MIND UXDEH WATER. 165 



hair of the head is somewhat odd. By all these signs 

 a fish knows a man immediately, and as certainly as 

 any creature moving on land would know him. There 

 is no instinctive or hereditary fear of man at all it 

 is acquired by observation (which a thousand facts 

 demonstrate); so that we are quite justified in 

 believing that a fish really does notice some or all of 

 these attributes of its enemy. What the poacher or 

 wild hunter has to do is to conceal these attributes. 

 To hide the two-step, he walks as slowly as possible, 

 not putting the foot down hard, but feeling the ground 

 first, and gradually pressing it. In this way progress 

 may be made without vibration. The earth is not 

 shaken, and does not communicate the sound to the 

 water. This will bring him to the verge of the place 

 where the fish is basking. 



Very probably not only fish, but animals and some 

 birds hear as much by the vibration of the earth as by 

 the sound travelling in the atmosphere, and depend 

 as much upon their immediate perception of the 

 slightest tremor of the earth as upon recognition by 

 the ear in the manner familiar to ourselves. When 

 rabbits, for instance, are out feeding in the grass, it is 

 often possible to get quite close to them by walking in 

 this way, extremely slowly, and carefully placing the 

 foot by slow degrees upon the ground. The earth is 

 then merely pressed, and not stepped upon at all, so 

 that there is no jar. By doing this I have often 

 moved up within gunshot of rabbits without the least 

 aid from cover. Once now and then I have walked 

 across a field straight at them. Something, however, 

 depends on the direction of the wind, for then the 



