Sometimes, where fish have not been disturbed by poachers, or loafers throwing stones and otherwise annoying them, they will not heed a passer-by, whose gentle walk or saunter does not affright them with brisk motion, especially if the saunterer, on espying them, in no degree alters his pace or changes his manner. That wild creatures immediately detect a change of manner, and therefore of mood, any one may demonstrate for himself. They are as quick to see it as the dog, who is always with his master, and knows by the very way he puts a book on the table what temper he is in. When a book goes with a bang on the table the dog creeps under it. Wild creatures, too, catch their manners from man. Walk along a lane with your hands in your pockets, and you will see twice as much of the birds and animals, because they will not set themselves to steadfastly watch you. A quick movement sets wings quickly beating. I have noticed that even horses in stables do not like visitors with jerky, brisk, angular ways of moving. A stranger entering in a quiet, easy manner is not very objectionable, but if he comes in in a bustling, citizen-like style, it is quite probable that one or other horse will show a wicked white corner in his eye. It roughs them up the wrong way. Especially all wild creatures dislike the shuffling, mincing step so common in towns. That alone will disturb everything. Indeed, I have often thought that a good and successful wild hunter – like the backwoodsman, or the sportsman in African bush or Indian jungle – is really made as much by his feet as his eyes or hands. Unconsciously he feels with his feet; they come to know the exact time to move, whether a long or short stride be desirable, and where to put down, not to rustle or cause a cracking sound, and accommodate themselves to the slope of the ground, touching it and holding it like hands. A great many people seem to have no feet; they have boots, but no feet. They stamp or clump, or swing their boots along and knock the ground at every step; this matters not in most callings, but if a man wish to become what I have called a wild hunter, he must let his feet learn. He must walk with hands in his boots. Now and then a person walks like this naturally, and he will come in and tell you that he has seen a fish basking, a partridge, a hare, or what not, when another never gets near anything. This is where they have not been much disturbed by loafers, who are worse than poachers.
As a rule, poachers are intermittent in their action, and they do not want to disturb the game, as it makes it wild and interferes with their profits. Loafers are not intermittent – they are always about, often in gangs, and destroy others’ sport without having any themselves. Near large towns there are places where the fish have to be protected with hurdles thrown across the stream on poles, that the stones and brick-bats hurled by every rascal passing may not make their very life a burden. A rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference in the ways of fish when they have been much disturbed and when they have been let alone is at once discerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who has been much annoyed and driven than he strikes, and a quick-rotating curl on the surface shows with what vehemence his tail was forced against it. In other places, if a fish perceives you, he gives himself so slight a propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see him gliding slowly into the deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he would go so quickly as to be almost invisible. In places where the fish have been much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watch their habits, has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and even then they will scarcely bear the very sight of a man, sometimes not at all. The least briskness of movement would send them into the depths out of sight. Cattle, to whom they are accustomed, walk slowly, and so do horses left to themselves in the meads by water. The slowest man walking past has quicker, perhaps because shorter, movements than those of cattle and horses, so that, even when bushes intervene and conceal his form, his very ways often proclaim him.
Most people will only grant a moderate degree of intelligence to fish, linking coldness of blood to narrowness of intellect, and convinced that there can be but little brain in so small a compass as its head. That the jack can compete with the dog, of course, is out of the question; but I am by no means prepared to admit that fish are so devoid of sense as supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried with a jack, an account of which appeared in the papers. The jack was in a tank, and after awhile the tank was partly divided by inserting a plate of glass. He was then hunted round, and notes taken of the number of times he bumped his head against the plate of glass, and how long it took him to learn that there was something to obstruct his path. Further statistics were kept as to the length of his memory when he had learnt the existence of the glass – that is, to see if he would recollect it several days afterwards. The fish was some time learning the position of the glass; and then, if much alarmed, he would forget its position and dash against it. But he did learn it, and retained his memory some while. It seems to me that this was a very hard and unfair test. The jack had to acquire the idea of something transparent, and yet hard as wood. A moment’s thought will show how exactly opposite the qualities of glass are to anything either this particular fish or his ancestors could have met with – no hereditary intelligence to aid him, no experience bearing, however slightly, upon the subject.
