learnt only from the experiment, that the arti- 

 ficial-fly is not proper for food. And I have 

 caught pikes with four or five hooks in their 

 mouths, and tackle which they had broken 

 only a few minutes before ; and the hooks 

 seem to have had no other effect than that of 

 serving as a sort of sauce piquante, urging 

 them to seize another morsel of the same kind." 

 Nothing can be said to beat down this argu- 

 ment, based as it is on absolute fact, unless, 

 indeed, some one have recourse to a subterfuge 

 of this nature, that he admits the facts re- 

 corded, but that they do not prove the non- 

 suflering of the hooked fish, since the craving 

 of appetite may be so great as to overpower 

 the acuteness of external pain. We can our- 

 selves, by the statement of a fact that occurred 

 to us last summer, destroy completely the above 

 supposition. We were fishing on an afternoon, 

 at the weir a little to the south of Sawley 

 bridge on the Trent, and lost, in consequence 

 of a flaw in an old gut casting-line, the whole 

 of it, with the exception of a link or so. We 

 lost our three flies, and all by a small chub of 

 less than a pound weight, From the way the 

 fish were rising, sluggishly and slowly, we 

 were certain that the pangs of appetite had 

 little to do with their mounting towards our 

 flies, and having gone to another part of the 

 B 5 



