30 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 
Mr. Hatuaway (Virginia). Mr. President, I would like to make a statement 
in regard to that. A year or two ago our fleet came up into the Chesapeake Bay 
and made their headquarters off Tangier Island, about the center of our men- 
haden fishing. This we believe to be a positive fact, indicated by what we saw 
and experienced. They were practicing, and our fishing was around within 10 
miles; and every day the fishermen would find a school of fish—as the menhaden 
are a surface fish—and away would go one of those guns and down the fish 
would go, and not a fish for the poor fisherman. And many of our friends know 
what kind of oaths our fishermen utter under those circumstances. [Laughter.] 
We believe, judging from our fleet, according to the estimated catch of the fish 
by the number of vessels we had at work, that by that fleet coming and practicing 
for a few weeks, $4,000,000 loss was sustained in our state. It is a fact that the 
fleet drove every fish away as fast as every gun would go. The fish had just 
come up there and the fishermen had just got among them, and they absolutely 
drove away every fish from us; so much so that we petitioned through our 
Representative in Congress that they withdraw the fleet from our grounds, 
and I am very proud to say that they did. 
The PRESIDENT. May I ask some one in the Bureau of Fisheries whether the 
government is now making any observations with reference ‘to the effect of gun 
practice? 
Dr. Francis B. SUMNER (Woods Hole Laboratory, Massachusetts). We have 
some data on that subject—unfortunately not nearly as much as we could have 
wished for. Nearly all that I shall say is on the authority of Prof. G. H. Parker, 
who, as many of you know, is a well-known student of animal physiology, and 
especially a student of the physiology of the sense organs and of reactions to 
stimuli. Professor Parker several years ago made some investigations in the 
endeavor to answer the question, Do fishes hear? As many of you may know, 
there has been a good deal of difference of opinion as to whether fishes hear at all. 
It was claimed at one time that fishes could hear even such sounds as the shout- 
ing of persons on shore, or ina boat, or even the ringing of a bell. Thereis that 
classical story, which perhaps some of you have heard, of the monastery in 
Europe, where a bell was rung periodically and the fishes came up to get their 
food. A scientist—I do not recall his name—took the trouble to investigate 
the report and found it to be quite correct. He looked a little further, however, 
than the ordinary observer, and he found that what the fish really did was to 
respond to the sight of the approaching person, and not at all to the sound of the 
bell. The bell had nothing to do with it. 
Professor Lee, of Columbia University, also made some experiments upon 
the hearing of fishes more than ten years ago, and his conclusion was entirely 
negative. While he granted, of course, that the obvious auditory organ or 
organs which exist in the ear region of a fish are there for a purpose—in other 
words, that they have a function—this function he did not believe to be hearing. 
