34 FLY-FISHING AND FLY-MAKING. 



V. FEELING. 



This sense is well developed in all the angler's fishes, 

 but varies in its development. This variation appears to 

 me to depend on or is adjusted to the degrees of develop- 

 ment manifested by the other senses, especially that of 

 vision. For instance : The pike (Esox Lucius) is an exceed- 

 ingly sharp-sighted fish. If you fix your eyes on his as 

 he lies, perdu, sunning himself in the water, you may so 

 chain his attention as to allow of another person placing 

 a wire noose around his body and hauling him out. But 

 if your eyes waver, or the gaze be removed, like light- 

 ning he is gone. I have done this hundreds of times 

 when snaring pike from a trout stream, and mention it 

 chiefly to prove his quick sight. Now you may catch 

 him with a "flight "or "gang" of four or five hooks, 

 belonging to some previous angler, stuck in his jaw. I 

 have taken him with a lead-bound hook already fixed in 

 his maw, and have lost a hook on a pike and in thirty 

 minutes captured the fish with the tackle hanging to 

 him. This does not look much like evidence that 

 fish suffer pain. Indeed, the extremely dogmatic Mr. 

 Cholmondeley Pennell, says, in the " Fisherman's Maga- 

 zine :" "In sober seriousness, it has been proved over 

 and over again on evidence strong enough to hang a 

 man or what has been considered still more difficult, 

 to build a church the organization of a fish, which is a 

 cold-blooded animal, does not admit of its feeling pain." 

 Then there is the grayling, which I believe to be one of 

 the sharpest sighted of fishes ; he will come again and 

 again to a fly, even after being pricked by the hook, and 



