other insects 
iver the whole pond. When, tiring of this, he 
ried to come back to his foster-mother, his 
rst dive proved a failure, but swimming back 
amewhat further, he again dove and came up 
iree feet inside of the inclosure—a very de- 
berate case of calculation on his part. 
He proved one of the most interesting little 
Jcks, and for three or four days went in and 
4t of the inclosure with perfect ease. Finally, 
nvever, he attracted the attention of the mother 
oodduck, and was added to the list of her 
ctims. 
This was the last straw, and the “old lady” 
is shipped away to another place, and we can 
dy hope that none of her offspring .will de¬ 
lop the same murderous tendencies. 
Robert B. Lawrence. 
Passenger Pigeons? 
^ashua, N. H., Sept. 12 .—Editor Forest and 
'■eam: About a month ago I saw a sight I 
ntate to speak of for fear of the disbelief 
1 some of your readers. About four miles 
'in this city and near the Massachusetts line 
,aw two birds which I identified to my own 
^faction as passenger pigeons. I was riding 
'an automobile at the time when the two ap- 
’ red at m y right flying swiftly and close to- 
,her. I was talking and paid little attention 
| they, came within about forty yards, when 
;y wh; rled upward and the setting sun shone 
' on their pink breasts. The color of their 
asts, together with their slaty gray color, 
’ taiIs and their size and shape as compared 
i either our common turtle doves or domes- 
’pigeons, identified them, 
at once called my friends’ attention to them 
regret that none of the other passengers 
■ at all familiar with these birds, though we 
watched them pass out of sight flying close 
mer. As a boy I was familiar with the 
1 e nger pigeon, as at that time they were 
‘ty, and I well remember not only their ap- 
ance, but their flavor in a pot pie. 
is too muc h to hope for their return in 
Hers, but certainly a few are left. 
W. H. B. 
Birds and Fishes Compared. 
<( The Allowing extracts are from a paper on 
Sonn. 1 oints of Similarity of Birds and 
Fishes,” recently read by A. H. E. Mattingley, 
G.M.Z.S., before the Victorian Fish Protection 
Society and Anglers’ Club, at Melbourne, Aus¬ 
tralia : 
What lover of nature, be he an ornithologist 
or an ichthylogist, could help but associate 
birds and fishes. The angler as he sits under 
the cool shade of some gum-tree pensively 
gazing at the float of his fishing line, cannot 
help hearing the soul stirring melody of the 
birds overhead as they sing gaily to their 
mates, or utter notes of satisfaction a.s they 
sip the nectar contained in the surrounding 
WOODDUCK. 
blossoms. Neither can he help noticing the 
sudden dash of a feathered creature as it 
cleaves through space while hawking for some 
insect in front pf him, nor can the graceful 
aerial movements of the swallow and fairy 
martins go unnoticed as ever and anon they 
glide downward, and take a sip of the cool 
water while in full flight. The chattering of 
the parrots, too, direct his attention to some 
hollow spout wherein they have their progeny 
safely ensconced, and as they fly backward and 
forward their beautiful colors appear like the 
blooms of a flower garden blown through the 
air. How nature, wild and free, appeals to him, 
though, may be subconsciously, yet withal 
thrilling him to his spinal marrow with pleas¬ 
urable sensations. 
The ornithologist, too. cannot but observe the 
insects that have perchance escaped the birds, 
and have fallen into the water. He cannot but 
perceive a sudden swirl, an eddy at it were, 
around the insect, which suddenly disappears 
as if by magic, as it is sucked into some 
hungry fish’s maw. He cannot help seeing the 
leaping of the trout in the early morn, and at 
eventide, nor can he but notice the similarity 
that exists, in some respects, between fishes 
and birds, as he gazes at the denizens as they 
lurk in the waters of some crystal-clear moun¬ 
tain creek. 
In the great arena of nature fishes and birds 
work side by side—each paying toll on the 
other—each being concerned with each other’s 
life history. As we proceed from the oldest 
to the newest forms of life we find an in¬ 
crease in the number, variety and complexity 
of structure of animal life. This increased com¬ 
plexity has resulted from the gradual modifica¬ 
tion of simple types as they become more and 
more perfectly adapted to their environment. 
In our studies we cannot fail to be impressed 
with the conviction that nature has com¬ 
pressed the plastic matter of the animal king¬ 
dom into many shapes, and many creatures 
into the same shape. Nature has varied the 
raw material in her work-shop, and has manu¬ 
factured her types. The fishes are the poor 
relations of the birds, who have reached their 
present form by slow and gradual degrees, each 
stage improving upon the last. The result of 
such a series of progressive changes has been 
to remove and obliterate, in the individuals 
concerned, the traces of their original like¬ 
ness. Flowever, this paper is not written for 
the express purpose of elaborating the process 
of evolution, more than to show that birds have 
descended from fishes through the reptiles, 
while the fishes in turn evolved from lower 
forms of life such as worms, which obtained 
their ancestry from single gutted invertre- 
brates and so on. 
Scales are to the fishes what feathers are to 
the bird—a covering to protect the surface of 
the body, and to regulate its temperature. 
There are many varieties of scales or horny 
plates with which fish are clothed. Some are 
loose, and fit on like the tiles of a house. 
Others again, in the eel for example, can only 
be detected microscopically. In others again, 
the scales have become fused, and form a com¬ 
plete coat of armor. In some species of fish, 
the fused scales are arranged in definite tracts,' 
just like the arrangement of the feather tracts! 
01 feather forests, of birds known technically 
as pterylas. I n some fishes, however, as the 
porcupine fish, the scales grow to 'a great 
length, forming a bony rod, and radiating out 
like the quills of a porcupine. In some species 
of birds, such as the lmallee hen, for instance, 
the young chicks, before they manage to 
scratch their way out through the top of the 
nesting mound in which they are enveloped, 
and before the quills, which surround the 
feathers, have become ruptured, resemble the 
porcupine fish, since the feathers in the quills 
stick up just like the porcupine fishes’ spines. 
The long horny rods or quills growing on the 
wing of the Australian cassowary, a large flight¬ 
less bird, are an excellent example of how 
feathers have degenerated, and have reverted 
to the form of structure closely approximating 
the bony rods of a porcupine fish, which act 
as its scales. This degeneracy in the feathers 
of a cassowary is due to disuse inheritance. 
Both feathers and scales are dermal or skin 
structures. Feathers are, practically speaking, 
elongated scales—the counterpart of the scales 
of reptiles from which birds are descended. At 
(Continued on page 517.) 
