112 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



ell long ; which was of such a length and depth, that he had his 

 picture drawn, and now is to be seen at mine host Rickabie's at 

 the George in Ware :* and it may be, by giving that very great 

 trout the rod, that is, by casting it to him into the water, I might 

 have caught him at the long run ;f for so I use always to do 

 when I meet with an overgrown fish, and you will learn to do so 

 too hereafter : for I tell you. Scholar, fishing is an art ; or, at 

 least, it is an art to catch fish. 



Ven. But, Master, I have heard that the great trout you speak 

 of is a salmon. 



Pisc. Trust me, Scholar, I know not what to say to it. There 

 are many country people that believe hares change sexes every 

 year : and there be many very learned men think so too, for in 

 their dissecting them they find many reasons to incline them to 

 that belief.^ And to make the wonder seem yet less, that hares 

 change sexes, note, that Dr. Mer. Casaubon affirms in his book 

 of credible and incredible things, that Gaspar Peucerus, a learned 



* In the reign of Charles H., a trout was taken from the Kennet, near 

 Newbury, which measured forty-five inches ! The largest trout known to 

 have been taken with a minnow in the south of England, was the prize of 

 Mr. Howell, 1755, at Hambledon Lock, which weighed sixteen pounds. — 

 Sir H. JVicholas. 



t This bungling practice is condemned by Cotton in the second part of 

 the Angler, and should never be resorted to by any one who has a reel at his 

 hand. Trouts much larger are taken by the Piseco Lake Club, by trolling 

 with a miimow on fine gut. See Appendix. — Am Ed. 



X This, of course, is fabulous. Pliny {Hist. JVat., vii., 1) gravely says : 

 " The change of females into males is not fabulous. We find in the Annals, 

 that in the consulate of Licinius Crassus and Crassus Longinus, a boy, living 

 under the parental roof, was turned into a virgin, and by order of the 

 Augurs abandoned on a desert island. Licinius Mucianus declared that 

 he saw in Argos, one Arescon, wlio had borne the name of Arescusa, and 

 had been married, but getting a beard and virility, took a wife. He saw 

 also a boy of the same kind at Smyrna. I myself saw in Africa, L. Cos- 

 sicius, a citizen of Thyrsdris, who was changed into a man on his (her ?) 

 marriage-day." The reader may remember how Tiresias was turned into a 

 woman by striking two cojjulating snakes, and back again into a man seven 

 years afterwards by the same process; and how he lost his sight from the 

 revenge of Juno, by deciding a delicate nuptial question between her and 

 Jupiter, ten to one against the goddess. Montaigne also asserts that he saw 

 a man who had once been a woman. — Am. Ed. 



