32 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



confess my discourse is like to prove suitable to my 

 recreation, calm, and quiet ; we seldom take the name 

 of God into our mouths but it is either to praise him or 

 pray to him ; if others use it vainly in the midst of 

 their recreations, so vainly as if they meant to conjure, 

 I must tell you that it is neither our fault nor our 

 custom ; we protest against it. But pray remember, I 

 accuse nobody ; for as I would not make a " watery 

 discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into 

 it, nor would I raise the reputation of my own art by 

 the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much 

 for the prologue to what I mean to say. 



And now for the water, the element that I trade in. 

 The water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the 

 element upon which the Spirit of God did first move, 

 the element which God commanded to bring forth living 

 creatures abundantly ; and without which, those that 

 inhabit the land, even all creatures that have breath 

 in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putrefaction. 

 Moses, the great law-giver, and chief philosopher, skilled 

 in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was called 

 the friend of God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, 

 names this element the first in the creation ; this is 

 the element upon which the Spirit of God did first 

 move, and is the chief ingredient in the creation : 

 many philosophers have made it to comprehend all 

 other elements, and most allow it the chiefest in 

 mixtion of all living creatures. 



There be that profess to believe that all bodies are 

 made of water, and may be reduced back again to water 

 only : they endeavour to demonstrate it thus : 



Take a willow, or any like speedy growing plant, newly 

 rooted in a box or barrel full of earth, weigh them all 

 together exactly when the tree begins to grow, and then 

 weigh all together after the tree is increased from its 

 first rooting, to weigh a hundred pound weight more 



the 

 the 



