THE ORGAN AND SENSE OF TASTE IN FISHES. 
245 
Regarding the peculiar palatal organ of the cyprinoids, it has been known since 
Weber’s account in 1827 that this is plentifully supplied with taste buds, and Weber 
himself brought forward strong indirect evidence that its function is gustatory. 
The following observations (and many similar ones might be cited from the literature 
of sport) are taken from the section on “The Trouts of America,” by William C. 
Harris, in the American Sportsman’s Library. 
The angler can not resist the belief that the senses of smell and taste are well developed in trout. 
They eject the artificial fly, if the hook is not fast in the flesh, at the instant they note its nonedible 
nature, or when they feel the gritty impact of the hook. They will not eat impure food, and they 
have the faculty of perceiving odors, and various scents attract or repel them. This has been verified 
from the earliest days of our art, when ancient rodsmen used diverse and curious pastes and oils, which 
were seductive to fish; in Walton’s day, and long after, this practice was followed and the records tell 
us of its success. When I was a boy and the Schulkill River was swarming with the small white-bellied 
cat-fish, than which no more delightful breakfast food ever came out of the water, the only bait used 
to catch them was made of Lim burger cheese, mixed with a patch of cotton batting to hold it firm on 
the hook. No other lure had the same attraction for them because, no doubt, of the decided odor of 
the cheese. 
The problems connected with the relative significance of the several sense organs 
of the fishes have been treated both anatomically and experimentally in the excellent 
paper of Bateson (’90). After, anatomical remarks, based largely on his own careful 
studies, on the eyes, olfactory organs, and gustatory organs, he recounts a series of 
admirable and well-considered experiments made to test the parts played by these 
organs in the normal feeding of various kinds of fishes. 
These observations are grouped under two chief heads, viz, “Senses of fishes 
which seek their food by scent” and “The senses of fishes which seek their food 
I >y sight.” Though the taste buds in the mouth and outer skin are described and 
correctly interpreted in the anatomical part of the paper, these organs are scarcely 
considered at all in the physiological part, and this is really the greatest weakness of 
the paper. Since my own observations in part follow so closelj T in the footsteps of 
Bateson (though completed in the main before his paper was accessible to me), and 
since they are in general confirmatory of his, it will be of interest to review portions 
of his paper at this time. 
He gives the following list of fishes which he has observed “to show conscious- 
ness of food which was unseen by them, as, as will hereafter be shown, there is 
evidence that they habitually seek it without the help of their eyes”: 
Proloplerus anncclens, mud-fish. 
Scyllium canicnla, rough dog-fish. 
Scyllium caiulus, nurse-hound. 
Raja batis, skate. 
Conger vulgaris, conger eel. 
Anguilla, vulgaris, eel. 
Motella tricirrata, three-bearded rockling. 
Motella mustela, five-bearded rockling. 
Nemacheilus barbatula, loach. 
? Lepadogaster gouanii, sucker. 
Solea vulgaris, sole. 
Solea minuta, little sole. 
Acipenser ruthenus, sterlet. 
He says: “To this list may almost certainly be added the remainder of the Raiidse , 
together with the angel -fish (Rhina squatind) and Torpedo .” Unfortunately, how- 
ever, Bateson in his list does not distinguish between those fishes in which smell 
obviously plays the leading part and those in which taste or touch or both are used to 
compensate for the reduction of vision, and it is this defect which it is hoped that the 
present contribution may in part correct. 
