COMMON TROUT. 



227 



any considerable length on the subject of the amusement of 

 anirlinsr, as that has been treated of in so many volumes: 

 but although medicated baits have been long neglected or 

 discarded by British fishermen we will venture a reference to 

 one mentioned by Bloch, as we have no recollection of having 

 seen it referred to by any English writers. It is formed of a 

 mingling together of castor and camphor with the aid of heat, 

 and while yet in a melted state a piece of linen is dipped in it 

 and kept for use, a slip of it being wrapped about the hook. 



The practice of fishing with a fiy has been thought almost 

 ])eculiarly English, and of ancient date in this country, and 

 Duhamel in France copies all that he has to say of it from 

 Walton and Cotton; but in both these particulars there is reason, 

 for doubt. The "Book of St. Albans" gives some directions for 

 what it terms "dubbing," a practice referred to by Izaak Walton, 

 and which in some distant degree bears a likeness to the modern 

 method of fly-fishing. But neither does this dubbing with a fly 

 obtain a principal place in this old treatise, the very little of 

 which appears to limit it to "Fysshynge wyth an angle," or 

 earthworm; nor was the patriarch of the art, Izaak Walton, much 

 better versed in it, for it is to his friend Charles Cotton we are 

 chiefly indebted for what afterwards grew to be a new phase in 

 the art. And again, although it is often said that the Trout 

 was unknown to the ancients, or unrecognised by them, there is 

 evidence that not only was it common and fished for in Macedonia, 

 (as in the lakes of Italy,) but that the method of taking it with 

 a fly was in use in the former country. 



Aristotle had spoken 'in a cursory manner of a fish, the name 

 of which is read as Thrissa, but which the learned Gesner 

 supposes to be more properly Thrassa and Thratta, and that it 

 was the same with the Trout; and that the fish itself must have 

 been known to that eminent philosophic naturalist, himself a 

 native of Macedonia, is clear from a narrative of ^lian; although 

 of the name of the fish, as being local, the latter expresses his 

 ignorance. He says "I have received information of the following 

 method of catching fish in Macedonia. In the river Astrseos, 

 Avhich runs between Berntea and Thessalonica, there are fish 

 which are ornamented with spots of different colours, but the 

 names they bear are best learnt from the people of ]\Iacedonia_ 

 Their food is the flies which frequent that river; and these flics 



