INTRODUCTION. 5 



to sliow tliat tlie bear and the boar ranged the 

 forests as late as the conquest of England by the 

 jN^ormans, whilst tbe red deer, tbe egret and tbe 

 crane, the bittern and the bustard, remained to a 

 period almost within living memory. 



River loams, river gravels, lake beds, and cave 

 breccias, disclose hooks and spears, and sometimes 

 fragments of nets, which show that hunting and 

 fishing were practised by the primitive dwellers 

 along river plains and valleys. 



The situations of abbeys, priories, and other 

 monastic piles, the ruins of which here and there 

 are seen along the banks of rivers, and the records 

 the heads of these houses have left behind them, 

 lead us to suppose that those who reared and those 

 who occupied them were alive to the advantages the 

 neighbourhood of good fisheries supplied. Some of 

 the vivaries or fish-pools, and meres even, which 

 once ajfforded abundant supplies, no longer exist, 

 their sites being now green fields; but indications 

 of their former presence are distinct, whilst the 

 positions of weirs on the Severn, the rights of which 

 their owners zealously guarded, may still be pointed 

 out. Sometimes they were subjects of litigation, 

 as with the canons of Lilleshall, who claimed 



