2l6 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I 



These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my 

 old deceased friend, Michael Dray ton ; and because you say 

 you love such discourses as these of rivers and fish and fishing, 

 I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to 

 fou : nevertheless, Scholar, if I should begin but to name the 

 several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of 

 those rivers that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, 

 or unbelief, or both : and yet I will venture to tell you a real 

 truth concerning one lately dissected by Dr Wharton, a man 

 of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom to 

 communicate it ; one that loves me and my art ; one to whom 

 I have been beholden for many of the choicest observations 

 that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares do 

 anything rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he 

 lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described it to 

 me. 



" The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length ; 

 his mouth wide enough to receive or take into it the head of a 

 man ; his stomach seven or eight inches broad. He is of a 

 slow motion, and usually lies or lurks close in the mud, and 

 has a movable strLig on his head about a span, or near unto a 

 quarter of a yard long, by the moving of which, which is his 

 natural bait, when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he 

 draws other smaller fish so close to him that he can suck them 

 into his mouth, and so devours and digests them." 



And, Scholar, do not wonder at this, for, besides the credit 

 of the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes 

 which are of the like and more unusual shapes, are very often 

 taken on the mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore. 

 And this will be no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt ; 

 where 't is known the famous river Nilus does not only breed 

 fishes that yet want names, but, by the overflowing of that 

 river, and the help of the sun's heat on the fat slime which 

 that river leaves on the banks, when it falls back into its natural 

 channel, such strange fish and beasts are also bred, that no man 



