The Compleat ^Angler 



moreland, that ebbs and flows several times every day : and he tells 

 us of a river in Surrey (it is called Mole), that after it has run several 

 miles, being opposed by hills, finds or makes itself a way under ground, 

 and breaks out again so far off, that the inhabitants thereabout boast 

 (as the Spaniards do of their river Anus) that they feed divers flocks 

 of sheep upon a bridge. And lastly, for I would not tire your 

 patience, one of no less authority than Josephus, that learned Jew, 

 tells us of a river in Judea that runs swiftly all the six days of the 

 week, and stands still and rests all their sabbath. 



But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and tell you some 

 things of the monsters, or fish, call them what you will, that they 

 breed and feed in them. Pliny, the philosopher, says (in the third 

 chapter of his ninth book) that in the Indian Sea, the fish called 

 the balxna or whirlpool, is so long and broad as to take up more in 

 length and breadth than two acres of ground ; and of other fish of 

 two hundred cubits long ; and that, in the river Ganges, there be 

 eels of thirty feet long. He says there, that these monsters appear 

 in the sea only when tempestuous winds oppose the torrents of 

 water falling from the rocks into it, and so turning what lay at the 

 bottom to be seen on the water's top. And he says that the people 

 of Cadara (an island near this place) make the timber for their 

 houses of those fish-bones. He there tells us that there are sometimes 

 a thousand of these great eels found wrapt or interwoven together. 

 He tells us there that it appears that dolphins love music, and will 

 come when called for, by some men or boys that know, and use to 

 feed them ; and that they can swim as swift as an arrow can be 

 shot out of a bow ; and much of this is spoken concerning the 

 dolphin, and other fish, as may be found also in the learned Dr. 

 Casaubon's Discourse of Credulity and Incredulity r , printed by him 

 about the year 1670. 



I know we islanders are averse to the belief of these wonders ; 

 but there be so many strange creatures to be now seen (many 

 collected by John Tradescant, and others added by my friend Elias 

 Ashmole, Esq., who now keeps them carefully and methodically 

 at his house near to Lambeth near London) as may get some belief 

 of some of the other wonders I mentioned. I will tell you some of 



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