96 Book of the Black Bass. 



to get a rise under such conditions, he himself must be 

 very near-sighted indeed. 



On the other hand, any one who has seen a black bass 

 dart like an arrow and seize a minnow swimming quietly 

 thirty feet away, or a brook trout flash like a meteor for 

 a dragon fly hovering near the water at the same distance, 

 must admit that their visual powers are sufficient for all 

 practical purposes. 



It is quite amusing to hear an aiigler expatiate learnedly 

 on the dimness of sight and dullness of hearing in fishes, 

 and in the next breath caution the tyro to have his cloth- 

 ing conform as nearly as possible with the hues of the 

 foliage skirting the stream; to keep out of sight, tread 

 lightly, and make as little noise as possible ; and to assure 

 him, that, even then, the chances are that the fish will see 

 the novice before he sees the fish. 



It is a curious contradiction of theory and practice, a 

 fishy illustration of the abstract and concrete. The expla- 

 nation I conceive to be this: our Piscator would be con- 

 sidered a scientific angler, which, in his case, becomes a 

 contradiction of terms; for while blindly holding to the 

 opinions of some closet naturalist, he is practically follow- 

 ing the dictates of his own experience and common sense. 



Now, it is possible to be scientific and an angler, too, 

 but our science, like our angling, must be practical, and 

 must of necessity be learned by close observation and study 

 of the habits of the fishes as they exist in nature, and not 

 alone from the study of the physical construction of a 

 preserved specimen. 



I am well aware that many scientists consider fish 

 myopic, or near-sighted; not, however, on account of ex- 

 cessive convexity of the cornea, as is popularly supposed, for 

 it is an exploded theory in medical science that myopia 



