The Compleat ^Angler 



does not usually stir out of his hold, but lies in it as close in the 

 day as the timorous hare does in her form, for the chief feeding of 

 either is seldom in the day, but usually in the night, and then the 

 great trout feeds very boldly. 



And you must fish for him with a strong line, and not a little 

 hook ; and let him have time to gorge your hook, for he does not 

 usually forsake it, as he oft will in the day-fishing. And if the night 

 be not dark, then fish so with an artificial fly of a light colour, and 

 at the snap : nay, he will sometimes rise at a dead mouse, or a piece 

 of cloth, or anything that seems to swim across the water, or to be 

 in motion. This is a choice way, but I have not often used it, because 

 it is void of the pleasures that such days as these, that we two now 

 enjoy, afford an angler. 



And you are to know that in Hampshire, which I think exceeds 

 all England for swift, shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, and store of 

 trouts, they used to catch trouts in the night, by the light of a torch 

 or straw, which, when they have discovered, they strike with a trout- 

 spear, or other ways. This kind of way they catch very many ; but 

 I would not believe it till I was an eye-witness of it, nor do I like it 

 now I have seen it. 



VEN. But, master, do not trouts see us in the night ? 



Pise. Yes, and hear and smell too, both then and in the day-time ; 

 for Gesner observes, the otter smells a fish forty furlongs off him in 

 the water : and that it may be true, seems to be affirned by Sir 

 Francis Bacon, in the eighth century of his Natural History r , who 

 there proves that water may be the medium of sounds, by demon- 

 strating it thus : " that if you knock two stones together very deep 

 under the water, those that stand on a bank near to that place may 

 hear the noise without any diminution of it by the water." He also 

 offers the like experiment concerning the letting an anchor fall, by a 

 very long cable or rope, on a rock, or the sand within the sea. And 

 this being so well observed and demonstrated as it is by that learned 

 man, has made me to believe that eels unbed themselves and stir at 

 the noise of thunder ; and not only, as some think, by the motion 

 or stirring of the earth, which is occasioned by that thunder. 



And this reason of Sir Francis Bacon (Exper. 792) has made me 



135 



