204 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



suffered by a little fish, while expiring on the green 

 bank are but momentary, and probably not to be com- 

 pared with those of a bird, when first taken from his 

 native haunts, and shut up in a cage. Fishes do not 

 seem to be endowed with the sense of feeling, or touch, 

 and have a brain so small as hardly to afford them a 

 very definite consciousness. They have the senses of 

 sight, of hearing, of smell, and of taste, for without 

 these they could not provide for their own wants. 

 They possess a very low form of intelligence and sen- 

 sibility, and may be severely cut, without showing 

 signs of feeling. If we wound a poor bird, he may 

 lead a life of pain and misery for many weeks. He is 

 a creature of warm blood, endowed with intelligence, 

 and a capacity for grief. He is regarded as the com- 

 panion and benefactor of man, and as having certain 

 inalienable rights — such as the enjoyment of life and 

 liberty, and the means of obtaining a livelihood. But 

 fishes, the voracious devourers of their own young, 

 whom they cannot recognize and do not protect, are 

 plainly incapable of mental suffering, and may be taken 

 in unlimited quantities, without danger of causing an 

 inconvenient scarcity. Hence, though all living crea- 

 tures are more or less endowed with a power of feeling 

 pleasure and pain, and have a certain right to the enjoy- 

 ment of life, I regard the destruction of a fish in the 

 same light as the killing of a fly, or the trampling on a 

 worm. I would not needlessly destroy an insect, or set 

 foot upon a worm ; but I believe the united sufferings 

 of a thousand fishes in the agonies of death, would not 

 equal the pangs suffered by one little child with a burnt 

 finger. 



There is no other sport so well adapted to the habits 

 of a thoughtful man, as that of angling, leading him 



