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scription of certain parts of this famous stream 

 and our description shall be confined to the 

 best fishing portions, with their immediate 

 scenery a pretty correct statistical account of 

 it taken verbatim from Glover : " The Dove 

 takes its rise among cavities of gritstone and 

 coal-shade, near Thatch-marsh colliery, be- 

 tween the great and middle Axe-edge hills. 

 The scenery around the sources of this beautiful 

 river, presents tracts of barren mountainous 

 ridges, covered with heath, from which the tra- 

 veller has extensive views, on one hand, over the 

 fruitful and thickly-peopled plains of Stafford- 

 shire and Cheshire; and, on the other, the 

 dreary and sometimes stupendous elevations of 

 the Peak. After cutting through the gritstone 

 rock, this small but rapid branch is joined by 

 another stream, which passes by a village called 

 Dove-head, and has been selected by Walton,* 

 the angler, and by Edwards, the poet of the 

 Dove, as the original stream. 



* It is very odd that people will be confounding Walton 

 with Cotton. Walton was a mere bottom-fisher, and 

 knew nothing about fly-fishing. The few directions he 

 gives upon the art, are borrowed from Mr. Thomas Barker, 

 an old writer and a cotemporary. Walton knew little or 

 nothing of the Dove ; it was to Cotton that Glover should 

 have referred. The second part of "The Complete Ang- 

 ler," which treats of fly-fishing, and of the rivers of Derby- 

 shire and Staffordshire, was entirely written by Cotton. 

 Walton had no more to do with it than ourselves. 



