THE ANCIENT EAST

across the stream on poles, that the stones and brickbats hurled by everyrascal passing may not make their very life a burden.
A rural poacher is infinitely preferable. The difference inthe ways of fish when they have been much disturbed and when they
have been let alone is at at oncediscerned. No sooner do you approach a fish who has been much annoyed and driven then be
strikes, and aquick rotating curl on the surface shws with what vehemence his tail was forced against it. In other places, ifa
fish perceives you, he gives himself so slight a propulsion that the curl hardly rises, and you can see himgliding slowly into the
deeper or overshadowed water. If in terror he would go so quickly as to be almostinvisible. In places where the fish have been
much disturbed the poacher, or any one who desires to watchther habits, has to move as slowly as the hands of a clock, and
even then they will scarcely bear the very sightof 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 andhorses,
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 narrownessof intellect, and convinced that there can be but
little brain in so small a compass as its head. That the jack cancomoete with the dog, of course, is out of the question: but I am
by no means prepared to admit that fish areso devoid of sense as supposed. Not long since an experiment was tried with a jack,
an account of whichappeared in the papers. The jack was in a tank, and after awhile the tank was partly divided by inserting
aplate of glass. He was then hunted round, and notes taken of the number of times he bumped his head againstthe plate of
glass, and how long it took him to learn that there was something to obstruct his path. Furtherstaistics were kept as to the
length of his memory when he had learnt the existence of the glass that is, to seeif he would recollect it several days
afterwards. The fish was some time learning the position of the glass; andthen, if much alarmed, he would forget its position
and dash against it. But he did learn it, and retained hismemory some while. It seems to me that this was a very hard and
unfair test. The jack had to acquire the ideaof something transparent, and yet hard as wood. A moment’s thought will show
how exactly opposite thequalities of glass are to anything either this particular fish or his ancestors could have met with no
hereditaryintelligence 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 it you or I, having
been accustomed, of course, all our lives, to be fluidity ofair, which opens for our passage, were opposed by a solid block of
transparent atmosphere. Imagine any onerunning fir a train, and striking his head with all his might against such a block. He
would rise, shake himself together, and endeavor to pursue his journey, and be again repelled. More than likely he would try
threetimes before he became convinced that it really was something in the air itself which stopped him. Then hewould thrust
with his stick and feel, more and more astounded every moment, and scarcely able to believe hisown senses. During the day,
otherwise engaged, he would argue himself into the view that he had made amistake, and determine to try again, though more
cautiously. But so strong is habit that if a cause for alamarose, and he started running, he might quite probably go with
tremendous force up to the solid block oftranparent 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 thejack. A messenger was despatched by rail to a shop for
certain articles, and was desired to return by a certaintime. The parcel was made up, the man took it, heard an engine whistle,
turned to run, and in his haste dasedhimself right through a plate glass window into the street. He narrowly escaped
decapitation, as the greatpieces of glass fell like the knife of a guillotine. Cases of people injuring themselves by walking
againstplate glass are by no means uncommon; when the mind is preoccupied it takes much the same place as theplate of glass
in the water and the jack. Authorities on mythology state that some Oriental nations had notarrived at the conception of a
fluid heaven of free space; they thought the sky was solid, like a roof. The fishwas very much in the same position. The reason
why fish swim round and round in tanks, and do not beatthemselves against the glass walls, is evidently because they can see
where the water ends. A distinction isapparent between it and the air outside; but when the plate of glass was put inside the
tanl the jack saw waterbeyond it, or through it. I never see a fish in a tank without remembering this experiment and the long
train ofreflections it gives rise to. To take a fish from his native brook, and to place him suddenly in the midst ofsuch, to him,
inconceivable conditions, is almost like watching the actual creation of mind. His mind has to becreated anew to meet it, and
that it did ultimately meet the conditions shows that even the fish thecold blooded, the narrow brained is not confined to the
grooves of hereditary knowledge alone, but iscapable of wider and novel efforts. I thought the jack came out very well indeed
from the trial, and I havementioned the matter lest some should think I have attributed too much intelligence 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.

CHAPTER 1331