CHAP. v. THE FOURTH DAY. 97 



And you must fish for him with a strong line, and not a little 

 hook ; and let "him have time to gorge your hook, for he does 

 rrot usually forsake it, as he oft will in the day-fishing. And if 

 the night be not dark, then fish so with an artificial fly of a light 

 colour, and at the snap : nay, he will sometimes rise at a dead 

 mouse, or a piece of cloth, or anything that seems to swim 

 across the water, or to be in motion. This is a choice way, but 

 I have not often used it, because it is void of the pleasures 

 that such days as these, that we two now enjoy, afford an 

 angler. 



And vou^are to know that in Hampshire, which I jthink 

 exceeds^all England for_swift t shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, 

 and store of trouts, they used to catch trouts in the night, by 

 the light of a torch or straw, which, when they have dis- 

 covered^, they strike""with a trout-sgear, or other ways. This 

 kljid_ot__wayl:hey catch very manyg\but I would not believe it 

 tilL_I_was aneye-witness of it, nor do I like it now I have 

 seen it. y 



VEN. But, master, do not trouts see us in the night ? 



Pise. Yes, and hear and smell too, both then and in the 

 day-time; for Gesner observes, the otter smells a fish forty 

 furlongs off him in the water: and that it may be true, seems 

 to be affirmed by Sir Francis Bacon, in the eighth century of 

 his Natural History, who there proves that water may be the 

 medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus : " that if you 

 knock two stones together very deep under the water, those 

 that stand on a bank near to that place may hear the noise 

 without any diminution of it by the water." He also offers the 

 like experiment concerning the letting an anchor fall, by a very 

 long cable or rope, on a rock, or the sand within the sea. And 

 this being so well observed and demonstrated as it is by that 

 learned man, has made me to believe that eels unbed themselves 

 and stir at the noise of thunder; and not only, as some think, by 

 the motion or stirring of the earth, which is occasioned by that 

 thunder. 



And this reason of Sir Francis Bacon, Exper. 792, has made 

 me crave pardon of one that I laughed at, for affirming that he 



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