12 TO THE READER 



And I am the willinger to justify the pleasant part of it, 

 because though it is known I can be serious at seasonable 

 times, yet the whole Discourse is, or rather was, a picture 

 of my own disposition, especially in such days and times 

 as I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing with 

 honest Nat and R. Roe ; but they are gone, and with 

 them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow 

 that passeth away and returns not. 



And next let me add this, that he that likes not the 

 book should like the excellent picture of the trout, and 

 some of the other fish ; which I may take a liberty to 

 commend, because they concern not myself. 



Next let me tell the reader, that in that which is the 

 more useful part of this Discourse, that is to say, the 

 observations of the nature, and breeding, and seasons, 

 and catching of fish, I am not so simple as not to know that 

 a captious reader may find exceptions against something 

 said of some of these ; and therefore I must entreat 

 him to consider, that experience teaches us to know 

 that several countries alter the time, and I think almost 

 the manner of fishes' breeding, but doubtless of their 

 being in season ; as may appear by three rivers in 

 Monmouthshire, namely, Severn, Wye, and Usk, where 

 Camden (Brit. Fishes, 633) observes, that in the River 

 Wye, salmon are in season from September to April ; 

 and we are certain that in Thames and Trent, and in 

 most other rivers, they be in season the six hotter months. 



Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to 

 make a man that was none to be an angler by a book ; 

 he that undertakes it, shall undertake a harder task than 

 Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who, 

 in a printed book called A Private School of Defence, 

 undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed 

 at for his labour not but that many useful things 

 might be learnt by that book, but he was laughed at 

 because that art was not to be taught by w r ords, but 



