EXPERIMENTS ON THE PRODUCTION OF ARTIFICIAL BAITS. 221 



larly the squid and pilchard preparations. It seems unlikely that 

 anything other than these should be attractive, although there are 

 cases where substances, which animals in the ordinary course of 

 events would not meet with, are exti-emely attractive. In these 

 cases it would seem likely that there is a strong resemblance 

 between the smell of these substances and that of some favourite 

 food of the animals, although in most cases it is not easy to find. 



It will be seen from the above account that the difficulty of 

 finding a "medium'^ still remains unsolved, and, on that account, 

 the work is still incomplete. If this were discovered, further ex- 

 periments could be made in the preparation of extracts, and a 

 satisfactory bait would soon result. 



At the same time, if nothing is found attractive but preparations 

 of the bait now in use, no very great advantage will be obtained, 

 since the same result could be arrived at by keeping the ordinary 

 bait in a frozen condition. This can be done for a considerable 

 time — six to eight weeks ; and the expense, when done on a large 

 scale, would not be very great. 



The question appears to me to be one of those which are not so 

 likely to be solved by continuous investigation as by some accidental 

 observation, since it is probable that some substance may be found 

 suitable for the purpose which at first it would appear absurd to 

 use. In the same way some material, other than squid, &c., might 

 be found to be attractive to the fish. 



