Fish Culturists Association. 



Now, when committees, juries, or experts are brought 

 together for matters practical, scientific, ecclesiastical, or com- 

 mercial, the best general work or result is brought about if each 

 man is allowed to follow his own bent. In fact, men, by their 

 own natural impulses, slide into peculiar grooves. So, in a 

 body of men acting together, one person has the brains and does 

 the thinking, 'another has the legs and does the walking; and I 

 assure you that individuals so blessed have ample scope for 

 pedestrianism in this exhibition, while another who has the 

 mouth does the talking. I would like to draw here your 

 attention to this fact. In this enormous icthyc show, I am 

 inclined to think that the mouth was comparatively useless — at 

 least in what is sometimes regarded as its noblest function. 

 The mouths having to do with Group V., I suppose, have talked 

 but sparingly, and for the best of reasons. It was because the 

 mouths of the judges of Group V. were full— not of poetic 

 sentiment nor of dry scientific names, but full of fish. You 

 may depend upon it that there was a great deal of steady tasting. 

 If it is permitted to man, in his ordinary experience, to taste a 

 good deal, at this exhibition the most extraordinary opportu- 

 nities were allowed him. If we run through the ordinary 

 alphabet of tastes, calling for instance A the savor of salted cod, 

 or B the flavor of smoked herring, it must have required quite 

 the perfection of gustatory grammar to understand squid in its 

 original ink-sauce, coming from Spain, or to construe or digest 

 dried skark-fins from China. Certain combinations may no 

 doubt have been pleasant to the judges, though I am inclined to 

 think that occasionally their impressions might have been 

 painful. Of course I do not mean to say that the judges of 

 Group V. were martyrs in the cause, but as icthyophagists, eating 

 ploddingly and conscientiously through the fish of twenty-seven 

 countries, in a continuous kind of repast, extending over a 



