The Compleat ^Angler 



The crystal Trent^ for fords and fish renowned; 



And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised. 

 Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee; 



York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 

 The Peak^ her Dove^ whose banks so fertile be; 



And Kent will say^ her Medway doth excel. 

 Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame ; 



Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood ; 

 Our western parts extol their Willy's fame ; 



And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood. 



These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my old 

 deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; and because you say you love 

 such discourses as these, of rivers and fish and fishing, I love you the 

 better, and love the more to impart them to you : nevertheless, 

 scholar, if I should begin but to name the several sorts of strange 

 fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers that run into the 

 sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, or both ; and yet I 

 will venture to tell you a real truth concerning one lately dissected 

 by Dr. Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and of 

 equal freedom to communicate it ; one that loves me and my art ; 

 one to whom I have been beholden for many of the choicest observa- 

 tions that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares to 

 do anything rather than tell an untruth, did (I say) tell me he had 

 lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described it to me : 



" The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length ; his 

 mouth wide enough to receive, or take into it, the head of a man ; 

 his stomach seven or eight inches broad : he is of a slow motion, 

 and usually lies or lurks close in the mud, and has a movable string 

 on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long, by 

 the moving of which (which is his natural bait) when he lies close 

 and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him 

 that he can suck them into his mouth, and so devours and digests 

 them." 



And, scholar, do not wonder at this, for besides the credit of the 

 relater, you are to note, many of these, and fishes that are of the 



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