CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE. 249 



feet, which cannot endure cold ; wherefore nature 

 hath provided that it hunts a bird in the evening, 

 sits upon it all night to keep its feet warm, lets it go 

 in the morning without hurt, and hunts another bird 

 to prey upon." Making a warming-pan of a fag at 

 school must sink in the scale of inventions after this. 



Surely in the following we have the original of 

 Tennyson's " violent sea ?" " Huntingdonshire hath 

 its share of fens, and there are several violent meers, 

 which have plenty of fish, but the waters are often 

 furiously disturbed in the calmest weather to the 

 great danger and terror of the fishermen, supposed to 

 be occasioned by eruptions of wind underneath. 

 Wittlesey Meer, six miles long and three broad, is 

 clear water and full of fish, yet like the rest it is 

 troubled much with wind ; the air about is foggy and 

 stinking, fatal to strangers, but the natives bear it 

 well and live long." 



As the witty Curran sought to soothe sleep-dis- 

 pelling Boreas by an offering of a box of peppermint 

 lozenges cast from his bedroom window, may not 

 the modern growth of the peppermint plant upon the 

 banks of these once wmefy-meers have had an even 

 more successful effect in smoothing their agitated 

 beds? 



Eivers that take it into their heads to run dry 

 when they might naturally be expected to be over- 

 flowing, and vice versa, are very common. 



