52 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART t 



custom ; we protest against it. But pray remember, I accuse no- 

 body ; for as I would not make "a. watery discourse," so I 

 would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the 

 reputation of my own art by the diminution or ruin of another's. 

 And so much for the prologue to what I mean to say. 



And now for the Water, the element that I trade in. The 

 Water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the element upon 

 which the Spirit of God did first move, Gen. i. 2, the element 

 which God commanded to bring forth living creatures abun- 

 dantly ; and without which, those that inhabit the land, even 

 all creatures that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly 

 return to putrefaction. Moses, the great lawgiver and chief 

 philosopher, skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was 

 called the friend of God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, 

 names this element the first in the creation ; this is the element 

 upon which the Spirit of God did first move, and is the chief 

 ingredient in the creation : many philosophers have made it to 

 comprehend all the other elements, and most allow it the chiefest 

 in the mixtion of all living creatures. 



There be that profess to believe that all bodies are made of 

 water, and may be reduced back again to water only ; they en- 

 deavor to demonstrate it thus : 



Take a willow, or any like speedy-growing plant, newly 

 rooted in a box or barrel full of earth, weigh them all together 

 exactly when the trees begin to grow, and then weigh all to- 

 gether after the tree is increased from its first rooting to weigh 

 an hundred pound weight more than when it was first rooted 

 and weighed ; and you shall find this augment of the tree to 

 be without the diminution of one drachm weight of the earth. 

 Hence they infer this increase of wood to be from water of 

 rain, or from dew, and not to be from any other element. And 

 they affirm, they can reduce this wood back again to water ; 

 and they affirm, also, the same may be done in any animal or 

 vegetable. And this I take to be a fair testimony of the ex- 

 cellency of my element of Water. 



