THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 57 



Mole,) that after it has run several miles, being opposed by 

 bills, finds or makes itself a way under ground, and breaks out 

 again so far off, that the inhabitants thereabout boast, as the 

 Spaniards do of their river Anus, that they feed divers flocks 

 of sheep upon a bridge. And, lastly, for I would not tire your 

 patience, one of no less authority than Josephus, that learned 

 Jew, tells us of a river in Judea that runs swiftly all the six 

 days of the week, and stands still and rests all their Sabbath.* 



But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and tell you some 

 things of the monsters, or fish, call them what you will, that 

 they breed and feed in them. Pliny the philosopher says, in 

 the third chapter of his ninth book, that in the Indian Sea, the 

 fish called the Baleena, or whirlpool, is so long and broad as to take 

 up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground ; and, 

 of other fish of two hundred cubits long ; and that, in the river 

 Ganges, there be eels of thirty feet long. He says there, that 

 these monsters appear in that sea only when the tempestuous 

 winds oppose the torrents of waters falling from the rocks into 

 it, and so turning what lay at the bottom to be seen on the 

 water's top. And he says, that the people of Cadara, an island 

 near this place, make the timber for their houses of those fish- 

 bones. He there tells us, that there are sometimes a thousand 

 of these great eels found wrapt or interwoven together, f He 

 tells us there, that it appears that dolphins love music, and will 

 come when called for, by some men or boys that know, and 

 used to feed them ; and that they can swim as swift as an arrow 

 can be shot out of a bow : and much of this is spoken con- 

 cerning the dolphin, % and other fish, as may be found also in 

 the learned Dr Casaubon's Discourse of Credulity and Incredulity, 

 printed by him about the year 1670. 



I know, we islanders are averse to the belief of these wonders ; 

 but there be so many strange creatures to be now seen, many 

 collected by John Tradescant, and others added by my friend 

 Elias Ashmole, Esq. who now keeps them carefully and 

 methodically at his house near to Lambeth, near London, as 



* Unquestionably fabulous. J. R. 



f This is all fabulous, or much exaggerated J. R. 



Mr Laing, in his Voyage to Spitzbergen, says, " the seals crowded 

 round the ship to hear his yiolin ; " and Valerius Flaccus sayf, " Gaude- 

 bantcarinaphocae." J. R. 



The Tradescants wore the first collectors of natural curiosities in this 

 kingdom ; Ashmole and Sir Hans Sloane were the next. The generous spirit 

 of these persons seems to have been transfused into, and at present (1784) 

 to reside in, a private gentleman of unbounded curiosity and liberality, Sir 

 Ashton Lever, whose collections, for beauty, variety, and copiousness, 

 exceed all description, and surpass every thing of the kind in the known 

 world. 



After Sir Ashton Lever's death, this collection was disposed of by 

 lottery, and came into the hands of Mr Parkinson, who (in 1806) sold the 

 whole, in separate lota, by public auction. 



