36 Fisuinc iv AMERICAN WATERS. 
as well as water insects, which are the staple food of every 
kind of fish from the minnow to the salmon; every thing that 
lives and moves being swallowed without—so far as has been 
found. 
lection. 
any discrimination of species or much nicety of se- 
SECTION SIXTH. 
ON SMELL IN FISHES. 
Smelling in land animals is immediately connected with 
breathing, and we can not easily conceive how smell is pro- 
duced except by a current of air, in which odoriferous parti- 
cles are diffused, passing through a moistened channel, as was 
so admirably described by Schneider two hundred years ALO 5 
Dut in fishes which do not breathe, smell can not be thus pro- 
duced, though there can be no doubt of their being endowed 
with this sense. Water, indeed, is as good a medium for dif 
fusing odors as air, and there is the less necessity for a cur- 
rent of this being produced through the nostrils, as fish move 
about so constantly through the water. Their nostrils, there- 
fore, are generally large, but imperforate backward; that is, 
they do not communicate with the throat; but in some fishes, 
such as rays and sharks, the nostril opens by a considerable 
space into the mouth, and through this a current of water 
may probably run. M. Dumeril and the Rev. W. B. Daniell 
think that, from the structure of the nostril and the want of 
an aerial medium for odors, fishes can not smell at all, and 
that their nostrils perform a function similar to taste; but to 
a late professor of zoology in King’s College, London, this 
supposition appears improbable. Trom all that I have dis- 
covered, I feel confident that a majority of anglers and men 
of science believe that smell in fishes is quite palpable. Smell- 
ing substances for enticing fish to the hook are recommended 
by too many honorable names to leave a shadow of doubt 
upon the subject. Walton, for example, recommends numer- 
ous strong-smelling pastes for attracting fish to the bait, stat- 
ing that “old Oliver Henley, now with God, a noted fisher 
