THE COiMPLETE ANGLER. 61 



There is also in Kent near to Canterbury, a trout called there 

 a Fordidge trout,* a trout that bears the name of the town where 

 it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish ; many 

 of them near the bigness of a salmon, but known by their differ- 

 ent color, and 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 excellent 

 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 

 may 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,f 

 but are nourished and take breath by the porousness of their 

 gills, man knows not how ; and this may be believed, if we con- 

 sider that when the raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no 

 further care, but leaves her young ones to the care of the God 



* Fordwich is about two miles east of Canterbury and the river, the 

 Stour. Yarrell says, unhesitatingly, that the Fordwich trout is the salmon 

 trout {sa/mo trutta of Linnaeus, salmo albus or white trout, Flem. Brit. 

 An ), what is called the hirling in some parts of Scotland. He says also 

 in contradiction to Walton and his friend Sir George Hastings, that quan- 

 tities are taken with the rod, and on being examined are found full of va- 

 rious insects, particularly the sandhopper. The very rapid digestion of 

 the salmon family led to our author's error. He quotes also Dr. Macul- 

 logh Jo^ir. Rmj. Inst., xxxiv., p. 211), as stating that the salmon trout, or 

 sea trout as it is called in Scotland, is " now a permanent resident of a fresh 

 wat€r lake in the Island of Lismore, one of the Hebrides, and'without the 

 power of visiting the sea. There it has been known for a number of years, 

 perfectly reconciled to its prison, and pi'opagating without difficulty." 

 The same thing has doubtless occurred in this country. — ^m. Ed. 



t The reader hardly needs to be told that both these statements are mis- 

 takes of Walton's. The grasshopper is a hearty feeder, and well furnished 

 with jaws, and the raven as good a mother as the wren. It is, however, 

 an ascertained fact, that fish bred in the darkness of the great Kentucky 

 cave have no eyes, because they have no use for them. I have seen a Jish 

 of this description {Amblyopsis speleus. of De Kay), there being no ap- 

 pearance whatever of eyes in its head, which led an incorrigible punster 

 to pronounce it to be of the/ee/-ine species. — Im. Ed. 



