THE BURBOT 91 



which varies according to locality from November till March. 

 When engaged in reproduction, burbots assemble in numbers 

 and lie closely intertwined with each other at the bottom 

 of the water. 



The burbot is very widely distributed over Central and 

 Northern Europe and North America, extending from the 

 north of Italy to Sweden, and, according to Yarrell, as far east 

 as India. But in England it is so very local as to suggest some 

 curious speculation. How comes it that a robust and prolific 

 fish which is at home in the Trent is absent from the Thames, 

 which geologists hold to be the older river, once a tributary of 

 the Rhine, where burbots abound } Mr. Keene, indeed, states 

 that he once took one (he does not say how) from the Wey, 

 near Weybridge, weighing half a pound ; but he adds that 

 none of the people in that neighbourhood had ever seen 

 a fish of the kind before. The occurrence of a single 

 individual of a species could only be accounted for by 

 supposing that it had made its way through canals into the 

 Thames watershed ; but there is evidence to prove that the 

 burbot once was indigenous to the Thames and its tributaries. 

 Mascall, already referred to as the author of the 'Booke of 

 Fishing with Hooke and Line (1590), has the following interest- 

 ing note about this fish : 



*' There is a kind of fish in Holand,* in the fennes beside 

 Peterborrow, which they call a poult ; they be like in making 

 and greatness to the whiting,f but of the cullour of the loch 

 [loach] ; they come forth of the fennes brookes, into the rivers 

 nigh there about, as in Wandsworth river| there are many of 

 them. . . . They are taken at milles in welles [eel-baskets], 

 and at waters [weirs] likewise. They are a pleasant meate, and 



* Not the kingdom of Holland, but the south-eastern division of 

 Lincolnshire which bears this name. 



t A true analogy ; the whiting, like the burbot, belonging to the Cod 

 Family. 



X The Wandle, which falls into the Thames at Wandsworth. 



