THE TROUT. 23 



be so. I never fish with a live bait, or with worms ; 

 and I am furnished with a large knife having a 

 small hammer at the end of it, with which I kill 

 my fish the moment they are out of the water. 

 It may be said that pain is inflicted on a fish the 

 instant the hook strikes its mouth. I do not think 

 that this is the case. It is either resistance, or the 

 sight of an object that alarms them, which occa- 

 sions a fish to shew fear, and not from any actual 

 pain they feel from the hook. This is well known 

 to fishermen as well as the fact of fish taking a 

 bait while they have had a set of hooks in their 

 mouth. I have already given an instance of this 

 in the large trout taken by Mr. Marshall, and ano- 

 ther proof of it, amongst numerous others, occurred 

 this summer in the Thames near Kingston bridge. 

 On two consecutive days this summer (1835) a 

 large barbel broke the tackle of a gentleman, and 

 on the third day he caught it with two hooks, and 

 the line attached to them, which had been pre- 

 viously lost, fixed to its mouth. Sir Humphrey 

 Davy has some curious observations on this subject 

 in his Salmonia. He says, that ' the nervous sys- 



* tem of fish, and cold blooded animals in general, 

 ' is less sensitive than that of warm-blooded ani- 

 ' mals. The hook is usually fixed in the cartila- 

 ' ginous part of the mouth, where there are no 



* nerves; and a proof that the sufferings of a 



* hooked fish cannot be great is found in the cir- 



* cumstance, that though a trout has been hooked 



