FISHES AND FISHING. 117 



ble, I think, he might then have weighed from thirty 

 to forty pounds. 



Trout are also voracious after their own species ; 

 a gentleman angling at Bakewell, saw a large trout 

 holding in his mouth another smaller than himself, 

 which he had seized across the body, and was so 

 much absorbed by his efforts to secure and swallow 

 his prey, that the angler, by the dexterous use of his 

 landing net, secured them both. 



The next sense possessed by fish, which claims at 

 tention, is that of feeling ; externally, from the na 

 ture of their scaly covering, they can have but very 

 little about the body, and taking the whole of their 

 formation into consideration, and that they are 

 amongst the class of cold-blooded animals, the sense 

 of feeling cannot be very acute, or can pain inflicted 

 upon them be very lasting in duration, for if wounded 

 with a hook, or even one remaining fixed in the 

 mouth, the same fish will attack a similar bait imme 

 diately, a fact well known to anglers of any experi 

 ence ; at the same time it may be taken into consider 

 ation, that the greater the proximity of a nerve to the 

 part where the hook enters, the wound must necessa 

 rily inflict more pain than if the instrument were 

 imbedded in a less sensitive portion of the mouth ; 

 and this may account for the difference in the exer- 



