80 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



to be young Salmons ; but in those waters they never grow to 

 be bigger than a herring. 



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 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, but wantonness ; and it 

 is rather to be believed, because both he, then, and many others 

 before him, have been curious to search into their bellies, what 

 the food was by which they lived, and have found out nothing 

 by which they might satisfy their curiosity.* 



Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported 

 by good authors, that Grasshoppers and some fish have no 

 mouths, but are nourished and take breath by the porousness of 

 their gills, man knows not how : and this may be believed, if 

 we consider that when the Raven hath hatched her eggs, she 

 takes no farther care, but leaves her young ones to the care of 



* The same is true of the Salmon, which hns never any thing besides ?i 

 yellow fluid in his stomach when caught. The same is also true of^thu 

 Herring. .!. R. 



f " It has been said by naturalists," says Sir John Hawkins, " partial. 

 larly by Sir Theodore Mayerne, that the Grasshopper has no mouth, but a 

 pipe in his breast, through which it sucks the dew, which is its nutriment." 



Nothing could be more absurd than this, which may be disproved by any 

 body that chooses to examine the large and obvious jaws in the Grass- 

 hopper. So far from living on dew, Grasshoppers are so voracious that they 

 make no ceremony, as I have often witnessed, "and proved by experiment, 

 of eating their own species. I can scarcely comprehend how Walton was 

 not set right by some of his dignified Episcopal friends in reference to the 

 gross perversion of the text respecting the young Ravens. Even supposing 

 worms to be bred in the nests, the poor things could not help themselves 

 thereto. -J. R. 



