no The Animal Mind 



fish to activity, but not to direct their movements. Bateson 

 (25) and Herrick (297) both obtained evidence of this; 

 Nagel, on the other hand, declares that fish do not perceive 

 food at a distance except by sight, and that the function 

 of the first pair of cranial nerves in these animals must 

 remain uncertain (522). The well-developed character 

 of these " olfactory" nerves and lobes, whose function in 

 higher vertebrates is certainly connected with smell, would 

 argue against the supposition that smell can be wholly 

 lacking in fishes. It is generally agreed that a contact 

 food sense exists in fish; Nagel, however, holds that its 

 organs are situated only about the mouth (522), while 

 Herrick has good experimental proof that fishes which 

 have " terminal buds," structures resembling taste buds, 

 distributed over the skin, are also sensitive to food stimu- 

 lation applied to different regions of the skin. He thinks 

 that Nagel's negative results were due to the fact that 

 instead of food stimuli in his experiments he used chemicals 

 with which the fish would not normally be acquainted (297). 

 Parker (546), experimenting with catfish and the young 

 of a species of lamprey, found the whole body surface more 

 or less sensitive to salt, acid, and alkali; the body of the 

 lampreys was sensitive also to quinin solution, but that 

 of the catfish was not; neither animal displayed skin 

 sensitiveness to sugar solution. Cutting the nerve supply 

 to the olfactory organs, the lateral-line organs (see page 

 128), and the taste buds failed to abolish skin sensitiveness, 

 which Parker therefore concludes must depend on free 

 nerve endings in the skin. He distinguishes three forms 

 of chemical sensibility in these lower vertebrates : common 

 chemical sensibility, for which free nerve endings are the 

 organ; taste, dependent on the taste buds; and smell, 

 dependent on the olfactory nerves, and responding to much 



