The daily morning Alaskan., 1901-05-05
ETHICS OF FISHING.
4 SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE ALLEGED
 CRUELTY OF THs SPORT.

The Creatures Are Most Happy When
 They Are HoOked-rhey Have Little Capacity For Suffering and Even
 Little PIeasure In Eating.
 A little boy was fishing for the first time. With the customary luck of a beginner be had bass and perch galore to answer the invitation Of his bait
 Presently the impulses of the hu- mane side Of his nature made little hesltating protest against the more savage instincts of the sportsmanlike side. The wriggllng of the Ash when be caught them troubled hlm. and he sought to apologize Co his conscience for the suffering he was apparently ln- dieting He said. "l think the reason they jump so Is that they are so glad to get out of that wet water"
 Curiously enough. if we may accept the testimony of the scientists. the It. tle boy was quite right. A iish Is never so happy as when he Is drawn out of the water The air Is Co him quite all that laughing gas Is tO a human being. It gives him O hundred times m0ro oxygen per second than his gllls ever got for him from the inhalation of wa ter. IL makes him delightfully."- drunk en. It exhllarates him. lt fills him with a completeness of physical joy the only Joy he Is capable of feeling wholly unknown to him in his native element He dies presently, it Is true. but he dies in an ecstasy of enjoyment Instead of dying in his appointed fash lon by sufYocation In the maw of some bigger ash.
 In tootnote to the thirteenth canto of Don Juan" Byron denounces IEaak Walton as sentimental savage and characterizes fishing as "the cruelest. the coldest of pretended sports" That only shows how little Byron knew about the matter. Ills sports involved the sacrifice of women rather than worms.
 It Is time to set this matter of fish Ing upon It's moral legs. as lt were, an end to be accomplished merely by tell lne the truth about it A Ash Is the very lowest form of the vertebrates. It Is incapable of any Joy except that of getting hooked and thus drawn out of the water to which It's nature con demns lt and for a time breathing the air that lntoxicates it ln delightfully."- | deadly fashion. It has not even the h. | stlnct of sexual association except In the case of few rare species lt knows nothing of companionship. for the scientists tell us that even when fish swim in schools it Is only be cause they are engaged in a common predatory pursuit of prey. each endeay- bring to snatch from the others the morsels they seek to swallow.
 So low in the scale Is the ash that even in eating be has no pleasure ex- cept that of distendlng his stomach. For the scientists ind DO taste gob- lets" at the base of hls tongue, and ey' cry fisherman knows that the hsh swallows his prey whole, with no pos slblllty of detecting its flavor. And further. every fisherman who has troll ed knows that the Ash Is so far an in discriminate gormand in his search foi food tha. he will swallow a coffeC spoon with a bur attached as readily as the dalntiest bait morsel that could be displayed in front of his greedy eye' and his rapacious mouth.
 Stul, again. every fish that Is caugh upon a hook gets only what he de serves. He Is caught every time In ar attempt to swallow some other crea ture whole and digest lt in slow tor ture. Indeed the entire life of every
 fish Is passed In a ceaseless endeavoi to catch and swallow other fish. So fal as science can discover, fish of mos species make no distinction even in Ia yor of their own young, their Onll ground of selection being a considera ton for thelr individual throats In thu act of swallowing. On that accoun alone the severely splned suntsh es capes the predatory perch, and thu bullhead the moment his horns" ar, hard ceases to be in danger even iron the most voraciops of pickereL
 The fisherman Is not a monster O wanton cruelty. He Is merely a de scendant of Adam exercising that "do mlnlon" over inferior creatures whieI God authorized him to exercise George Cary Eggleston In New HorI World.