MIND UNDEB WATER. 173 



their very life a burden. A rural poacher is infinitely- 

 preferable. The difference in the ways of fish when 

 they have been much disturbed and when they have 

 been let alone is at once discerned. No sooner do 

 you approach a fish who has been much annoyed and 

 driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating curl on 

 the surface shows with what vehemence his tail was 

 forced against it. In other places, if a fish perceives 

 you, he gives himself so slight a propulsion that the 

 >curl hardly rises, and you can see him gliding slowly 

 into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror 

 he would go so quickly as to be almost invisible. In 

 places where the fish have been much disturbed the 

 poacher, or any one who desires to watch their habits, 

 has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and 

 even then they will scarcely bear the very sight of 

 a man, sometimes not at all. The least briskness of 

 movement would send them into the depths out of 

 sight. Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk 

 slowly, and so do horses left to themselves in the 

 meads by water. The slowest man walking past has 

 quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than 

 those of cattle and horses, so that, even when bushes 

 intervene and conceal his form, his very ways often 

 proclaim him. 



Most people will only grant a moderate degree of 

 intelligence to fish, linking coldness of blood to narrow- 

 ness of intellect, and convinced that there can be but 

 little brain in so small a compass as its head. That 

 the jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of 

 the question ; but I am by no means prepared to admit 

 that fish are so devoid of sense as supposed. Not long 



