Atmospheric Influences on Fish. 
Concluded from page 260. 
All theory as to magnetic influence must be 
largely speculative, yet there are grounds to go 
upon from our own meagre knowledge. It is 
the fascinating business of some to collect and 
harness electricity; it is the fate of others to be 
very much upset by an overdose of it, perhaps 
in a thunderstorm, perhaps in the electric chair. 
Most are very much revived by it in small doses, 
but none know what it is; none can either 
analyze or explain it. But this we know: ani¬ 
mal organisms are sensitized to it. And further 
we know that certain organisms are capable of 
being communicated with by it at a great dis¬ 
tance. 
We may venture still further. They are in 
actual and perpetual communication with con¬ 
ditions far away in space, and if attuned to re¬ 
spond to them, distance need hardly count. Even 
with the ponderous man-made wireless appa¬ 
ratus, distance is half annihilated. How little it 
must be to the more exquisitely sensitive appa¬ 
ratus of an animal endowed with nerves which 
form naturally attuned “receivers.” 
Many animal instincts—I would rather say 
intelligences—can only be explained in this way: 
that they are ever attuned to the delicate im¬ 
pingements of ethereal waves, at indefinite dis¬ 
tances. And the message arrives simultaneously 
almost with the variations of those forces near 
or distant. How natural, then, the actions of 
many animals when an earthquake is pending, 
and how explicable the terrors of some before 
the first rumble has alarmed the ears of man. 
So it is with fish life. Long before the thunder, 
or the flood, or the north wind which will bring 
snow, they give signs that they are acquainted 
with conditions which will disturb or starve them. 
How madly will the roach, and indeed most 
fish feed before the coming of a flood, when 
they will have to hide and fast. Again, how 
sportive they' often are just before the breakup 
of a drouth. The knowledge of good things 
coming stimulates them. Their mercurial livers 
respond. Expectation excites. 
You may say: How do you know?* My reply 
is, I do not know. It is simply open to all to 
draw common sense conclusions. There is logic 
to go upon. A man may be very cheerful to¬ 
day in his toil if he anticipates a holiday to¬ 
morrow, and he can bear a pain with hilarity 
one hour if he knows an ecstasy will replace it 
in the next. A horse runs fastest toward the 
stable. So may a sickly, half-starved fish be 
revivified by the knowledge of a plentitude of 
food coming down shortly. 
No, I do not know much, but I have my con- 
viciions on these points. Sometimes I have a 
mysterious fellow-feeling. I am overlooking a 
trout stream. It is the middle of January. If 
the law allowed it—which happily it does not— 
I could go out and catch trout to-day with al¬ 
most any lure except a fly. Some may snigger; 
others may mutter something, but I know they 
are to be caught to-day. How do I know it? 
I feel it. Long experience endows one with 
more or less accurate sensations. You may call 
it intuition or acquired sympathy. It is a dis¬ 
tinctive knowledge. I am certain those trout are 
out foraging. It is not temperature, the direc¬ 
tion of the wind, sunlight or balmy air I go 
by; it is a fellow-feeling through long acquaint¬ 
ance. 
But that is not satisfactory. It does not help 
my fellow anglers. Had I, from the beginning 
of my angling career kept more careful records 
of all kinds, there would now be some data be¬ 
fore me to show why I know that those trout 
are now out foraging. 
I wish all anglers would keep records. It 
would help as well as interest posterity. Not 
only records of the conditions during their ang¬ 
ling outings, but of the meteorological conditions 
of the twenty-four hours — at least — preceding 
and following. They would discover some clear 
indications, and a good many seeming incon¬ 
gruities would vanish. They should record their 
own feelings—separate from the physical ones 
explainable—and study themselves in relation to 
atmospheric conditions. It is better to acquire 
such knowledge than have it thrust upon us. 
Such knowledge of piscine—as compared with 
human—fee ing was thrust upon a feeder at a 
hatchery that I visited recently without his ever 
having either courted or cultivated it. He was 
preparing several bucketsful of food for the 
stock ponds. “That’s one less than usual,” he 
informed me. “Why?” I asked. “Oh, I can tell 
when they be hungry,” he said. “How so?” 
