NOTES ON ICHTHYOLOGY. 25 



poor power of palate, the fact that they are " often unable to distinguish 

 poisonous substances, and are frequently accordingly destroyed wholesale 

 by poachers." It seems to me that these are very insufficient grounds 

 for assuming an absence of taste. I doubt not but that I or the nearest 

 druggist could compound savoury but fatal dishes ad infinitum, and even 

 Mr. PennelTs educated palate would fail to distinguish the poisonous 

 agent. However, he is quite right in the assertion which follows, that 

 the sense of taste (if it amount to that) is more developed in herbivorous 

 than in carnivorous fishes. 



The sense of feeling, or mechanical perception, is without doubt also but 

 feebly developed, except in such fish as the Silurus glanis, and generally 

 barbed or bearded fishes, such as the barbel and gudgeon. In these 

 .the sense of sight is in many cases imperfectly developed, and the 

 tentacula are as auxilliaries brought into requisition. The sense of feeling 

 in its subjective aspect is also feeble. A shark, Mr. Pennell tells us, will 

 be seemingly unconscious of serious injury unless it is disabled, and we 

 know how trout will take a hook in its mouth, and a pike a gorge bait 

 with treble hooks in its mouth and another hook and half digested lead in 

 its stomach. Mr. Pennell once caught a perch with its own eye ; and this 

 incident reminds me that on one occasion I performed the operation on a 

 large tame carp of cutting its eye from its head, from which it hung 

 suspended by the optic nerve having been partially torn out. The carp 

 the same evening responded to its keeper's whistle to be fed, and did 

 feed. 



Speaking of calling fish reminds me of the final sense on which it is here 

 necessary specifically to remark, viz., hearing. That fish do hear is 

 undoubted ; but the medium of the water being denser the sound made in 

 air is not heard, I believe, in water unless it be sufficiently loud to 

 produce well-defined mechanical vibrations in the water. For example, one 

 may speak as loudly as inclined in the punt within a few yards of a wily 

 old chub, but no result is apparent. The fish whose sight is so keen and 

 whose fears are so instantly aroused as to perceive in the shadow of a 

 flying bird an enemy, cannot hear the reverberation of the voice for this 

 assumption is fair from its timorous character ; but fire off a gun near it 

 as I have done, hidden so that no smoke or flame can be possibly seen by 

 the fish, and away darts Cyprinus cephalus to deep water. Again, I have 

 seen the small fish leap bodily out of the water on the firing of a frigate's 

 24-pounder. Of course I know that these results are substantially denied 

 by Ronalds in his book, but I can conceive of his experiments being faulty, 

 and his gun of light detonation, both of which possible causes of his opinions 

 could not have operated in my own experiments. Again, notwithstanding 

 my experience, I am confronted by the fact that persons whistle and call 



