4 The Lije Story of the Fish 



they have the advantage of being able to watch them swim 

 and eat and go about their affairs, whereas the angler rarely 

 sees them except on the end of a line. They, too, have added 

 to the general store of knowledge. They, too, have learned 

 by observation. 



But, after all, there are limits to what can be learned by 

 observation and by trial-and-error experiment. Here is where 

 science comes in. For centuries scientists have been studying 

 fish. With their training and their facilities, they have been 

 able to analyze the construction and the workings of their 

 bodies, to carry out controlled experiments on their actions, 

 to make systematic observations on their habits. They have 

 not found out all there is to know. Some problems, such as 

 where baby tarpon live, they are on the brink of solving 5 

 others they may never master. But to a great many questions 

 they have, through years of painstaking and ingenious labor, 

 of drudgery and endeavor and imaginative searching, found 

 the answers. And these answers they have, after the incurable 

 habit of scientists, scattered piecemeal through technical jour- 

 nals of different dates, or have entombed in large volumes 

 with long titles. It is for this reason that, while the field 

 naturalist who goes out and observes the habits of animals 

 and writes about them from the popular point of view has 

 added greatly to the knowledge and pleasure of sportsmen 

 and others, the more orthodox biologist — the man who per- 

 mits himself to be called a zoologist or, even worse, an ich- 

 thyologist — has been looked upon as a dull fellow, and his 

 contributions often have remained unknown to the very 

 people to whom they ought to be of the most interest and 

 value. 



On the one hand, then, we have the aquarists and anglers 

 seeking for knowledge of fishj on the other hand, we have 

 a great fund of knowledge about fish stored away in labora- 

 tories and scientific libraries. In one room, shelves full of 



