EXPERIMENTS ON THE PEODUOTION OP ARTIFICIAL BAIT. 93 



When a sufficiently attractive extract is obtained, however, it does 

 not necessarily follow that it is of any use as a bait, since there is a 

 great difficulty in applying anything in a liquid form. To do this, 

 some substance is needed which will soak up enough extract to retain 

 its odour for a sufficient time in the water, and yet be soft enough 

 to allow of the fish getting hooked. Various substances have been 

 tried for this purpose. Pieces of flannel and bags of buttercloth 

 filled with pulp or cotton-wool, were soaked in the extracts, but these 

 do not retain their smell more than a few minutes. To obviate this, 

 I tried to thicken the extracts with gelatine, but this appears to 

 precipitate the odorous substances, and the smell is destroyed. Slices 

 of turnip, filled with the extract under reduced pressure, were also 

 tried ; but in this case a strong vegetable odour was developed, 

 which rendered the substance useless. Gelatine appears at first to 

 be just the substance required, but in order to mix the extract with 

 the gelatine heat must be applied, and this completely destroys the 

 smell of the extracts. 



Since liquid extracts appeared to be so difficult to use as bait, I 

 tried making a kind of mash of the bait, adding small quantities of 

 boracic acid and glycerine, to prevent decomposition. These 

 mixtures remain unchanged for a considerable length of time, and 

 retain their attractive properties. 



Mackerel and squid treated in this manner were most attractive 

 to the conger in the tanks of the Laboratory, but I have not caught 

 any fish with them from the sea, although some of the bags contain- 

 ing the mixtures have been sucked off the hooks. Conger will 

 also eat pastes made with flour and these mashes ; but these are of 

 no use for fishing, as they do not remain on the hooks for a sufficient 

 length of time. If one may judge from experiments in the Aquarium, 

 as soon as a bait reaches the bottom it is seized by the crabs, and 

 if it is not sufficiently tough, is pulled off the hook before the fish 

 have time to get the scent. For this reason the medium for 

 applying an extract, or, in fact, almost any kind of preparation must 

 be exceedingly strong, and not easily pulled to pieces. If anything 

 of this nature can be prepared, the application of extracts will become 

 easy, and the whole question will be very much simplified. 



I have not made any experiments with essential oils, since 

 Mr. Bourne, when at Plymouth, tried several of these, and found that 

 none were in any way attractive ; it seems improbable that fish would 

 be attracted by anything of that nature, since, in the natural 

 course of events, they would never meet with such bodies. 



Preserving bait by freezing has also been tried, and was 

 moderately successful. A number of squid were cleaned and placed 

 in an air-tight jar, a small quantity of dry boracic acid, being 



