animals, such as migrations, building nests, and selection of food, to
imitation; but, I confess, I cannot explain the last fact you have
brought forward on this principle. Pray, Ornither, let me state your
view, as I understand it, that we may not differ as to the meaning of
language. I conclude you adopt Hartley’s view of association, that the
motions of the muscles in man are first automatic, and become voluntary
by association; and that reason is the application of voluntary motions
for a particular end. For instance: a child is not afraid of fire, but,
bringing its hand near the fire, it is burnt, and the convulsions of the
muscles produced by the pain ends in removing the hand from the source
of pain. These motions by association are made voluntary; and after this
experiment he avoids the fire by _reason_, and takes care always to
perform those motions which remove his limbs from this destructive
agent. But in contrasting instinct with this slow process, you would
say, most animals, without having felt the effects of fire, have an
innate dread of it; and in the same way, without having been taught, or
experienced pleasure or pain from the object, young ducks seek the
water, young chickens avoid it: their organs have a fitness or unfitness
for certain functions, and they use them for these functions without
education. In short, the instinctive application of the organ is
independent of experience, and forms part of a train of pure sensations.
ORN.—I have no objection to the statement you make of my view of the
subject; but I certainly should give to it a little more refinement and
generality. In all the results of reason, ideas are concerned but never
in those of instinct. Without memory there can be no reason; but in
instinct nothing can be traced but pure sensation.
POIET.—Though in the animal world no ideas seem connected with
instincts, yet they are all intended for specific and intelligent ends.
Thus the swallow travels to a country where flies are found; the salmon
migrates from the sea to the sources of fresh rivers, where its eggs may
receive a supply of aerated water, and without this migration the race
would be extinct: and in this way all the instincts of animals may be
referred to intelligence, which, though not belonging to the animal,
must be attributed to the Divine Mind. Is it not then reasonable to
refer instinct to the immediate impulse of the Author of Nature upon his
creatures? His omnipresence and omnipotence cannot be doubted, and to
the infinite mind the past, the present, and the future are alike; and
creative and conservative power must equally belong to it.
HAL.—That instincts depend upon impulses immediately derived from the
Deity is an opinion which, though it perhaps cannot be confuted, yet
does not please me so much as to believe them dependent upon the
formation of organs, and the result of the general laws which govern the
system of the universe; and it is in favour of this opinion that they
are susceptible of modifications. Thus, in domesticated animals they are
always changed; the turkey and the duck lose their habits of
constructing nests, and the goose does not migrate. In supposing them
the result of organization and hereditary, they might be expected to be
changed by circumstances, as they are actually found to be. Without
referring the instincts of animals to the immediate impulse of the
Deity, they appear to me to offer the most irresistible and convincing
argument that can be brought forward against atheism. They demonstrate
combinations, the result of the most refined intelligence, which can
only be considered as infinite. Take any one of the lowest class of
animals, insects for instance, not only is their organization fitted to
all their wants; but their association in society is provided for, and
the laws of a perfect social community, as it were, are adopted by
beings, that we are sure cannot reason. In the hive bee, for instance,
the instinct of the workers leads them to adopt and obey a queen; and if
she is taken away from them, or dies, they have the power of raising
another from offspring in the cells by an almost miraculous process:
they work under her government for a common object, allow males only to
exist for the purpose of impregnating females, who preserve the society,
and under whose government they send forth swarms, which readily place
themselves under the protection of man. In the geometrical construction
of their cells, the secretion of wax from their bodies, the collecting
their food, and the care of the brood, there is a series of results
which it requires a strong reason to follow, and which are the
consequences of invariable instincts. Bees, since they have been noticed
by naturalists, have the same habits, and, as it is probable that there
have been many thousand of generations since the creation, it is
evident, that the instincts of the first bees have been hereditary and
invariable in their offspring; and it cannot be doubted, that they do
now, as they did four thousand years ago, make some cells in combs
larger than others for the purpose of containing the eggs and future
grubs of drones, that are to be produced by a grub, which they are
educating for a queen bee; and that these cells are connected with the
common cells by a series, in which the most exact geometrical laws of
transition are observed. An eminent philosopher has deduced an argument
in favour of the existence of Deity from the analogy of the universe to
a piece of mechanism, which could only be the work of an intelligent
mind; but there is this difference: in all the productions of nature,
the principle, not only of perfection, but likewise of conservation, is
found, marking a species of intelligence and power which can be compared
to nothing human. The first created swarm of bees contained beings
provided with all the instincts necessary for the perpetual continuance
of the species; and some of these instincts can scarcely be understood
by man, requiring the most profound geometrical knowledge, even to
calculate their results; and _other instincts_ involve what in human
society would be the most singular state of policy, combining contrasted
moral causes and contradictory interests. It is impossible not to be
lost in awe at the contemplation of this chain of facts; the human mind
cannot fail to acknowledge in them the strongest proofs of their being
produced by infinite wisdom and unbounded power; and the devout
philosopher can scarcely avoid considering with respect a little insect,
endowed with faculties producing combinations, which human reason vainly
attempts to imitate, and can scarcely understand.
