shy ways are divided upon the question. It is beyond a doubt that all
fishes, except the very lowest forms, have ears. But then so have all
men; and yet we have the best authority for believing that there are
many who "having ears, hear not."

The ears of fishes, for the most part, are inclosed in their skull, and
have no outward opening. Water conveys sound, as every country boy
knows who has tried the experiment of diving to the bottom of the
swimming-hole and knocking two big stones together. But I doubt whether
any country boy, engaged in this interesting scientific experiment, has
heard the conversation of his friends on the bank who were engaged in
hiding his clothes.

There are many curious and more or less venerable stories to the effect
that fishes may be trained to assemble at the ringing of a bell or the
beating of a drum. Lucian, a writer of the second century, tells of a
certain lake wherein many sacred fishes were kept, of which the largest
had names given to them, and came when they were called. But Lucian
was not a man of especially good reputation, and there is an air of
improbability about his statement that the LARGEST fishes came. This is
not the custom of the largest fishes.

In the present century there was a tale of an eel in a garden-well, in
Scotland, which would come to be fed out of a spoon when the children
called him by his singularly inappropriate name of Rob Roy. This seems
a more likely story than Lucian's; at all events it comes from a more
orthodox atmosphere. But before giving it full credence, I should like
to know whether the children, when they called "Rob Roy!" stood where
the eel could see the spoon.

On the other side of the question, we may quote Mr. Ronalds, also a
Scotchman, and the learned author of THE FLY-FISHER'S ENTOMOLOGY, who
conducted a series of experiments which proved that even trout, the most
fugacious of fish, are not in the least disturbed by the discharge of a
gun, provided the flash is concealed. Mr. Henry P. Wells, the author of
THE AMERICAN SALMON ANGLER, says that he has "never been able to make a
sound in the air which seemed to produce the slightest effect upon trout
in the water."

So the controversy on the hearing of fishes continues, and the
conclusion remains open. Every man is at liberty to embrace that side
which pleases him best. You may think that the finny tribes are as
sensitive to sound as Fine Ear, in the German fairy-tale, who could hear