THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 157 



that such days as these that we two now enjoy, 

 afford an angler. 



And you are to know that in Hampshire which 

 I think exceeds all England for swift, shallow, 

 clear, pleasant brooks and store of trouts they 

 use to catch trouts in the night by the light of a 

 torch or straw, which when they have discovered 

 they strike with a trout spear or other ways, This 

 kind of way they catch very many ; but I would 

 not believe it till I was an eyewitness of it, nor do 

 I like it now I have seen it. 



Ven. But, master, do not trouts see us in the 

 night? 



Pise. Yes, and hear and smell too, both then 

 and in the daytime. For Gesner observes, the ot- 

 ter smells a fish forty furlongs off him in the water ; 

 and that it may be true seems to be affirmed by 

 Sir Francis Bacon in the Eighth Century of his 

 '* Natural History," who there proves that waters 

 may be the medium of sounds by demonstrating it 

 thus : " That if you knock two stones together 

 very deep under the water, those that stand on a 

 bank near to that place may hear the noise without 

 any diminution of it by the water." He also of- 

 fers the like experiment concerning the letting an 

 anchor fall, by a very long cable or rope, on a rock 

 or the sand within the sea. And this being so well 

 observed and demonstrated as it is by that learned 

 man has made me to believe that eels unbed 

 themselves and stir at the noise of thunder; 

 and not only, as some think, by the motion or 



