CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE 245 



CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING 

 LITERATURE. 



As we explore retrogressively, and dive deep into the 

 mysteries of old books upon Natural History, so do 

 we find how the flood of light which is now poured 

 by the lamp of scientific research upon all things 

 animate and inanimate dwindles gradually to a more 

 minute spark : and curious it is to reflect that that 

 little ray, penetrating in times past through only a 

 narrow crevice, or peeping modestly out of the 

 chamber of literature through its well-nigh closed 

 shutters, was the parent of the great living TRUTH, 

 which in these latter days finds nothing too low and 

 nothing too high for its shining, and which by the 

 aid of the telescope and the microscope has left but 

 little unrevealed, or at least unexamined, whether of 

 things on the earth, or things under the earth, or 

 things over the earth. The books we have been re- 

 cently plodding through date from 1600 to 1740, and 

 these show how, for the most part, truth and error 

 were unwittingly, and as we might almost say con- 

 scientiously, woven together. 



In the course of our search we have chanced upon 



