14 THE FRESH- WATER TROUT. 



its cruelty have got into nice disquisitions upon the 

 subject of trouts' feelings. Having already referred 

 our readers to Isaac Walton and a learned Doctor 

 of Divinity for the solution of this difficulty, we 

 need not do more than remark that their feelings 

 do not seem to be by any means acute. They have 

 frequently been caught with flies in their mouths 

 which had been left there by some angler a few 

 hours previous. The trout, as Professor Wilson 

 observed, having gone off " with the fly in one 

 cheek and his tongue in the other." A friend of 

 ours met with a remarkable instance of this want of 

 feeling when angling in the Whitadder with worm. 

 He had just made his first cast when a trout went 

 off with the whole apparatus of hook and casting- 

 line. Without moving from where he stood, in the 

 middle of the water, he put on another, and first 

 cast with it caught the trout with the previous 

 casting-line hanging from its mouth, and the hook 

 firmly fixed in it. The vagaries which they exhibit 

 when hooked are usually attributed to pain, but 

 more probably arise from a mixed feeling of surprise 

 and just indignation at having their powers of loco- 

 motion suddenly curtailed. 



Of all the senses trout possess, that of sight is 

 the most perfect, and is the one which most affects 

 the angler in pursuit of his vocation. Naturalists 

 say that the appearance and structure of the eye 

 do not lead to the conclusion that their sight is 

 very acute ; but the angler has every reason to 



