386 HAVE FISHES MEMORY. 



under which they lost the "flight reflex." Numerous examples were 

 reported. Herr Wallau, of Ma3'ence, had tamed a rainbow trout to 

 such a degree that it took food from his hand. If he caught it by the 

 tail and raised it out of the water it would not approach him for three 

 days. Similarl}' a macropod, which Herr Schott, of Ludwigsburg, had 

 repeatedly teased with a little board, for some time kept away from 

 him at feeding hours. Many observers noticed tame gold-tish resume 

 their timorous habits after being chased Ijy cats or blackbirds. In 

 general, fish, even such as have not been tamed, grow particularly shy 

 by being chased and disturbed. At a water gate near Raunheim lumier- 

 ous varieties of fishes, as Herr Buxbaum determined by marking indi- 

 viduals, take up their position for days together in the eddy richly 

 impregnated with oxygen. They rise quite to the surface, and can 

 easily be removed from the water. This state of afi'airs continues only 

 a short time. Soon fish-eating birds collect about the sluice, and at 

 first their booty is plentiful. Before long, however, the whole congre- 

 gation of fishes sink as deep down as possible into the water. I am 

 informed that a pike which had taken up a permanent stand left it 

 when it had been shot at; two others acted similarly when they had 

 come into contact, respectively, with a pike hook and a net. Von Link, 

 in Stuttgart, tells me that after he had fired several shots on the same 

 day into a group of rather large dace the}- disappeared whenever he 

 came in his uniform. Landois reports that in the zoological gardens 

 a little gre])c {Colytahiis nilnor)^ which had taken rich booty in an 

 aquarium stocked with four or five hundred fish, soon was avoided by 

 them. They hid in a corner of the aquarium, behind the water-supply 

 pipe, where they cowered in a ball as thick as one's fist. Before they 

 had been gaily scattered in all parts of the reservoir. I do not agree 

 with Landois that this incident proves a comparatively high develop- 

 ment of the psychic life of even little fishes, such as the coujmon 

 stickleback, the bitterling, the red-eye, etc. To explain the fact that 

 after satisfying their "curiosity " they soon recognized their " enemy " 

 and sought a well-situated place of refuge, the assumption suflices that 

 pursuit intensified, or rather, after taming, renewed the " flight reflex." 

 At all events, we are not absolutel}^ forced to attribute to the fish 

 conscious action serving a preconceived purpose. 



Fishermen are well aware that places in which a great deal of fishing 

 has been done are for some time avoided by fish. Various experi- 

 ences seem to point to the fact that fishes in some way recognize, or 

 at least avoid, objects believed to be noxious to them. Thus fisher- 

 men hold that the hook must be carefully buried in the bait or the fish 

 will not bite. Many reports maintain that pike once made acquainted 

 with wire nets thereafter avoided them. Herr Buerob, master of the 

 fisheries in Weimar, writes that, though a large pike did not recoil from 

 persons passing his permanent place, even when tickled with a whip, 



