The Compleat ^Angler 



the Lake Leman (the Lake of Geneva) there are trouts taken of 

 three cubits long, as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit ; 

 and Mercator says, the trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva, 

 are a great part of the merchandise of that famous city. And you 

 are further to know, that there be certain waters, that breed trouts 

 remarkable both for their number and smallness. I know a little 

 brook in Kent, that breeds them to a number incredible, and you 

 may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater than 

 about the size of a gudgeon : there are also in divers rivers, especially 

 that relate to, or be near to the sea (as Winchester, or the Thames 

 about Windsor) a little trout called samlet, or skegger trout (in both 

 which places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing) that will 

 bite as fast and as freely as minnows : these be by some taken to be 

 young salmon ; but in those waters they never grow to be bigger 

 than a herring. 



There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout (called there a 

 Fordidge trout), a trout that bears the name of the town where it is 

 usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish ; many of them 

 near the bigness of a salmon, but known by their different colour ; 

 and in their best season they cut very white ; and none of these have 

 been known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was 

 caught by Sir George Hastings (an excellent angler, and now with 

 God); and he hath told me, he thought that trout bit not for hunger 

 but wantonness ; and it is rather to be believed, because both he, 

 then, and many others before him, have been curious to search into 

 their bellies, what the food was by which they lived ; and have found 

 out nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity. 



Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by 

 good authors, that grasshoppers, and some fish, have no mouths, 

 but are nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, 

 man knows not how : and this may be believed, if we consider that 

 when the raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but 

 leaves her young ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said, 

 in the Psalms, " to feed the young ravens that call upon him." And 

 they be kept alive, and fed by dew, or worms that breed in their 

 nests, or some other ways that we mortals know not ; and this may 



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