PHYS.—I agree with you, that if instinct be supposed the result of
organization, and that the first animal types were so created as to
transmit their instincts invariably, generation after generation, it
does offer a most triumphant and incontrovertible argument for the
existence of an all-powerful intelligent Cause.—Even in the instance
which led to this conversation, the instinct which carries salmon from
the sea to the sources of rivers, it is only lately philosophers have
discovered, that the impregnated eggs cannot produce young fishes
independent of the influence of air; and thus an animal goes many
hundred miles under the direction of an instinct, the use of which human
reason has at length developed, and man is supplied with an abundant
food by the result of a combination, in consequence of which a species
is preserved.
POIET.—I do not understand, Halieus, your objections to the view I have
adopted, which is sanctioned by the authority of a good ethic
philosopher, Addison. Allowing the omnipresence and constant power of
Deity, I do not see how you can avoid admitting his actual interference
in all the phenomena of living nature.
HAL.—As I said before, I cannot _confute_ your view; but, upon this
principle, gravitation and the motion of the planets round the sun, and
all the other physical phenomena of the universe, would be owing to the
immediate action of the Divinity. I prefer the view, which refers them
to motion and properties, the results of general laws impressed on
matter by Omnipotence. This view is, I think, simpler; but it is
difficult to form any distinct opinion on so high and incomprehensible a
subject, on which, perhaps, after all, it is wiser to confess our entire
ignorance, and to bow down in humble adoration to the one
incomprehensible Cause of all being.
POIET.—I agree with you in your last sentence, but I still adhere to my
own view, and I hope you will not object to a favourite opinion of mine,
that instincts are to animals what revelation is to man, intended to
supply wants in their physical constitution, which in man are provided
for by reason; and that revelation is to him as an instinct, teaching
him what reason cannot—his religious duties, the undying nature of his
intellectual part, and the relations of his conduct to eternal happiness
and misery.
HAL.—“Davus sum, non Œdipus.” I will not attempt to discuss this view of
yours, Poietes; but I think I may say, that all the instincts of animals
seem to be connected with pleasure; and in man the feeling of love and
the gratifying the appetites, which approach nearest to instincts, are
likewise highly delightful, and perhaps there is no more pleasurable
state of the human mind than when, with intense belief, it looks forward
to another world and to a better state of existence, or is absorbed in
the adoration of the supreme and eternal intelligence.
SIXTH DAY.
HALIEUS—POIETES—ORNITHER—PHYSICUS.
MORNING.