“Me own feelin’s,” was the answer, but I couldn’t 
get him an inch further. 
Following him to the stock ponds he soon 
proved himself right. The fish rose to the food 
half-heartedly, and soon ceased to come at all. 
A few blew out what they took. To my remark 
that they seemed sick, he said: “They be some¬ 
times, and the vunny part ov it is I da generally 
know it aforehand.” 
One can hardly touch this great subject in a 
short article, but I may venture perhaps a few 
more words on common experience as to the 
sudden changes of behavior among fish. Take 
a trout stream on a fair day in June, the water 
regular, the weather settled as far as we feel, 
the fish steadily rising. All at once up stream 
and down the rises cease. Not a fish moves. 
Wait half an hour, or an hour perhaps, and the 
water is alive again. Some tell you it is some¬ 
thing in the water. That theory is easily 
quashed. Others tell you it is inter-communica¬ 
tion between the fish caused by some great 
fright or the presence of enemies. So is that. 
Let us prove it. 
Fishing Lake Vyrnwy from a boat with a 
friend—who held no view of his own and would 
have none of mine—we could get no rise what¬ 
ever for two hours. I got ashore and strolled 
down the river. From 2:3o to 3130 they rose 
vigorously, then stopped suddenly. Going up to 
the hotel in the evening we met. “Ah,” said 
my friend, “you should have stuck on with me,” 
and he displayed seventeen trout. 
I knew perfectly well that he must have had 
a rise in the lake also. But fish in lake water 
are earlier to respond as a rule to atmospheric 
changes, and what interested me was the time 
of it. He happened to have timed it. It ex¬ 
actly coincided in this instance with my experi¬ 
ence in the river. I told him that and showed 
him my fifteen fish. Between the river and the 
lake, the Liverpool Water Company had erected 
a dam at a cost of a miiiion pounds, so the 
chance far inter-communication was nil. The 
question of the presence of enemies and the 
changing state of the water must also be ruled 
out obviously enough. 
“Now,” I said, “if it was not due to a passing 
influence in the atmosphere, what was it? Re¬ 
member the rise of fly was strong all day.” 
“I can’t tell you what it was,” he answered, 
“but your passing influence in the atmosphere 
isn't good enough for me, and for this reason 
I took care to note everything, and there wasn’t 
the least change in wind, sky, temperature, or 
anything else. No, I don’t believe it. Had there 
been a change in the wind, had clouds gathered, 
had it got colder or hotter I could have under¬ 
stood it, but it didn't. No, I'm not going to 
take in that.” 
It was in vain I pointed out to him that even 
the least things in nature, animal and vegetable, 
change from hour to hour from causes imper¬ 
ceptible to our senses. 
“Well, if you won’t have the celestial, you are 
bound to have the terrestrial,” I said. “Was 
there a little agitation from below do you think? 
Did a little heat or smoke ooze up to give them 
warning of some ultimate doom?” 
“As likely as the other,” he said, quite 
solemnly. 
Two days later I handed him a postcard from 
some friends fishing the Wye fifty miles away. 
It ran: “Yes, there was a rise, distinct and 
strong. Three o’clock.” 
He would not be convinced. “Coincidence” 
was the sum of his argument. “Their feeding 
hour” was the argument of others. That will 
not do. What dictates the constantly changing 
feeding times from day to day? 
Let us be reasonable. If we cannot explain 
these subtleties sufficiently, let us acknowledge 
that it is because our intelligence is incapable 
of it. Let us admit there must be laws con¬ 
trolling the feelings and actions of these sensi¬ 
tive beings that we are too grossly constituted 
to recognize. But we may hold some lucid views 
as to causes, or at least their principles, by being 
watchful of effects. The merest tyro in logical 
argument who ever cast a fly must conclude that 
it is not the darkness caused by the gathering 
cloud that stops a trout from rising, for he 
rises in the gloaming, and in the dark, when in 
the mood. The duns pass over him, but he sinks 
and is stolid. The artificial falls near him, but 
he darts to his haunt. He is over-wrought. His 
organism is more tremulous’y sensitive than mer¬ 
cury a thousand times. There is that in the 
cloud or the veering of the wind, or the far off 
cvclone which vibrates through him. Now, some 
