66 BEST'S AET OF ANGLING. 



also when your hand will feel him give a strong 

 snatch ; then strike him, and he will be your 

 own, if you play him wellj but if you do not 

 manage him with dexterity, he will break your 

 tackle. You must have on your rod a winch, 

 and a line on it about thirty yards long. 



Barbels are the worst and coarest of fresh- 

 water fishes, and seldom eaten but by the poorer 

 sort of people, who sometimes boil them, with a 

 bit of bacon to give them a relish. They are 

 sometimes taken of the length of three feet, and 

 eighteen pounds in weight. 



The most famous places near London for bar- 

 bel-angling are Kingston- bridge, and Shepperton* 

 deeps \ but IValton-deeps , Chertsey-lridge, Hamp* 

 ton-ferry, and the holes under Cooper's -kill are in 

 nowise inferior. You may likewise meet with 

 them at all the locks between Maidenhead and 

 Oxford. 



N. B. Their spawn acts as a violent cathartic 

 and emetic. His liver is likewise unwholesome. 

 The hooks for this fish ; No. or 2. 



AXGUILLA* 



The Eel; authors of natural history, in regard 

 to the eel, have advanced various conjectures; 

 and in some measure contradicted each other 

 entirely on this head, namely : Whether they 

 are produced by generation or corruption, as 

 worms are, or by certain glutinous drops of 

 dew, which falling in May and Jurft, on the 

 banks of some ponds or rivers, are by the heat 

 of the sun turned into eels. Abr. Mylius, in a 

 treatise on the origin of animals, describes a me- 

 thod of producing them by art. He says, that if 

 you cut up two turfs covered with May-dew, 



