NATURE AND BREEDING OF THE TROUT 



ness. 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 a 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 Salmons, 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 the 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 Grashoppers 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 farther care, but leaves her young ones to the care 

 of the God of Nature, who is said in the Psalms, (Psal. cxlvii. 9.) 

 'To feed the young Ravens that call upon him.' And they be 

 kept alive, and fed by a dew, or worms that breed in their nests, 

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

 be believed of the Fordidge Trout, which, as it is said of the 

 Stork, (Jerem. viii. 7.) that ' he knows his season,' so he knows 

 his times, I think almost his day of coming into that river out 

 of the sea, where he lives, and it is like feeds, nine months of 

 the year, and fasts three in the river of Fordidge. And you 

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