The Fourth Day 107 



And you must fish for him with a strong line, and 

 not a little hook; and let him have time to gorge 

 your hook, for he does not usually forsake it, as 

 he oft will in the day-fishing. And if the night be 

 not dark, then fish so with an artificial fly of a light 

 colour, and at the snap : nay, he will sometimes rise 

 at a dead mouse, or a piece of cloth, or anything 

 that seems to swim across the water, or to be in 

 motion. This is a choice way, but I have not oft 

 used it, because it is void of the pleasures that such 

 days as these, that we two now enjoy, afford an 

 angler. 



And you are to know, that in Hampshire, which 

 I think exceeds all England for swift, shallow, clear, 

 pleasant brooks, and store of Trouts, they used to 

 catch Trouts in the night, by the light of a torch or 

 straw, which, when they have discovered, they strike 

 ivith a Trout-spear, or other ways. This kind of 

 way they catch very many : but I would not believe 

 it till I was an eye-witness of it, nor do I like it now 

 I have seen it. 



VENATOR. But, master, do not Trouts see us in 

 the night ? 



PiSCATOR. Yes, and hear, and smell too, both 

 then and in the day-time : for Gesner observes, the 

 Otter smells a fish forty furlongs off him in the 

 water : and that it may be true, seems to be affirmed 

 by SinJFrancis Bacon, in the eighth century of his 

 Natural History, who there proves that waters may 

 be the medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus : 

 " That if you knock two stones together very deep 

 under the water, those that stand on a bank near to 

 that place may hear the noise without any diminu- 

 tion of it by the water " . He also offers the like ex- 

 periment concerning the letting an anchor fall, by a 

 very long cable or rope, on a rock, or the sand, within 

 the sea. And this being so well observed and de* 



