THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 61 



Leman, the Lake of Geneva, there are trouts taken of three 

 cubits long, as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit; 

 and Mercator'" says, the trouts that are taken in the Lake of 

 Geneva, are a great part of the merchandize of that famous 

 city. And you are further to know, that there be certain 

 waters, that breed trouts remarkable both for their number 

 and smallness. I know a little brook in Kent, that breeds 

 them to a number incredible, and you may take them twenty 

 or forty in an hour, but none greater than about the size of a 

 gudgeon : there are also in divers rivers, especially that relate 

 to, or be near to the sea, as Winchester, or the Thames about 

 Windsor, a little trout called samlet, or skegger trout (in both 

 which places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing), 

 that will bite as fast and as freely as minnows : these be by 

 some taken to be young salmon ; but in those waters they 

 never grow to be bigger than a h erring. t 



There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout called 

 there a Fordidge trout, a trout that bears the name of the 

 town where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest 

 of fish ; many of them near the bigness of a salmon, but 

 known by their different colour; and in their best season they 

 cut very white ; and none of these have been known to be- 

 caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught by 

 Sir George Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God ; 

 and he hath told me, he thought that trout bit not for hunger 



* Gerard Mercator, of Ruremond in Flanders, a man of so intense applica- 

 tion to mathematical studies, that he neglected the necessary refreshments of 

 nature. He engraved with his own hand, and coloured the maps to his geo- 

 graphical writings. He wrote several books of theology ; and died 1594. II. 



t The skegger here alluded to is no doubt the young salmon in its first year 

 before it has paid its first visit to the sea. As salmon has disappeared from 

 the Thames, so have skeggers, or salmon fry. The Lake of Geneva still pro- 

 duces very large trout, which are frequently cooked on the spot, and sent 

 express to Paris. Still, I do not think that any of them now grow to the 

 length of" three cubits." They are not unfrequently caught weighing twenty- 

 four or thirty pounds. Trout every bit as large are caught in some of the loughs 

 and lochs of Ireland and Scotland. The smallest species of trout is now called 

 " the parr," and very likely that is the fish to which "Walton alludes in this 

 passage, " I know a little brook in Kent, that breeds them to a number incre- 

 dible, and you may take them twenty or forty in the hour, but none greater 

 than about the size of a gudgeon." When Walton mentions " barren trouts, 

 that are good in winter," he falls into a common error. The barren trout are 

 really male trout, which have shed their milt over the ova of the female fish in 

 the early spawning months, August and September. The male fish very rapidly 

 recovers from the exhausting process of procreation. Not so the female , which, 

 if a large fish, is not fully convalescent until the May next following her 

 accouchement. ED. 



