116 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



angled for before ; but I am inclined to think the very 

 large number of fish in the water, and the consequent 

 scarcity of food, had something to do with the eager way 

 in which they took the bait. Another instance of this 

 sort of thing occurred to me in a pond, through which ran 

 a very slight stream, at the bottom of the grounds of Ash- 

 brittle Rectory, Somerset. The rector said he believed 

 there were some trout in it, but he had never heard of any 

 one trying for them. I made experiment of it at once, 

 and at almost every cast with an ordinary red palmer I rose 

 a fish, filling my basket in about the space of two hours 

 with very pretty trout, ranging from -|lb. to l|lb., 

 and then giving up from sheer repletion of sport, if, 

 indeed, simple slaughter of artless fish can be called sport. 

 How many fish, I wonder, should I have caught in the 

 same time in the well-fished trout stream hard by ? 



The denizens of any particular water gradually get 

 "educated" by experience. "Suffering is teaching," 

 says the old Greek proverb ; and this is very true in 

 reference to fish. It may be difficult to understand the 

 intellectual, or perhaps I should say, psychological 

 process of this education, and how the fear of man and 

 the knowledge of his art and hostility is transmitted to 

 the piscine progeny through the ova, just as the same 

 gradually acquired fear and knowledge is transmitted 

 through the egg or foetus of birds and beasts. But there 

 the fact is. Birds and beasts which, on their first intro- 

 duction to man, displayed little or no fear of him, have 

 gradually become " educated," and learnt to fly from him 

 as their enemy, and to be suspicious of his wiles, shrinking 

 from him almost as soon as they have seen daylight iu 

 this world. So it has come to pass with fish in our home 



