84 Spinning for Mahseer. CHAP. v. 



likely to be attached to their warnings, in opposition to the cravings of 

 nature. 



Certainly there is much to be urged in the contrary direction also, 

 as, for instance, the fact that fish will keep on biting in one particular 

 spot, though they see their neighbours being pulled out before their 

 very eyes. Still men do things quite as foolish. They engage in trades 

 dangerous to life, and continue to follow them, though they see their 

 fellow workmen falling off around them from diseases which have been 

 calculated to result with certainty after a stated number of years. If 

 the pressure of circumstances, res angusta domi^ be too strong for the 

 wisdom of the human being, why should not the cravings of nature be 

 allowed to have outweighed the caution of the fish, rather than be 

 deduced as conclusive evidence that he knows not the risk he is run- 

 ning? It is at least an open question, and analogy and observation 

 incline me to the belief that fish can communicate ideas to each other. 



I may not be able to deduce as many, or as striking examples, as 

 in the case of birds or beasts, but that, as I have already shown, is the 

 natural consequence of fish inhabiting an element in which we are 

 necessarily less at home than in our own. 



It is not necessary to my argument that the communication should 

 take place by means of oral sounds as with human beings, though fish 

 have the sense of hearing. Dr. W. Lauder Lindsay says : " Various 

 fish kept in pleasure ponds in gentlemen's demesnes also know their 

 own master's voice or call, and sometimes even footfall or footstep, 

 from those of all other individuals. They attend to the one and are 

 indifferent to the other." And Sir J. Emerson Tennent, in his very 

 interesting " Natural History of Ceylon," has remarked, not without 

 force, that " organs of hearing have been clearly ascertained to exist not 

 only in fishes, but in mollusca. In the oyster the presence of an 

 acoustic apparatus of the simplest possible construction has been 

 established by the discoveries of Siebold." Sound, we are told, is 

 produced by vibrations of matter, as light is perceptible through 

 vibrations of ether. When the air is quivering with vibrations of less 

 than 16,000 or more than 32,000 beats a second, the sound is inaudible 

 to the human ear. May there not be such sounds in animal speech, 

 audible to them, as we notice that there are scents and sights beyond 

 our powers ? Still it is not necessary to my argument that the com- 

 munication should be made even by sounds inaudible to the human 