HAL.—WELL met, my friends! It is a fine warm morning, there is a fresh
breeze, the river is in excellent order for fishing, and I trust our
good behaviour yesterday will ensure us sport to-day. There must be a
great many fresh run fish in the pool; and after twenty-four hours’
rest, some of those that were indisposed to take on Saturday evening,
may have acquired appetite. Prepare your tackle, and begin: but whilst
you are preparing, I will mention a circumstance which every
accomplished fly fisher ought to know. You changed your flies on
Saturday with the change of weather, putting the dark flies on for the
bright gleams of the sun, and the gaudy flies when the dark clouds
appeared: now, I will tell you of another principle, which it is as
necessary to know as the change of flies for change of weather; I allude
to the different kinds of fly to be used in particular pools, and even
for particular parts of pools. You have fished in this deep pool; and if
you were to change it for a shallower one, such as that above, it would
be proper to use smaller flies of the same colour; and in a pool still
deeper, larger flies; likewise in the rough rapid at the top, a larger
fly may be used than below at the tail of the water: and in the Tweed or
Tay, I have often changed my fly thrice in the same pool, and sometimes
with success—using three different flies for the top, middle, and
bottom. I remember, that when I first saw Lord Somerville adopt this
fashion, I thought there was fancy in it; but experience soon proved to
me how accomplished a salmon fisher was my excellent and lamented
friend, and I adopted the lesson he taught me, and with good results, in
all bright waters.
POIET.—I will try the correctness of your principle. Look at the fly now
on my line; where would you recommend me to cast it?
HAL.—It is a large gaudy fly, and is fit for no part of this pool,
except the extremely rough head of the torrent: there I dare say it will
take in _this_ state of the waters.
POIET.—Good, I hooked a large fish, but alas! he is off: Yet I thought
he was fairly caught.
HAL.—The hook, I think, turned round at the moment you struck, and
carried off some scales from the outside of his mouth.
POIET.—You are right: see, the scales are on the hook. I cannot raise
another fish: I have tried almost all over the pool. I thought I saw a
fish rise at the tail of the rapid.
HAL.—You did: he refused the fly. Now put on a fly one third of the size
and of the same colour, and I think you will hook that fish.
POIET.—I have done so—and he is fast; and a fine fish; I think a salmon.
HAL.—It is a salmon, and one above 10lbs. Play him with care, and do not
let him run into the rough part of the stream, where the large stones
are.
POIET.—It is, I think, the most active fish I have yet played with. See
how high he leaps! He is making for the sea.
HAL.—Hold him tight, or you will lose him.
POIET.—Fear me not. I trust, in spite of his strength, I shall turn him.
You see, I show him the but of the rod, and his force is counterpoised
by a very long lever.
HAL.—You do well. But he has made a violent spring, and, I fear, is off.
POIET.—He is!—but not, I think, by any fault of mine: he has carried off
something.
HAL.—You played that fish so well, that I am angry at his loss: either
the hook, link, or line, failed you.
POIET.—It is the hook, which you see is broken, and not merely at the
barb, but likewise in the shank. What a fool I was ever to use one of
these London or Birmingham made hooks.
HAL.—The thing has happened to me often. I now never use any hooks for
salmon fishing, except those which I am sure have been made by
O’Shaughnessy, of Limerick; for even those made in Dublin, though they
seldom break, yet they now and then bend; and the English hooks, made of
cast steel in imitation of Irish ones, are the worst of all. _There_ is
a fly nearly of the same colour as that which is destroyed; and I can
tell you, that I saw it made at Limerick by O’Shaughnessy himself, and
tied on one of his own hooks. Should you catch with it a fish even of
30lbs. I will answer for its strength and temper: it will neither break
nor bend.
POIET.—Whilst I am attaching your present, so kindly made, to my line,
pray tell me how these hooks are made, for I know you interested
yourself in this subject when at Limerick.
HAL.—Most willingly. I have even made a hook, which, though a little
inferior in form, in other respects, I think, I could boast as equal to
the Limerick ones. The first requisite in hook-making is to find good
malleable iron of the softest and purest kind—such as is procured from
the nails of old horse-shoes. This must be converted by cementation with
charcoal into good soft steel, and that into bars or wires of different
thickness for different sized hooks, and then annealed. For the larger
hooks, the bars must be made in such a form as to admit of cutting the
barbs; and each piece, which serves for two hooks, is larger at the
ends, so that the bar appears in the form of a double pointed spear,
three, four, or five inches long: the bars for the finer hooks are
somewhat flattened. The artist works with two files, one finer than the
other for giving the point and polishing the hook, and he begins by
making the barb, taking care not to cut too deep, and filing on a piece
of hard wood, such as box wood, with a dent to receive the bar, made by
the edge of the file. The barb being made, the shank is thinned and
flattened, and the polishing file applied to it; and by a turn of the
wrist round a circular pincers, the necessary degree of curvature is
given to it. The hook is then cut from the bar, heated red hot, by being
kept for a moment in a charcoal fire; then plunged, while hot, into cold
water; then tempered, by being put on iron, that has been heated in the
same fire till it becomes a bright blue, and, whilst still hot, it is
immersed in candle-grease, where it gains a black colour; it is then
finished.
