164 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



CHAPTER XI. 



Observations of the Tench, and advice how to angle for him. 



PiscATOR. The tench,* the physician of fishes, is observed to 

 love ponds better than rivers, and to love pits better than either ; 

 yet Camden observes there is a river in Dorsetshire that abounds 

 with tenches, but doubtless they retire to the most deep and quiet 

 places in it. 



This fish hath very large fins, very small and smooth scales, a 

 red circle about his eyes, which are big and of a gold color ; and 

 from either angle of his mouth there hangs down a little barb: 

 in every tench's head there are two little stones, which foreign 

 physicians make great use of; but he is not commended for 

 wholesome meat, though there be very much use made of them 

 for outward applications. f Rondeletius says that, at his being 

 at Rome, he saw a great cure done by applying a tench to the 

 feet of a very sick man. This, he says, was done after an unu- 

 sual manner by certain Jews. And it is observed, that many of 

 those people have many secrets yet unknown to Christians ; 

 secrets that have never yet been written, but have been since 

 the days of their Solomon, who knew the nature of nil things, 

 even from the cedar to the shrub, delivered by tradition from 

 the father to the son, and so from generation to generation, with- 



* Tinea Vvlgaris. The tench is not named by the ancients, except 

 by Ansonius (125-7), who speaks contemptuously of it, as affording 

 sport only to boys, and food only to the lowest of the commtjn people. He 

 o- lis them *' viriden Tineas ;" but Aldrovandns insists upon it, that he 

 does not mean tlie tench of the E:i.j;lish.— .'?w. Ed. 



t Follovvi'ig honest Izaak's advice in tlie next paragraph, we sh'll siy 

 little on this point, where our author is too credulous. In the Regimen 

 Sanitutis Salernitatvm, the SGth line commending fishes, is, 



" Lucius et parca, saxaulis, et albica, tenca." 



Jim. Ed. 



