Fisoes HAVE SENSITIVE Ears. 39 
pond in such numbers that there was scarcely room for them 
to lie by one another, and then he threw some spinach-seed 
among them, which they devoured very greedily. This sat- 
istied me that fishes have the sense of hearing.” Sir Walter 
Rogers, an English gentleman, had a pond of pikes which 
members of his household called together at pleasure; and as 
carnivorous fishes are more wild and untamable than are 
those which feed on herbs, it offers the most palpable proof 
that fishes hear, 
M. Lebault advises fish culturists not to permit shooting 
about the ponds for wild-fowl, etc., as it frightens, injures, 
and destroys the fish. This opimion is also entertained by 
celebrated physiologists; and John Hunter, who describes the 
ear of fishes—always, he says, important—as consisting of a 
gristly substance, very hard and firm in parts, and in some 
species crusted over with a thin plate of bone, so as not to 
permit it to collapse. The ear of fishes he also remarked to 
possess the singular peculiarity of increasing with the size 
of the individual, whereas in quadrupeds it is nearly as large 
in the young as in the full-grown animal. 
“When in Portugal,” said Dr. Hunter,“ in 1762, I observed 
in a nobleman’s garden near Lisbon a small fish-pond full 
of different kinds of fishes. Its bottom was level with the 
ground, and was made by forming a bank all round, with a 
shrubbery close to it. While lying on the bank secing the 
fish, I desired a gentleman who was my companion to go be- 
hind the shrubs (that there be no reflection from the flash) 
and fire his gun. The moment the report was made the fish 
seemed universally affected, for they vanished immediately, 
raising, as it were, a cloud of mad from the bottom. In 
about five minutes afterward they began to appear and 
swim about as before.” 
The discussions of Dr. Munro, Geoffroi, Comparetti, Scarpa, 
Weber, and De Blainville, may be referred to, as their works 
fully settle the question in favor of hearing in fishes. Weber 
discovered a communication between the ear in fishes and 
