70 PARKER— A CRITICAL SURVEY OF 



Bacon to show that sound is easily conducted through water and 

 he concludes with the statement that this experiment " has made 

 me crave pardon of one that I laught at, for affirming that he knew 

 Carps come to a certain place in a Pond to be fed at the ringing of a 

 Bel; and it shall be a rule for me to make as little noise as I can 

 when I am a fishing, until Sir Francis Bacon be confuted, which I 

 shall give any man leave to do." In the second edition of " The 

 Complete Angler" (1655, p. 175) Piscator, who seems to have pon- 

 dered the matter of fish hearing in the two years since the first edi- 

 tion appeared, added the following final touch. " All the further 

 use that I shall make of this, shall be to advise Anglers to be patient, 

 and forbear swearing, lest they be heard, and catch no fish." 



In the eighteenth century the ears of fishes were studied by such 

 workers as Klein (1740), Geoffroy (1780), Hunter (1782), Monro 

 (1785) and others. Hunter (1782, p. 383), in commenting on the 

 function of the ears of fishes, makes the following statement: 



Thus Hunter confirmed the opinion of previous investigators, 

 who were further supported by what was learned of the structure 

 of the fish ear by a host of later workers including such men as 

 Comparetti (1789), Cuvier (1805), E. H. Weber (1820) and espe- 

 cially G. Retzius (1881), whose monumental work on the ears of 

 vertebrates may be said to have completed a chapter in our knowl- 

 edge of this sense organ. 



Retzius (1881) has reported very fully on the structure of the 



" As it is evident that fish possess the organ of hearing, it becomes unnec- 

 essary to make or relate any experiment made with live fish which only tends 

 to prove this fact ; but I will mention one experiment, to shew that sounds 

 affect them much, and is one of their guards, as it is in other animals. In 

 the year 1762, when I was in Portugal, I observed in a nobleman's garden, 

 near Lisbon, a small fish-pond, full of different kinds of fish. Its bottom was 

 level with the ground, and was made by forming a bank all round. There 

 was a shrubbery close to it. Whilst I was laying on the bank, observing ttie 

 fish swimming about, I desired a gentleman, who was with me, to take a 

 loaded gun, and go behind the shrubs and fire it. The reason for going 

 behind the shrubs was, that there might not be the least reflection of light. 

 The instant the report was made, the fish appeared to be all of one mind, for 

 they vanished instantaneously into the mud at the bottom, raising as it were 

 a cloud of mud. In about five minutes after they began to appear, till the 

 whole came forth again." 



