30 THE COMMERCIAL SEA FISHES OF 



valuable forms of fish are found to depend on food liable 

 to injury or destruction, while other and equally suitable 

 forms subsist on food which is inexhaustible in amount. 

 Some feed on insects which fall into the water, some are 

 herbivorous, some carnivorous, and many omnivorous. 

 Many forms of fish cease, or almost cease, feeding during 

 the breeding season, but this is not invariable. Also 

 during the cold season of the year the desire for food 

 appears generally to be little developed. 



Some forms survive after very considerable injuries. 

 Thus in the Weston-super-Mare Museum is the cast of a 

 sword-fish which had evidently been impaled by one of 

 its own species, but recovered. A few years since, some 

 fishermen obtained a sturgeon off Margate, and, having 

 attached a rope round it a little above the tail fin, they 

 towed it up the Thames, intending to dispose of it to an 

 aquarium. On arrival the rope was found to have cut 

 down to the backbone, and the fish was refused under the 

 belief it could not live. The fishermen pleaded for its 

 being tried in the aquarium, and it entirely recovered. 

 Many instances might be adduced tending to show that 

 this class of animals is not very sensitive to pain ; but I 

 will merely allude to the numerous instances in which fish, 

 having been hooked and escaped, have in a very short 

 period again taken a bait. While we are informed of an 

 angler who, having hooked a small perch, foul, occasioning 

 its eye to be torn out, threw the fish again into the pond, 

 but left its eye on his hook as a bait, when, curiously 

 enough, the injured fish was very shortly again secured in 

 attempting to seize its own eye. 



It seems very probable that fish have some means of 

 intercommunication, and instances have been adduced when 

 fresh-water forms have evidently warned their friends against 



