288 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



needs shoring up a little. I dwell more and more 

 on (yet get less and less satisfaction out of) the 

 Dominion of Man, his supreme place in the 

 creation, his right to dispose of the lives of inferior 

 creatures. I am not content to kill ; I must 

 justify the killing. I find man myself slaying 

 right and left, and I cry out that his title to do so 

 is unquestionable thereby questioning it. And 

 is the argument sufficient ? Is there not something 

 like an ignoratio elenchi here ? (If one were only 

 certain what an ignoratio elenchi is.) 



Again, by constantly telling myself and other 

 people that it is so, I nearly always succeed in 

 believing firmly that cold-blooded animals have 

 not the same power of sensation as warm-blooded 

 animals that fish, for example, do not feel pain, 

 being provided (trout, at any rate) with horny 

 mouths whose substance is comparable to the 

 human nail, and it does not hurt to cut one's 

 nails therefore unsensitive to the penetration of a 

 hook. At one time I have even persuaded myself 

 to look on this circumstance as a direct proof of 

 the Creator's intentions regarding trout and men. 

 But there are other fishes that have soft mouths- 

 roach, for example. Thank goodness I have few 

 roach on my conscience. 



Once more how very much better it is for a 

 wild animal to die at the hand of man than, after a 



