THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 43 



rest of the Derbyshire rivers of note originally are, for they all 

 spring from the mosses : but is in a few miles' travel so clari- 

 fied, by the addition of several clear and very great springs, big- 

 ger than itself, which gush out of the lime-stone rocks, that be- 

 fore it comes to my house, which is but six or seven miles from 

 its source, you will find it one of the purest crystalline streams 

 you have seen. 



ViAT. Does Trent spring in these parts ? 



Pisc. Yes, in these parts ; not in this county, but somewhere 

 towards the upper end of Staffordshire, I think not far from a place 

 called Trentham, and thence runs down not far from Stafford to 

 Wolsly bridge, and washing the skirts and purlieus of the forest of 

 Needwood, runs down to Burton in the same county : thence it 

 comes into this where we now are, and running by Swarkston 

 and Dunnington, receives Derwent at Wildon, and so to Notting- 

 ham, thence to Newark, and by Gainsborough to Kingston-upon- 

 Hull, where it takes the name of Humber, and thence falls into 

 the sea ; but that the map will best inform you. 



ViAT. Know you whence this river Trent derives its name ? 



Pisc. No, indeed : and yet I have heard it often discoursed 

 upon ; when some have given its denomination from the fore- 

 named Trentham, though that seems rather a derivative from it : 

 others have said, it is so called from thirty rivers that fall into it, 

 and there lose their names ; which cannot be neither, because it 

 carries that name from its very fountain, before any other rivers 

 fall into it : others derive it from thirty several sorts of fish that 

 breed there ; and that is the most likely derivation.* But be it 



* Mr. Birch, in his elegant work, says : " In some places it flows smooth- 

 ly along, but never slowly ; in others its course is rapid, and even turbu- 

 lent. The ash, the hazel, the slender osier, and the graceful birch, hung 

 with honeysuckles and wild roses, dip their pensile brandies in the 

 stream, and break its surface into ripples. Huge fragments of stone, top- 

 pled from the rocks above, and partly covered with moss and plants that 

 love the water, divide the stream into many currents ; round these it cir- 

 cles in innumerable eddies, which give life and motion to a great variety 

 of aquatic plants that grow in the bed of the river. . . Occasionally large 

 stones are thrown across the stream, and interrupt its progress, forming 

 frequently series of fairy cascades, about which it sparkles and foams with a 

 beauty and brilliancy peculiar to this lively and romantic river." " The 



