chap, v.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 127 



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 use to 

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

 or straw, which when they have discovered, they 

 strike with a Trout-spear or other ways. This kind 

 of way they catch very many ; but I would not be- 

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

 it now I have seen it. 



Ven. But, Master, do not Trouts see us in the 

 night ? 



Pise. 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 Sir 

 Francis 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 

 " diminution of it by the water." He also offers the 

 like experiment 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 ob- 

 served and demonstrated, as it is by that learned 

 man, has made me to believe that Eels unbed them- 

 selves, and stir at the noise of thunder, and not 

 only, as some think, by the motion or stirring of 

 the earth which is occasioned bv that thunder. 



