FISHES AND FISHING, 291 



Item, great salt eels. Item, great salt sturgeon jowls. 

 Item, fresh ling. Item, fresh turbot. Item, great 

 pike. Item, great jowls of fresh sammon. Item, 

 great ruds. Item, great turbots. Item, tarts. 



** Second course. Martens to pottage. Item, a great 

 fresh sturgeon jowl. Item, fresh eel, roasted. Item, 

 great brett. Item, sammon chines, broiled. Item, 

 roasted eels. Item, roasted lampreys. Item, roasted 

 lamperns. Item, great burbutts. Item, sammon, baken. 

 Item, fresh eel, baken. Item, fresh lampreys, baken. 

 Item, clear jilly. Item, gingerbread." 



This could not surely be all served at one dinner, 

 but must be a dietary for Saturdays, when probably 

 one, two, or three of these dishes were indispensable 

 at table, on that day of the week. 



Thus our ancestors promulgated laws and orders, 

 relative to the eating of fish, with a view to render 

 persons more chaste, as they did not consider fish 

 conveyed so much nutriment to the human system, 

 or was so exciting to the passions as flesh ; in respect 

 to nutriment, their ideas were very erroneous, and 

 also as to "subduing men's bodies." 



An opinion has been entertained by some authois 

 on medical subjects, that eels, salmon, herrings, lam- 

 preys,, mussels and lobsters prove injurious to some 

 constitutions; this is quite true ; the first four dis- 

 agree with many, in consequence of the large propoi- 



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