92 BRITISH FRESH-WATER FISHES 
some do thinke they would be as well in other rivers and 
running waters, as Huntingdon, Ware, and such like, if those 
waters were replenished as they may be with small charge. 
They have such a plentie in the fenne brookes, they feed their 
hogges with them. If other rivers were stored with them, it 
would be good for the common wealth, as the Carpe which 
came of late yeares into England. Thus much for the fenne 
poult.” 
At the present day the burbot is not known to survive in 
the Thames system. It is a strange thing that it should have 
disappeared, and Mr. Keene’s mention of the capture of one in 
the Wey suggests the possibility of the species still lingering 
in its ancient haunts, shielded from observation by its retiring 
and nocturnal habits. Plot, in his Natural History of Stafford- 
shire (1686), mentions the burbot, but says that it is called, 
“from the oddness of the shape and rarity of meeting them, 
the Non-such; there having never been but four (that I 
could hear of) found within memory.” Yet it is certain 
that there were plenty of burbot in Staffordshire waters in 
the seventeenth century, as there are in the Penk and other 
tributaries of the Trent at this day. At all events, this 
fish is strictly limited in range within Britain to certain 
eastward-flowing rivers, once connected with the great Rhine 
system. 
Were we as a nation more careful than we are to develop 
the natural resources of our waters, the burbot would undoubt- 
edly repay care in its propagation, for it would thrive at the 
expense of less valuable fish in many ponds and lakes now 
exclusively inhabited by inferior fish. It is equally at home in 
running and still waters, and would probably pick up a living 
wherever eels can do so. 
A word of warning as to the use of fishes in general for 
food may be appropriately spoken before dismissing the burbot. 
To enter into the life-histories of the internal parasites of fish 
would extend this work far beyond the limits assigned to it ; 
