THE COMPLETE ANGLER. IOI 



is accounted the rarest of fish, many of them 

 near the bigness of a salmon, but known by their 

 different color, arid in their best season they cut 

 very white. And none of these have been known 

 to be caught with an angle, unless it were one 

 that was caught by Sir George Hastings, an excel- 

 lent angler, and now with God ; and he hath told 

 me he thought that trout bit, not for hunger, but 

 wantonness. And it is the rather to be believed, 

 because both he then and many others before him 

 have been curious to search into their bellies what 

 the food was by which they lived, and have found 

 out nothing by which they might satisfy their 

 curiosity. 



Concerning which you are to take notice that 

 it is reported by good authors that grasshoppers 

 and some fish have no mouths, but are nourished 

 and take breath by the porousness of their gills, 

 man knows not how. And this may be believed if 

 we consider that when the raven hath hatched her 

 eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her 

 young ones to the care of the God of nature, who 

 is said in the Psalms, " to feed the young ravens 

 that call upon him ; " and they be kept alive and 

 fed by dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or 

 some other way that we mortals know not. And 

 this may be believed of the Fordidge trout, which 

 as it is said of the stork that " he knows his sea- 

 son," so he knows his times, I think almost his day, 

 of coming into that river out of the sea ; where 

 he lives, and it is like feeds nine months of the 