PHYS.—Nothing seems simpler than this process. Surely London might
furnish manufacturers for so easy a manipulation; and I should think one
of our friends, who is so admirable a cutler, might even improve upon
the Irish process; at least the tempering might be more scientifically
arranged; for instance, by the thermometer, and a bath of fusible metal,
the temperature at which steel becomes blue being 580° Fahrenheit, might
be constantly preserved.
HAL.—Habit teaches our Irish artists this point with sufficient
precision. We should have such hooks in England, but the object of the
fishing tackle makers is to obtain them cheap, and most of their hooks
are made to sell, and good hooks cannot be sold but at a good price.
POIET.—I have heard formerly a good angler complain, that the Limerick
hooks were too heavy and clumsy. He preferred hooks made at Kendal in
Cumberland.
HAL.—I saw, twenty years ago, hooks far too heavy made at Limerick; but
this O’Shaughnessy is, I think, a better maker than his father was, and
the curve and the general form of the hook is improved. It has now, I
think, nearly the best form of a curve for catching and holding, the
point protruding a little. The Kendal hook holds well, but is not so
readily fixed by the pull in the mouth of the fish. The early Fellows of
the Royal Society, who attended to all the useful and common arts, even
improved fish hooks; and Prince Rupert, an active member of that
illustrious body, taught the art of tempering hooks to a person of the
name of Kirby; under whose name, for more than a century, very good
hooks were sold. I shall take a walk towards the lake to enjoy a view of
its cloud-capped mountains, and I hope to find, on my return, that you
have all had your satisfaction in a good day’s salmon fishing.
PHYS.—We shall crimp and cool a salmon, if we catch a good one, for our
dinner.
HAL.—Do so.
ORN.—But before you leave us, I wish you would be good enough to inform
us why the salmon here are so different from those I have seen
elsewhere: for instance, some caught in the Alness, in Rosshire, which
we saw in passing round the south coast of Ross. These appear to me
thicker and brighter fish, and one that I measured was 30 inches long,
and 17 in circumference.
HAL.—I think I have seen broader fish than even those of this river; but
the salmon which you happen to remember for comparison, belonged to a
small stream, which, I think, in general, are thinner and longer than
those in great rivers; and what I mentioned on a former occasion with
respect to trout holds good likewise with regard to salmon; each river
has a distinct kind. It is scarcely possible to doubt, that the
varieties of the salmon, which haunt the sea, come to the same rivers to
breed in which they were born, or where they have spawned before. And
this could hardly happen unless they confined their migrations to a
certain space in the sea, the boundaries of which may be regarded as the
shore and probably deep water, which may be considered as effectual a
limit almost as land; for fish do not willingly haunt _very_ deep water,
which even in summer is of low temperature, approaching to 40°, and
contains little or no vegetable food or insects, which the smaller
fishes search for, and the larger fishes follow the smaller. It is
however possible, that in winter, all fish fond of heat will seek water
rather deeper than in summer; and char and umbla in lakes are usually
found in the deepest parts, being fond of _cool_ water, and they come to
spawn whenever the shallow water of the lakes becomes cool, in October
or November. We cannot judge of the senses of animals that breathe
water,—that separate air from water by their gills; but it seems
probable, that, as the quality of the water is connected with their life
and health, they must be exquisitely sensible to changes in water, and
must have similar relations to it, that an animal with the most delicate
nasal organs has to air. A vulture or a dog scents not only particular
food and particular game at great distances, but even makes of the smell
a kind of language; and I doubt not, that when dogs, that have been
blindfolded and carried away from their home, return to it, it is by the
sense of smelling: to them each town, lane, or field, must have a
particular scent. And I have seen even a blind horse, an animal in which
the sense of smelling is less acute, evidently find his way by it to his
master’s house and stable, which was, indeed, near a tan-yard. The state
of parts of water, in the sea or great lakes, produced by the
impregnations carried down by particular streams, is much more permanent
than a _like state_ in air: so that though the knowledge given by the
nasal organs may be more easily communicated at a distance by winds, yet
_that_ produced by streams on the bronchiæ of fishes is more invariable,
and a migratory fish is less likely to be deceived. Yet in great floods,
often connected with storms, or violent motion in the waters near the
shore, salmon sometimes mistake their river. I remember in this way,
owing to a tremendous flood, catching with the fly a large salmon, that
had mistaken his river, having come into the Bush, near the Giant’s
Causeway, instead of the Bann. No fish can be more distinct in the same
species than the fish of these two rivers, their length to their girth
being nearly in a ratio of 20:9 and 20:13.—I am going; good sport to
you.
