CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE. 21 
stances which we neither cared for at the period of 
their occurrence nor ever after. All these, and end- 
less other instances to which we could refer, tend to 
prove that where there exist noses, there the absence 
of the sense of smell must be taken as the exception, 
and notas therule. Davies quaintly tells us of that— 
“ Next, in the nostrils she doth use the smell, 
" As God the breath of life in them did give ; 
So makes he now this power in them'to dwell, 
To judge all airs whereby we breathe and live.” 
If then, in other words, we accept the general con- 
clusion that the nose is the sentinel of the stomach, 
and we find by proper examination that fish possess 
the organ with its due proportion of muscles and 
nerves, we cannot conscientiously deny that they 
likewise are probably endowed to some extent with the 
power of discriminating by smell what is good or bad 
for them. Most anglers are aware that the fresh bait 
of to-day eagerly seized and pouched by the salmon 
or the pike, and to-morrow rejected by both, will be 
greedily devoured by the less fastidious ¢el, which 
yet, after a greater degree of staleness in the bait, 
would turn up its nose at it, whether blunt or pointed ; 
thus giving the still greater scavenger of the water— 
the craw-fish—the chance of making an acceptable 
meal, Call this an exercise of taste, or by what name 
you will, it is too intimately connected with smelling 
