FISHES AND FISHING. 121 



they have some mode of mutual communication ; why 

 should they not ? Birds and insects have ! see the 

 article on bees, wasps, and ants, in that elaborate 

 work on Entomology, by Kirby and Spence. These 

 associations of fish may arise from the similarity of 

 their required food, and the necessity for selecting 

 particular parts of rivers congenial to their require- 

 ments : this instinct or necessity will direct them to 

 do. The male and female salmon pair, they play 

 about the part they have selected, then jointly make 

 furrows or nests for their impregnated ova, which 

 they conceal by covering them carefully, and if dis- 

 turbed and obliged to leave the spot, will return to it 

 again : this is all instinct ; but when the poacher 

 speared and carried away the male fish, and the 

 female went to a pool at some distance, and, im- 

 pelled by sexual desire, induced a fresh male to re. 

 turn with her to the same furrows, and eight or nine 

 male fish being thus captured by poachers, she 

 returned each time to the pool to obtain a fresh male, 

 and the last time finding no male salmon, she brought 

 a large male trout : this was proved before a Com- 

 mittee of the House of Commons. How she commu- 

 nicated her amorous feelings to the male fish, by what 

 blandishments, persuasions, or arts she induced him 

 to follow her, we are totally ignorant, but it will, I 

 think be granted, this was beyond instinct; that 



