90 The American Salmon-fisherman. 



experience, and are speaking from experience, yet though 

 unquestionably truthful, they are at complete variance 

 with one another. 



That there is reason for it all, I cannot doubt. To at- 

 tribute the conduct of the salmon in this respect to mere 

 caprice is not satisfactory to my mind. Caprice is an 

 individual trait. A characteristic common to an entire 

 species must rest on some more substantial basis. Ca- 

 price, too, is a characteristic of the higher, not of the 

 lower orders of life. Man builds in every conceivable 

 way, but every bee makes every cell hexagonal. 



The mental range of a fish is of the most limited de- 

 scription. If more than four impulses physical com- 

 fort, self-preservation, hunger, and the desire to repro- 

 duce govern their conduct, I have yet to hear it sug- 

 gested. Under precisely similar circumstances and con- 

 ditions, one man may stay at home and another go a-fish- 

 ing. But when we descend the scale of the animal king- 

 dom to the low nervous development and narrow life of 

 a fish, mental action of so high an order and so individual 

 as caprice seems to me out of the question. Under pre- 

 cisely similar circumstances and conditions, I believe every 

 fish of a given kind will act in precisely the same way; 

 and that this does not always appear to us to be the case, 

 is due, I am decidedly inclined to believe, rather to our 

 own ignorance than to the idiosyncrasy of the fish. 



Not only do I believe that there are reasons for the 

 varying conduct which has given rise to these discrepant 

 opinions in regard to the selection of flies for salmon- 

 fishing, but 1 believe that a knowledge of these reasons 

 is by no means hopeless. 



One thing, however, seems certain. Abstract deduc- 