Accustomed all his life to transparent water, he had also been accustomed to find it liquid, and easily parted. Put suddenly face to face with the transparent material which repelled him, what was he to think? Much the same effect would be produced if you or I, having been accustomed, of course, all our lives, to the fluidity of air, which opens for our passage, were opposed by a solid block of transparent atmosphere. Imagine any one running for a train, and striking his head with all his might against such a block. He would rise, shake himself together, and endeavour to pursue his journey, and be again repelled. More than likely he would try three times before he became convinced that it really was something in the air itself which stopped him. Then he would thrust with his stick and feel, more and more astounded every moment, and scarcely able to believe his own senses. During the day, otherwise engaged, he would argue himself into the view that he had made a mistake, and determine to try again, though more cautiously. But so strong is habit that if a cause for alarm arose, and he started running, he might quite probably go with tremendous force up to the solid block of transparent air, to be hurled back as the jack was.
These are no mere suppositions, for quite recently I heard of a case which nearly parallels the conduct of the jack. A messenger was despatched by rail to a shop for certain articles, and was desired to return by a certain time. The parcel was made up, the man took it, heard an engine whistle, turned to run, and in his haste dashed himself right through a plate-glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped decapitation, as the great pieces of glass fell like the knife of a guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking against plate-glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it takes much the same place as the plate of glass in the water and the jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had not arrived at the conception of a fluid heaven – of free space; they thought the sky was solid, like a roof. The fish was very much in the same position. The reason why fish swim round and round in tanks, and do not beat themselves against the glass walls, is evidently because they can see where the water ends. A distinction is apparent between it and the air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the tank the jack saw water beyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in a tank without remembering this experiment and the long train of reflections it gives rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and to place him suddenly in the midst of such, to him, inconceivable conditions, is almost like watching the actual creation of mind. His mind has to be created anew to meet it, and that it did ultimately meet the conditions shows that even the fish – the cold-blooded, the narrow-brained – is not confined to the grooves of hereditary knowledge alone, but is capable of wider and novel efforts. I thought the jack came out very well indeed from the trial, and I have mentioned the matter lest some should think I have attributed too much in
telligence to fish.
Other creatures besides fish are puzzled by glass. One day I observed a robin trying to get in at the fanlight of a hall door. Repeatedly he struck himself against it, beat it with his wings, and struggled to get through the pane. Possibly there was a spider inside which tempted him; but allowing that temptation, it was remarkable that the robin should so strive in vain. Always about houses, he must have had experience of the properties of glass, and yet forgot it so soon. His ancestors for many generations must have had experience of glass, still it did not prevent him making many trials. The slowness of the jack to learn the impenetrable nature of the glass plate and its position is not the least indication of lack of intelligence. In daily life we constantly see people do things they have observed injure them, and yet, in spite of experience, go and do the same again.
The glass experiment proves to me that the jack, like all other creatures, really has a latent power of intelligence beyond that brought into play by the usual circumstances of existence. Consider the conditions under which the jack exists – the jack we have been approaching so carefully. His limits are the brook, the ponds it feeds, and the ditches that enter it. He can only move a short distance up the stream because there is a high hatch, nor can he go far down because of a mill; if he could, the conditions would be much the same; but, as a matter of fact, the space he has at his command is not much. The running water, the green flags, the lesser fishes, the water-rats, the horses and cattle on the bank – these are about all the things that he is likely to be interested in. Of these only the water, the lesser fishes, the flags, and the bottom or sides of the brook, are actually in his touch and complete understanding. As he is unable to live out of water, the horse on the bank, in whose very shadow he sometimes lies, might be a mile away for aught it concerns him. By no possible means can he discover anything about it. The horse may be itself nothing more than a shadow, unless in a shallow place he steps in and splashes. Night and day he knows, the cool night, and the sunbeams in which he basks; but he has no way of ascertaining the nature of anything outside the water. Centuries spent in such conditions could add but little to his experience.
