The " Poult? 43 



MASCALL'S OPINION OF THE FLAVOUR 

 OF " FROGGES." 



" In many places frogges, being well 

 drest, they eate like fish, and is calde a 

 kinde of fish, and doe taste as well as a 

 young poullet, for I tasted my part of many." 



HE ADVOCATES THE CULTIVATION OF A 

 FISH NOW VERY RARE IN ENGLAND 

 THE " POULT " (EEL-POUT OR 

 BURBOT *). 



" There is a kind of fish in Holand, 

 in the fennes beside Peterborrow, which 

 they call a poult ; they be like in making 

 and greatness to the whiting, but of the 

 cullour of the Loch [loach] ; they come 

 forth of the fenne brookes, into the rivers 

 nigh there about, as in Wandsworth river f 

 there are many of them. They stirre not 

 all the sommer, but in winter when it is 

 most coldest weather. They are taken 

 at Milles in Welles [eel-baskets], and 



* The statement in the Bibliotheca Piscatoria 

 that Franck (1694) is the first English writer on 

 angling who describes that mystical fish the 

 " burbolt " is incorrect, as my quotation from 

 Mascall (1596) proves. 



f The Wandle not many years ago the 

 purest chalk stream in England, now tainted 

 by the water from Croydon's sewage farm, and 

 polluted by village drainage. 



