THE SENSE OF HEARING IN FISHES. 93 



must be ascribed to the loss of the ear as a receptor. Hence the 

 futility of the objection that the cutting of the eighth nerve involves 

 in itself serious inhibition. Watson (1914, p. 394) has urged 

 against these results the criticism that the sound-producing apparatus 

 " used by Parker and by Bigelow," an electrically driven tuning- 

 fork, " is open to the severest kind of criticism." No further com- 

 ment is made on this point and the reader is left in uncertainty of 

 what should have been used except for the remark (p. 394) that it 

 is strange that Parker did not repeat Bateson's experiment of 

 tapping stones under water. Such comments as these show a very 

 imperfect appreciation of the conditions under which tests on fish 

 hearing can be carried out, for it is extremely doubtful if anything 

 of value could be obtained by Bateson's procedure whereas that so 

 severely condemned yielded position results. Hence there appears 

 to be no good grounds to oppose the conclusion that both Fundulns 

 and Carassius hear. 



Notwithstanding Korner's negative results (1916) the unusual 

 responsiveness of Amiurus as shown by Maier (1909), Haempel 

 (1911), and Parker and Van Heusen (191 7) is beyond doubt and 

 Haempel's tests of a fish from which the ears had been removed is 

 strongly indicative of hearing. This conclusion is abundantly con- 

 firmed by the much more extensive experiments of Parker and Van 

 Heusen already summarized. The fact that these investigators used 

 a submerged telephone as a source of sound and avoided much of 

 the nerve-cutting previously employed in eliminating lateral-line 

 organs and the skin has removed practically all of the assumed ob- 

 jections to the earlier work of Parker. They confirm, beyond doubt, 

 Haempel's conclusion that Amiurus can hear. 



The part of the fish ear concerned with hearing has not yet 

 been determined with certainty. The condition seen in many of the 

 higher fishes in which the two chief parts of the ear, the utriculus 

 and the sacculus, are completely separated, suggests at once dififer- 

 ent functions for these parts. And the fact that in the goldfish the 

 animal still responds to sounds after the removal of the utriculus 

 and its appended canals (Bigelow, 1904) offers the natural sugges- 

 tion that in this fish hearing is associated with the sacculus. This 

 view is supported by Parker's observation (1910&) that when the 



