THE BREAM, 195 



" Gently take one of your rods, and bait your hook, casting it 

 over your ground bait, and gently and secretly draw it to you till 

 the lead rests about the middle of the ground bait." 



" Then take a second rod, and cast in about a yard above, and 

 your third a yard below your first rod, and stay the rods in the 

 ground, but go yourself so far from the water side, that you per- 

 ceive nothing but the tops of the floats which you must watch 

 most diligently ; then, when you have a bite, you shall perceive 

 the top of your float to sink suddenly into the water ; yet never- 

 theless be not too hasty to run to your rods until you see that the 

 line goes clear away, then creep to the water side, and give as 

 much line as possibly you can : if it be a good carp or bream 

 he will go to the farther side of the river, then strike gently, 

 and hold your rod at the bent a little while ; but if both pull to- 

 gether, you are sure to lose your game, for either your line or 

 hold will break. And after you have overcome them, they will 

 make noble sport, and are very shy to be landed." 



In treating on the golden carp just now, I alluded to the great 

 degree of heat some fishes are capable of enduring without suffer- 

 ing any apparent inconvenience, and it remains now for me to 

 remark, that the bream will sustain in a most wonderful degree 

 an opposite degree of temperature. 



Walton, on the authority of Gesner, states, that a certain and 

 great number of breams were put into a pond in Poland, which in 

 the next following winter were frozen up into one entire ice, and 

 not one drop of water remaining, nor one of these fishes to be 

 found, though they were diligently searched for ; and yet the next 

 spring, when the ice thawed, and the weather became warm, and 

 fresh water got into the pond, they all appeared again. Izaak, 

 honest worthy old fellow, says, he quoted his author, because it 

 seemed almost as incredible as the resurrection to an atheist. But 

 wonderful as it may appear, it is now established beyond all con- 

 troversy that many species of fish are capable of existing in a state 

 of torpor, although frozen into a solid block of ice, so as to be 

 split with a hatchet, or broken up with a hammer, as often occurs 

 in the Artie regions. 



Bushnan, in his introduction to the study of nature, states, that 

 perch have been transported for several miles in a frozen state. 

 " If when in this state, (he says,) fishes are placed in water near 

 a fire, they soon begin to exhibit symptoms of reanimation ; the 



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