8 ANGLING. 



to the hacked and hackneyed quotations from Dr Johnson 

 and Lord Byron about Walton and anglers and angling. 

 Nay, only the other day a newly-fledged philosopher talked 

 learnedly about the sense of pain in the lower animals, the 

 cruelty of baiting hooks and hooking fish, winding up with 

 the well-known quotation about the "poor beetle," finding 

 in corporal sufierance " a pang as great as when a giant dies," 

 — which may be good poetry, but it is bad science. Shake- 

 speare did not know that pain is comparative only, and 

 depends on the organisation of the nervous system ; and if 

 it were not so, the death of the fish by the angler's hook is 

 less painful than that caused by the attack of other piscine 

 species which prey on them. For fish do not die a painful 

 death when taken out of the water. Some fish die instan- 

 taneously, as the herring ; others, as the eel, perch, and 

 pike, live long, and may be conveyed great distances from 

 one pool to another. It is even said that pike, moved by 

 an inscrutable instinct, wUl voluntarily cast themselves out 

 of the water and transport themselves, by a series of jumps, 

 to a neighbouring river or pool. No one would grudge the 

 ravenous pike any amount of pain, for it is so cruel and 

 voracious that it preys upon its own species. I need 

 not point to the hand of nature, or justify the angler's art 

 by the doctrine of necessity. 



Ere proceeding to treat of the senses and habits of the 

 fish, let me look at this oft-repeated charge of cruelty. 

 When the worm writhes on the hook, we know that it must 

 feel a certain amount of pain, though it is more than prob- 

 able that its movements partly arise from an instinctive 

 effort to escape, for it equally wriggles and writhes when 

 merely held between the fingers. Nay, we even know 

 that when cut in two the worm speedily recovers, and the 



