168 OBTUSENESS OF FEELING IN FISH. 



four or five hooks in their mouths, and tackle 

 which had been 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." We can state a fact, too, which occurred 

 to ourselves a few years ago. We were one 

 morning busy fishing a favourite pool near Slym- 

 lakes Bridge, about a mile from Axminster, when 

 a friend came up to us with the intelligence that 

 a trout, in the same spot, half an hour before, had 

 carried off one of his choicest flies. At the same 

 instant we had the good fortune to hook a half- 

 pounder, which, in due time, our friend landed for 

 us, and in disengaging the fish from the hook we 

 discovered a second fly, which he recognised as 

 his lost favourite, firmly fastened in the roof of its 

 mouth. With this identical fly he, on the same 

 day, filled his basket, and lost it the next in 

 a spanking salmon-peal. Sir Humphrey Davy 

 mentions the circumstance above quoted, in his 

 admirable defence of angling from the charge of 

 cruelty a charge which is destitute of grounds 

 and unsupported by argument. In another place 

 he says, " It cannot be doubted that the ner- 

 vous system of fish, and of cold-blooded animals 

 in general, is less sensitive than that of warm- 



