64 ODD HOURS WITH NATURE 



removed, it left them quite unmolested. In this 

 case the pike never learned anything about the 

 partition. It merely got fixed hard in its head a 

 dull notion that there was something about those 

 minnows which interfered with their usefulness as 

 articles of diet. Of course, in support of the 

 belief of the teachableness of fish there will be 

 cited the case of those young hatchery trout which 

 come up in shoals to be fed on their attendant 

 making the customary sign. This, however, is 

 not a case of intelligence. It is but a free response 

 to a natural impulse, the almost mechanical per- 

 formance of an action in the direct sequence of 

 a stimulus acting on one of the senses. The 

 stupidest moth will quickly learn to respond in 

 the same way to a scent which it associates with 

 food. It is not in responding to, but in the inhibi- 

 tion of, such impulses that intelligence, and par- 

 ticularly the sort attributed to fish, should be 

 shown. 



How, then, is the so-called cunning of the trout 

 to be accounted for? The question is not very 

 difficult if one keeps steadily in mind the fact that 

 they have been fished for since, at any rate, the 

 days of neolithic man ; and teachableness has not 

 necessarily any part in the problem. Through 

 all those ages man has. been steadily extracting 

 from the water the fish with an inferior original 

 endowment of suspicion ; and, considering the 

 length of time during which the process has been 

 going on, the surprising thing is, not that fish are 

 suspicious, but that there are any strains left with 

 so little suspicion that they may still be deceived 