EVENING.
HAL.—I am sure I may congratulate you on your sport, for I see on the
bank a fine salmon, three grauls or grilses, and three large sea trout.
ORN.—You have not seen all, for we have crimped two fish—one a large
salmon, and the other a trout almost a yard long, and both in excellent
season. We have had great sport, and sport even of a kind which you will
not guess at; for, when the tide was falling, the fish ceased to rise at
the fly, and I thought of trying them with a bait; so we sent for our
swivel tackle, and put par or samlet on our hooks, as we bait for
pike—cutting off one ventral fin on one side, and one pectoral fin on
the other; and making the par spin in the most rapid streams, we had
several runs from fish, and it was in this way that Poietes caught this
large sea trout, which gave excellent sport.
HAL.—This kind of fishing is not uncommon. I have often caught salmon in
the Tay, fishing with pars; but though the fish ran at the bait, when
they would not rise at the fly while the tide was ebbing, they would
have taken the par better still while it was flowing.
PHYS.—From my experience to-day, I conclude the salmon has habits
different from the trout; for I think the fish which broke my hook rose
again at the artificial fly in the same place.
HAL.—I think you are mistaken. Salmon are usually shyer even than trout,
and I never knew one in this season, that had been pricked even
slightly, rise again at the artificial fly in the same pool. I should
say, that their habits were precisely the same, but with more sagacity
on the side of the salmon. It must have been another fish that rose at
your fly in the same place. After such severe discipline, I do not think
a fish would rise for many hours, even at a natural bait.
POIET.—Your experience is so great, that I dare say I was mistaken, yet
it seemed a fish of the same size.
HAL.—Salmon often in this season haunt the streams in pairs; but so far
from rising again after being pricked, they appear to me to learn, when
they have been some time in the river, that the artificial fly is not
food, even without having been touched by the hook. In the river at
Galway, in Ireland, I have seen above the bridge some hundreds of salmon
lying in rapid streams, and from five to ten fishermen tempting them
with every variety of fly, but in vain. After a fish had been thrown
over a few times, and risen once or twice and refused the fly, he rarely
ever took any notice of it again in that place. It was generally nearest
the tide that fish were taken, and the place next the sea was the most
successful stand, and the most coveted; and when the water is low and
clear in this river, the Galway fishermen resort to the practice of
fishing with a naked hook, endeavouring to entangle it in the bodies of
the fish; a most unartistlike practice. In spring fishing, I have known
a hungry, half-starved salmon rise at the artificial fly a second time,
after having been very slightly touched by it; but even this rarely
happens, and when I have seen it, the water has been coloured.
PHYS.—Can you tell us why the fish rise better at the fly when the tide
is flowing, than when it is ebbing? There seems no reason why flies
should be sought for by the fish at one of these seasons, rather than at
the other.
HAL.—The turn of the salt water brings up aquatic insects, and perhaps
small fish; and I suppose salmon know this, and search for food at a
time when it is likely to be found. I cannot think, that in these pools
they can be on the look-out for flies, for there are never any on the
surface of the water; and I imagine they take the gaudy fly, with its
blue kingfisher and golden pheasant’s feathers, for a small fish.