60 B fist's art of angling. 



particularly fond of it when made into a dish 

 called tvater-soricht/. The perch is a fish very 

 tenacious of life : they are often carried near 

 sixty miles in dry straw, and survive the journey. 

 One was once taken in the Scrpentiue-river, 

 Hyde-park, that weighed nine pounds ; but that 

 is very uncommon. Tlie colours are beautiful ; 

 the back and part of the sides being of a deep 

 green, marked with five broad black bars point- 

 ing downwards; the belly is white, tinged with 

 red, the ventral fins of a rich scarlet ; the 

 anal fins and tail of the same colour, but rather 

 paler. 



His haunts are chiefly in the streams not verv 

 deep, under hollow banks, a gravelly bottom, and 

 at the turnin"- of an eddv. U the weather is 

 cool and cloudy, and tlie water a little rufHed, he 

 will bite ail day long, especially from eight to ten 

 in the morning, and from three till six in the 

 evening. If there are thirty or forty of them 

 in a hole they may be all caught atone btanding : 

 they are not like the solitary pike^ but love to 

 accompany one another, and swim in shoals, as 

 all fishes which have scales are observed to do. 

 His baits are m'ninozcSy little frogs or b?arid(irigSy 

 if well scoured; when he bites give liim time 

 enough, and you can hardly give him too much; 

 for as he is not a leather-mouthed fish, without 

 you do, he will often break his hold. Angle for 

 him, if you bait with brandling, with an indifferent 

 strong line, and gut at bottom, your hook No. 4, 

 5, or 6, and about five or six inches from the 

 ground. But if you rove for him with a minnow 

 01' frog (which is a ver}' pleasant way) then your 

 line should be strong, and the hook armed with 

 gimp, and the bait swimming at mid-water sus- 

 pended by a cork float, I for my own paf t al- 



