THE LITERATURE OF FLY FISHING. 193 



customable prayer. And thus doing you shall 

 eschew and void many vices ; as idleness, which 

 is principal cause to enduce man to many other 

 vices : as it is right well known.' 



Leonard Mascall, who wrote a century after 

 the Treatise, but who since he stole from it 

 belongs to the same literary epoch, is chiefly 

 known as a writer on fruit trees and vermin 

 traps. I gather that his horticulture was good, 

 from the extent to which it was pirated. 

 Thomas Barker, who wrote on gardening as 

 well as fishing, stole Mascall' s chapter on graft- 

 ing, which was unkind of a brother angler. 

 However, as Mascall himself borrowed from 

 the Dutch, and as he also robbed the Treatise, 

 he has no cause to complain. Mascall was a 

 fly fisher; but above all a fish preserver. There 

 are many in this realm, he complains, 'that 

 spares no time to kill, nor cares for no time to 

 save, but takes at all times, which maketh 

 freshe fishe so deare, and so scant in rivers and 

 running waters.' Samuel Hartlib, fifty years 

 later, a well-known writer on agriculture, 

 friend of Milton, Evelyn and Pepys, says the 

 same. Fish are scarce because nets are used 

 with so small a mesh as to destroy the fry : and 

 also because of a disgusting practice, which 

 fortunately is obsolete, of feeding pigs on the 

 fry. But to come rather nearer fly fishing, 

 from which this is a digression, Hartlib quotes 

 a writer on Ireland who imputes the leprosy of 

 the Irish to their brutish eating of salmon 



