CHAP. V.] 



T11E FOURTH DAY. 



109 



And you are to know, that in Hampshire which I think 

 exceeds all England, for swiff, shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, 

 and store of trouts they use to catch trouts in the night, by 

 the light of a torch pr straw; which when they have discovered, 

 they strike with a trout-spear, or other w r ays. This kind of 

 way they catch very many ; but I would not believe it till I 

 was an eye-witness of it, nor do I like it now I have seen it. 



Yen. But, master ! do not trouts see us, in the night ? 



Pise. Yes ; and hear, and smell, too, both then and in the 

 day-time. 1 For Gesner observes, the otter smells a fish forty 

 furlongs off him in the water ; and that it may be true, seems 

 to be affirmed by Sir E.RANCIS BACO^, in the eighth century 

 of his Natural Ilis- 

 tory ; who there 

 proves that waters 

 may be the medium 

 of sounds, by de- 

 monstratin g it thus : 

 " That if you knock 

 two stones together 

 very deep under the 

 w r ater, those that 

 stand on a bank 

 near to that place, 

 may hear the noise 

 without any dimi- 

 nution of it by the 

 water." He also 



offers the like expe- Lord Bacou. 



riment concerning 

 the letting an anchor fall, by a very long cable or rope, on 



1 Swammerdam asserts that fish hear, and adds, that "they have a 

 wonderful labyrinth of the ear for that purpose." A clergyman, a friend 

 of mine, assures me, that at the abbey of St. Bernard, near Antwerp, he 

 saw carp come at the whistling of the feeder. H. I have tried too many 

 <;xperiments as to the hearing of fish not to be convinced that they do hear, 

 and there is little doubt of their sense of smelling. When I have been feeding 

 the gold and silver fish in Hampton Court Gardens, and cut the inside of a 

 piece of orange-peel to resemble a bit of bread, they would never touch it, 

 which is some evidence that they do smell. Besides which it was a confirmed 

 practice with anglers to use aromatic essences in their ground -baits, and, as 

 I have already said, (see p. 134,) it was fmnd to answer. ED. 



