sas grasshopper; but fishermen have noticed
that the largest fish despise flies, much as a person of a full roast-beef
habit may be supposed to turn up his nose at a small mutton-chop. In other
rivers they take the fly quite freely, but in the Potomac they have had
that branch of their education greatly neglected. In the matter of
vitality they are simply extraordinary: they cling to life with a tenacity
that very few fish exhibit. In the spring or fall, when the water and the
air are at a comparatively low temperature, a bass will live for eight or
ten hours without water. The writer has brought fifty fish, weighing on an
average two and three-quarter pounds, from Point of Rocks to Baltimore, a
distance of seventy-two miles, and after they had been in the air six hours
has placed them in a tub of water and found two-thirds of the number
immediately "kick" and plunge with an amount of energy and ability that
threw the water in all directions. These fish had been caught at various
times during the day, and as each was taken from the hook a stout leather
strap was forced through the floor of its mouth beneath its tongue, and the
bunch of fish so secured allowed to trail overboard in the stream. They
were thus dragged all day against a powerful current, but never showed any
symptoms of "drowning." In the evening they were strung upon a stout piece
of clothes-line, and after lying for some time on the railway platform were
transferred to the floor of the baggage-car, and so transported to the
city. It is quite evident that we do not live in the fear of Mr. Bergh. But
what is one to do? The fish is not to be discouraged except by the
exhibition of great and brutal violence. In fact, bass will not be induced
to decently decease by any civilized process short of a powerful shock from
a voltaic pile administered in the region of their _medulla oblongata_. Of
course, one cannot be expected to carry about a voltaic pile and go hunting
for the medullary recesses of a savage and turbulent fish. On the other
hand, one may batter the protoplasm out of a refractory subject by the aid
of a small rock, but it won't improve the fish's looks or cooking
qualities. It may seem like high treason to mention, moreover, at a safe
distance from Mr. Bergh, that euthanasia in animals designed for the table
does not always improve their quality, and in fact that the linked misery
long drawn out of a protracted dissolution imparts a certain tenderness a