74 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



long, as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit ; 

 and Mercator * says, the trouts that are taken in the 

 Lake of Geneva, are a great part of the merchandise of 

 that famous city. And you are further to know, that 

 there be certain waters, that breed trouts remarkable 

 both for their number and smallness. I know a little 

 brook in Kent, that breeds them to a number incredible, 

 and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, 

 but none greater than about the size of a gudgeon : 

 there are also in divers rivers, especially that relate to, 

 or be near to the sea, as Winchester, or the Thames about 

 Windsor, a little trout called samlet, or skegger trout 

 (in both which places I have caught twenty or forty at 

 a standing), that will bite as fast and as freely as minnows : 

 these be by some taken to be young salmon ; but in those 

 waters they never grow to be bigger than a herring.f 



There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout 

 called there a Fordidge trout, a trout that bears the 

 name of the town where it is usually caught, that is 



* Gerard Mercator, of Ruremond in Flanders, a man of so intense 

 application to mathematical studies, that he neglected the necessary 

 refreshments of nature. He engraved with his own hand, and 

 coloured the maps to his geograpliical writings. He wrote several 

 books of theology ; and died 1594. H. 



t The skegger here alluded to is no doubt the young salmon in 

 its first year, before it has paid its first visit to the sea. As salmon 

 have disappeared from the Thames, so have skeggers, or salmon 

 fry. The Lake of Geneva still produces very large trout, which are 

 frequently cooked on the spot, and sent express to Paris. Still, I do 

 not think that any of them now grow to the length of " three cubits." 

 They are not unfrequently caught weighing twenty-four or thirty 

 pounds. Trout every bit as large are caught in some of the loughs 

 and lochs of Ireland and Scotland. The smallest species of trout is 

 now called " the parr," and very likely that is the fish to which 

 Walton alludes in this passage, " I know a little brook in Kent, 

 that breeds them to a number incredible, and you may take them 

 twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater than about the size of a 

 gudgeon." When Walton mentions " barren trouts, that are good 

 in winter," he falls into a common error. The barren trout are 

 really male trout, which have shed their milt over the ova of the 

 female fish in the early spawning months, August and September. 

 The male fish very rapidly recovers from the exhausting process 

 of procreation. Not so the female, which, if a large fish, is not 

 fully convalescent until the May next following her accouchement. E. 



