36 FISHING IN AMERICAN WATEKS. 



as well as water insects, which are the staple food of every 

 kind of fish .from the minnow to the salmon ; every thing that 

 lives and moves being swallowed without so far as has been 

 found any discrimination of species or much nicety of se- 

 lection. 



SECTION SIXTH. 



ON SMELL IN FISHES. 



Smelling in land a*nimals is immediately connected with 

 breathing, and we can not easily conceive how smell is pro- 

 duced except by a current of air, in which odoriferous parti- 

 cles are diffused, passing through a moistened channel, as was 

 so admirably described by Schneider two hundred years ago ; 

 but in fishes which do not breathe, smell can not be thus pro- 

 duced, though there can be no doubt of their being endowed 

 with this sense. Water, indeed, is as good a medium for dif- 

 fusing odors as air, and there is the less necessity for a cur- 

 rent of this being produced through the nostrils, as fish move 

 about so constantly through the water. Their nostrils, there- 

 fore, are generally large, but imperforate backward ; that is, 

 they do not communicate with the throat ; but in some fishes, 

 such as rays and sharks, the nostril opens by a considerable 

 space into the mouth, and through this a current of water 

 may probably run. M. Dumeril and the Rev. W. B. Daniell 

 think that, from the structure of the nostril and the want of 

 an aerial medium for odors, fishes can not smell at all, and 

 that their nostrils perform a function similar to taste ; but to 

 a late professor of zoology in King's College, London, this 

 supposition appears improbable. From all that I have dis- 

 covered, I feel confident that a majority of anglers and men 

 of science believe that smell in fishes is quite palpable. Smell- 

 ing substances for enticing fish to the hook are recommended 

 by too many honorable names to leave a shadow of doubt 

 upon the subject. Walton, for example, recommends numer- 

 ous strong-smelling pastes for attracting fish to the bait, stat- 

 ing that " old Oliver Henley, now with God, a noted fisher 



