XXxil DEDICATION. 



mirth : of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complex- 

 ioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a compe- 

 tent judge; for divines say, there are offences given, 

 and offences not given but taken. 



And I am the willinger to justify the pleasant part 

 of it, because though it is known I can be serious at 

 seasonable times, yet the whole Discourse is, or 

 rather was, a picture of my own disposition, espe- 

 cially in such days and times as I have laid aside 

 business, and gone a-fishing with honest Nat and R. 

 Roe ; but they are gone, and with them most of my 

 pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away 

 and returns not. 



Next let me tell the reader, that in that which is 

 the more useful part of this Discourse, that is to say, 

 the observations of the nature and breeding and 

 seasons and catching of fish, I am not so simple as 

 not to know that a captious reader may find excep- 

 tions against something said of some of these ; and 

 therefore I must entreat him to consider that experi- 

 ence teaches us to know that several countries alter 

 the time, and I think almost the manner, of fishes' 

 breeding, but doubtless of their being in season; as 

 may appear by three rivers in Monmouthshire, name- 

 ly, Severn, Wye, and Usk, where Camden (" Brit. 

 Fishes," fol. 633) observes, that in the river Wye 

 salmon are in season from September to April; and 

 we are certain that in Thames and Trent, and in 

 most other rivers, they be in season the six hotter 

 months. 



Now, for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how 

 to make a man that was none, to be an angler by a 

 book ; he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder 