Does he hear the stream running past him? Do the particles of water, as they brush his sides and fins, cause a sound, as the wind by us? While he lurks beneath a weed in the still pool, suddenly a shoal of roach rush by with a sound like a flock of birds whose wings beat the air. The smooth surface of the still water appears to cover an utter silence, but probably to the fish there are ceaseless sounds. Water-fowl feeding in the weedy corners, whose legs depend down into the water and disturb it; water-rats diving and running along the bottom; water-beetles moving about; eels in the mud; the lower parts of flags and aquatic grasses swinging as the breeze ruffles their tips; the thud, thud of a horse’s hoofs, and now and then the more distant roll of a hay-laden waggon. And thunder – how does thunder sound under the surface? It seems reasonable to suppose that fish possess a wide gamut of hearing since their other senses are necessarily somewhat curtailed, and that they are peculiarly sensitive to vibratory movements is certain from the destruction a charge of dynamite causes if exploded under water. Even in the deep sea the discharge of a torpedo will kill thousands of herrings. They are as it were killed by noise. So that there are grounds for thinking that my quiet jack in the pool, under the bank of the brook, is most keenly alive by his sense of hearing to things that are proceeding both out and in the water. More especially, no doubt, of things in the water itself. With all this specialized power of hearing he is still circumscribed and limited to the groove of the brook. The birds fly from field to field, from valley to mountain, and across the sea. Their experience extends to whole countries, and their opportunities are constant. How much more fortunate in this respect than the jack! A small display of intelligence by the fish is equivalent to a large display by the bird.
When the jack has been much disturbed no one can do more than obtain a view of him, however skilfully he may conceal himself. The least sign of further proceedings will send the jack away; sometimes the mere appearance of the human form is sufficient. If less suspicious, the rod with the wire attached – or if you wish to make experiments, the rod without the wire – can be placed in the water, and moved how you choose.
The Modern Thames
First published in the Pall Mall Gazette, 6 September 1884
First collected in The Open Air, 1885
The wild red deer can never again come down to drink at the Thames in the dusk of the evening as once they did. While modern civilization endures, the larger fauna must necessarily be confined to parks or restrained to well-marked districts; but for that very reason the lesser creatures of the wood, the field, and the river should receive the more protection. If this applies to the secluded country, far from the stir of cities, still more does it apply to the neighbourhood of London. From a sportsman’s point of view, or from that of a naturalist, the state of the river is one of chaos. There is no order. The Thames appears free even from the usual rules which are in force upon every highway. A man may not fire a gun within a certain distance of a road under a penalty – a law enacted for the safety of passengers, who were formerly endangered by persons shooting small birds along the hedges bordering roads. Nor may he shoot at all, not so much as fire off a pistol (as recently publicly proclaimed by the Metropolitan police to restrain the use of revolvers), without a licence. But on the river people do as they choose, and there does not seem to be any law at all – or at least there is no authority to enforce it, if it exists. Shooting from boats and from the towing-path is carried on in utter defiance of the licensing law, of the game law (as applicable to wild fowl), and of the safety of persons who may be passing. The moorhens are shot, the kingfishers have been nearly exterminated or driven away from some parts, the once common black-headed bunting is comparatively scarce in the more frequented reaches, and if there is nothing else to shoot at, then the swallows are slaughtered. Some have even taken to shooting at the rooks in the trees or fields by the river with small-bore rifles – a most dangerous thing to do. The result is that the osier-beds on the eyots and by the backwaters – the copses of the river – are almost devoid of life. A few moorhens creep under the aquatic grasses and conceal themselves beneath the bushes, water-voles hide among the flags, but the once extensive host of water-fowl and river life has been reduced to the smallest limits. Water-fowl cannot breed because they are shot on the nest, or their eggs taken. As for rarer birds, of course they have not the slightest chance.
