THE SENSES OF FISHES. 29 



degrees of discriminating power, and that the voracious 

 fish are but slightly endowed with them to any nicety ; 

 but then, are there not degrees in connection with the 

 human gastronomist ? Would not the blubber-eating 

 Greenlander prefer his gross meal to the pate de foie 

 gras of the Parisian gourmand? i( A question not to be 

 asked/' as Falstaff would say, and I have myself met a 

 specimen of the genus homo, who would disdain the 

 juicy steak and dine off bacon-fat in preference. If 

 there is a lack of delicacy among men in this par- 

 ticular, why not among fishes ? But is there a lack of 

 particularity which would indicate an absolute absence of 

 taste in the inhabitants of the water ? Let us see. 



The pikes will take anything when hungry, you will 

 say, from a lead sinker to a red cork float. Yes, I admit, 

 that if you meet him on the aqueous highway, and you 

 possess a spark of bright metal about you, he will assail 

 you. It is, as Tennyson puts it, " Sense at war with soul." 

 The fish jumps out on a spoon in the hope that when he 

 crushes it, it will be fish-like, and so meat for him. I say 

 he will do this on impulse, but try a fish-bait that is not 

 fresh, and though he may seize it he will never swallow 

 it, no matter how ravenous he may be. Again, in Eng- 

 land, there is an olive, mucous coated, flat-fish, termed 

 the tench, which for some reason (some say gratitude !) 

 the fish will not touch. Though Espx Lucius will grow fat 

 on every other member of the family of the Cyprinidae, 

 or carps, yet you may fish all day in a lake or river 

 thronged with pike, using tench, and you will not catch 

 a pike. Again, with a golden fish (Cyprinus auratus) I 

 can catch four times more pike than with any other bait. 



