22 THE SALMON 



in such a manner that its mouth was completely closed, 

 the triangles being fixed in the upper and lower jaws. 

 On cutting out the hooks a partially digested parr fell 

 from the fish's mouth. It was, no doubt, the peculiar 

 way it was hooked which prevented it from suppress- 

 ing the evidence of this meal taken in fresh water. 

 Mr. Marsham also, in September 1897, killed a 20 Ib. 

 male fish fresh from the sea in the Teith, inside which 

 he found a black and white slug ITJ inches long. 



I do not believe that salmon or any other fish 

 feel very acutely, a reassuring theory for the tender- 

 hearted fisherman. I once caught a sea trout about 

 a pound and a half in weight which had been 

 recently completely transfixed by a heron's bill. The 

 wound was perfectly fresh, and could not, in my 

 judgment, have been made more than half an hour, 

 and yet the fish was already feeding and taking the 

 fly. So, too, the desperate struggle of the fish to get 

 free confirms the same view. Not all the instinct of 

 self-preservation would induce a man to put a strain 

 of even a pound on a fishing-rod if the hook was 

 attached to some tender part of his flesh. 



Scrope, in an amusing passage, quotes Sir 

 Humphry Davy, ' the eminent author of " Salmonia," 

 and Dr. Gillespie, as authorities for the statement 

 that " fish seldom feel any pain from the hook." ' 



