26o ANGLERS' EVENINGS. 



England, but no reference is made to the Mersey. We 

 are informed that the trouts of the Irk are accounted 

 excellent fish, and that river is in several places described 

 as a good stream for anglers. In one place, after 

 saying that no eels he ever met with were to be compared, 

 for deliciousness of taste, to the eels caught in a small 

 river in Lancashire, called the Irk, he proceeds : — 



Which is composed of three small Brooks that have their conflux 

 near unto Middleton Hall, when it assumes the name of Irk, and 

 thence descends through Blakely and Crumpsall, &c., to Manchester. 



Mr. J. Eglington Bailey in a note in the Manchester City 

 Nczas, February, 1879, gives other details in connection 

 Avith Chetham which will much interest anglers. 



The last book published during the seventeenth 

 century which I shall name is T/ie Gentleman s Recreations, 

 by Nicholas Cox, treating of hunting, fowling, fishing, and 

 agriculture. The first edition appeared in 1674. In it 

 we find the first mention of the use of the winch in trout 

 fly-fishing. He speaks of Walton, rather patronisingly as 

 it seems, as " a very ingenious man, an excellent 

 angler," probably little thinking that Walton would be 

 remembered and loved long after Nicholas Cox was 

 forgotten by all but the bibliographer. 



Pepys, in his Diary, March 19th, 1666 — 7, shows that 

 he had not escaped the love of sport which then pre- 

 vailed : — 



This day, Rlr. Caesar (the lute master) told me of a pretty experiment 

 of his, of angling with a minikin, a gut-string varnished over, which keeps 

 it from swelling, and is beyond any hair for strength and smallness. The 

 secret I like mightily. 



