292 Miscellaneous. Chapt. xxiii. 



" ment my own handiwork, with two inches of gut, was sticking in his lip. 

 " One of the fraternity, sedulously employed on the opposite bank, 

 " remarked, that ' it must have been an honest trout, for it was not 

 " ' for want of temptation that he kept the hook for the right owner.' 

 " . . . . The insensibility to pain, which an angler can scarcely 

 " fail to notice in these cold-blooded creatures, is a point which happily 

 " redeems from cruelty the necessary inflictions of his craft. I re- 

 " collect catching three fine trout one evening when trolling on Loch 

 "Lomond with a friend, and we discovered hanging out of the mouth of 

 " one of them a strong hair line. On opening the fish we found a large 

 "bait-hook fixed firmly in its stomach, the wicker and part of the 

 " hook being nearly digested. The creature had evidently been caught 

 " and broke away from a set line, and though hooked in so vital apart, 

 " not only took our bait greedily, made a most capital fight for a 

 " quarter of an hour, but was in the very finest condition, having 

 " fattened on his hard fare instead of wasting from torture." 



In connection with the power of language, vocal or non-vocal, 

 in fishes (pages 02 to 65) I omitted to mention that I have had 

 trout emit distinctly audible sounds in my hand, perhaps mechani- 

 cally produced by the unavoidable pressure of the hand, but 

 seemingly not so. I grant that it is very rare to hear a trout make 

 a noise with its mouth, but that is no argument, for it is equally 

 rare, if not more so, to hear a fox utter a sound when run into; 

 only once out of hundreds of kills have I heard a Deccan fox cry 

 when picked by the silent greyhounds. The fact that sound is 

 uttered at all, if, as it seems, it was voluntarily not mechanically 

 produced, is a strong argument for the general power of utterance, 

 and that, again, is an argument for the concomitant power of 

 hearing, which some have denied, though, without an external 

 orifice, the car is internally traceable in fishes. 



Do fish sleep ? If you can solve the enigma you will be clever. 

 It is a question worthy of a competitive examiner of most malig- 

 nant type. 



A fish's means of progression lias interested me much, and may 

 similarly interest some of my readers. 1 therefore make the 

 following extract, and copy the drawing from the English Cyclo- 

 paedia: — 



" Tho whole of tho fins aro more or less employed in certain kinds 

 "of movements. In order to ascertain the true use of the fins in 



