308 Fish Stories 



injured, while all the rest would drop to the bottom in 

 alarm. Whether fishes can talk is a question which might 

 be left for the ingenious gentleman who went to Africa and, 

 it is alleged, shut himself in a cage, expecting to learn the 

 language of apes, who, every one knows, can talk, at least 

 in South America, but will not, fearing the President will 

 put them to work building the canal. 



Fishes utter sounds in the water and out and may have 

 some method of communication. I have seen two solemn 

 striped grunts approach each other, open their mouths, press 

 the lips together, then back solemnly off. Whether the 

 fish was the dentist of fishes, or merely a practising physi- 

 cian examining the tongue of a patient, or whether it was 

 piscatorial osculation, I do not know, it is enough to have 

 seen these things, let alone explaining them; but here cer- 

 tainly is a large and boundless field for some nature writer. 

 Fishes have affection of a kind, as witness, the care of the 

 young by the male. He is as solicitous and savage as the 

 occasion requires, and displays at times intelligence of a cer- 

 tain kind. 



The bay of Avalon, California, is the resort of many 

 yellowtails, a large and vigorous fish, to catch which is one 

 of the pastimes of the island, the dock always having its 

 quota of anglers. Tossing over a bucket of sardines the 

 yellowtails will often dash up, pick them up, one after the 

 other, almost always avoiding the fish which is impaled on 

 the hook. I think the fishes always see the tackle, no matter 

 how light and delicate. If they are very hungry they rush 

 and seize it too quickly, but it is extremely difficult to catch 

 some old habitues of a wharf, schooled by a thousand 

 anglers. 



One day I hooked a large yellowtail which dashed directly 

 away out to sea ; when it had taken two hundred feet of line 

 from my reel I stopped it, and the fish, realizing that I had 

 the best of it, did a very unusual thing for a yellowtail, at 

 least in my experience. It turned and came for me, like 



