Chait. xxm. Angling Not Painful. 291 



not Gram pain, but from fright at the sense of restraint. If it were 

 from jiain it would give in sooner. Fish are equally frightened at 

 the same feeling of restraint in a net, and struggle hard to break 

 through the meshes. They will do the same from your hand. 

 Fish were created for capture and fond, and I do not suppose that 

 it is as unpleasant to be caught with a hook as to be masticated 

 by a Freshwater Shark. We have no records of the sensations 

 undergone in being masticated, whereas we do know that drowning 

 and hanging, forms of suffocation, are rather pleasant than other- 

 wise ; so those say who have tried, and I suppose you would rather 

 take their word for it than try yourself. There is a vision of green 

 fields. True, they didn't complete the experience, but they liked it 

 well enough "as far as they'd got" as Brigham Young said of 

 matrimony. And fish are killed by suffocation. They begin by 

 being out of breath as mentioned above, those which are hooked in 

 the mouth more so than those that are hooked foul, because you 

 interfere more or less with their respiration. It is said, too, that 

 a fish is drowned by water entering through the gills. When out 

 of water they are still more suffocated unless, as some do, you kill 

 them with a blow. 



Mr. Henderson, in his "My Life as an Angler," writes that he 

 had just lost a fish with more than half the casting hue, and im- 

 mediately after caught a 9 lb. salmon in the same he : — 



" What was oar surprise," he adds, " to see hanging from its mouth 

 " the lost line with a long array of heavy shot attached to it. On 

 " examination we found that the first set of hooks was planted far 

 " down in the stomach ; and yet though the long heavily weighted line 

 " was hanging in a strong stream, and therefore tugging at that most 

 " sensitive organ, our salmon's appetite was equal to a second break- 

 " fast. Surely this bears out the comfortable theory that fish have 

 - little feeling." 



In " The Moor and the Loch," by John Colquhoun, London, 

 John Murray, Albemarle Street, there is the following further 

 testimony to the same effect : — 



" Having tied a cast rather hurriedly in the morning, I hooked a 

 " good fish upon my bob .... when the single knot slipped. 

 " Two days after, when fishing the same place, I again hooked and 

 '• killed a fine trout, upwards of a pound weight, and to my a.stonish- 



TI1R HOI) IV ixdia. U 2 