The fish have fared better because they have received the benefit of close seasons, enforced with more or less vigilance all along the river. They are also protected by regulations making it illegal to capture them except in a sportsmanlike manner; snatching, for instance, is unlawful. Riverside proprietors preserve some reaches, piscatorial societies preserve others, and the complaint indeed is that the rights of the public have been encroached upon. The too exclusive preservation of fish is in a measure responsible for the destruction of water-fowl, which are cleared off preserved places in order that they may not help themselves to fry or spawn. On the other hand, the societies may claim to have saved parts of the river from being entirely deprived of fish, for it is not long since it appeared as if the stream would be quite cleared out. Large quantities of fish have also been placed in the river taken from ponds and bodily transported to the Thames. So that upon the whole the fish have been well looked after of recent years.
The more striking of the aquatic plants – such as white water-lilies – have been much diminished in quantity by the constant plucking, and injury is said to have been done by careless navigation. In things of this kind a few persons can do a great deal of damage. Two or three men with guns, and indifferent to the interests of sport or natural history, at work every day, can clear a long stretch of river of water-fowl, by scaring if not by actually killing them. Imagine three or four such gentry allowed to wander at will in a large game preserve – in a week they would
totally destroy it as a preserve. The river, after all, is but a narrow band as it were, and is easily commanded by a gun. So, too, with fish poachers; a very few men with nets can quickly empty a good piece of water: and flowers like water-lilies, which grow only in certain spots, are soon pulled or spoiled. This aspect of the matter – the immense mischief which can be effected by a very few persons – should be carefully borne in mind in framing any regulations. For the mischief done on the river is really the work of a small number, a mere fraction of the thousands of all classes who frequent it. Not one in a thousand probably perpetrates any intentional damage to fish, fowl, or flowers.
As the river above all things is, and ought to be, a place of recreation, care must be particularly taken that in restraining these practices the enjoyment of the many be not interfered with. The rational pleasure of 999 people ought not to be checked because the last of the thousand acts as a blackguard. This point, too, bears upon the question of steam-launches. A launch can pass as softly and quietly as a skiff floating with the stream. And there is a good deal to be said on the other side, for the puntsmen stick themselves very often in the way of every one else; and if you analyse fishing for minnows from a punt you will not find it a noble sport. A river like the Thames, belonging as it does – or as it ought – to a city like London, should be managed from the very broadest standpoint. There should be pleasure for all, and there certainly is no real difficulty in arranging matters to that end. The Thames should be like a great aquarium, in which a certain balance of life has to be kept up. When aquaria first came into favour such things as snails and weeds were excluded as eyesores and injurious. But it was soon discovered that the despised snails and weeds were absolutely necessary; an aquarium could not be maintained in health without them, and now the most perfect aquarium is the one in which the natural state is most completely copied. On the same principle it is evident that too exclusive preservation must be injurious to the true interests of the river. Fish enthusiasts, for instance, desire the extinction of water-fowl – there is not a single aquatic bird which they do not accuse of damage to fry, spawn, or full-grown fish; no, not one, from the heron down to the tiny grebe. They are nearly as bitter against animals; the poor water-vole (or water-rat) even is denounced and shot. Any one who chooses may watch the water-rat feeding on aquatic vegetation; never mind, shoot him because he’s there. There is no other reason. Bitterest, harshest, most envenomed of all is the outcry and hunt directed against the otter. It is as if the otter were a wolf – as if he were as injurious as the mighty boar whom Meleager and his companions chased in the days of dim antiquity. What, then, has the otter done? Has he ravaged the fields? Does he threaten the homesteads? Is he at Temple Bar? Are we to run, as the old song says, from the Dragon? The fact is, the ravages attributed to the otter are of a local character. They are chiefly committed in those places where fish are more or less confined. If you keep sheep close together in a pen the wolf who leaps the hurdles can kill the flock if he chooses. In narrow waters, and where fish are maintained in quantities out of proportion to extent, an otter can work doleful woe. That is to say, those who want too many fish are those who give the otter his opportunity.
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