THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 129 



angling, or any that desires to improve that art, to try this con- 

 clusion. 



I shall also impart two other experiments (but not tried by 

 myself,) which I will deliver in the same words that they were 

 given me, by an excellent angler and a very friend, in writing : 

 he told me the latter was too good to be told but in a learned 

 language, lest it should be made common. 



" Take the stinking oil drawn out of the polypody of the oak 

 by a retort, mixed with turpentine and hive honey, and anoint 

 your bait therewith, and it will doubtless draw the fish to it." 



The other is this : " Vulnera hederee grandissimae inflicta 

 sudunt. babamum oleo gelato, albicantique persimile, odoris 

 vero longe suavissimi." 



" It is supremely sweet to any fish, and yet asafcetida may 

 do the like."* 



But in these I have no great faith ; yet grant it probable ; and 

 have had from some chemical men (namely, from Sir George 

 Hastings and others) an affirmation of them to be very advan- 

 tageous. But no more of these : especially not in this place, f 



I might here, before I take my leave of the Salmon, tell you, 

 that there is more than one sort of them, as namely, a Tecon, and 

 another called in some places a Samlet, or by some a Skegger, 

 (but these, and others which I forbear to name, may be fish 

 of another kind, and differ as we know a Herring and a Pilchard 

 do ;)J which, I think, are as different as the rivers in which they 



* There is extant, though I have never been able to get a sight of it, n 

 book, entitled, the Secrets of Angling, by J. D[avors] ; at the end of which 

 is the following- mystical recipe of " R. R." who possibly may be the " R. 

 Roe " mentioned in the Preface to Walton : 



To bless thy bait, and make the fish to bite, 



Lo ! here 's a means, if thou canst hit it right : 



Take gum of life, well beat and laid to soak 



In oil well drawn from that * which kills the oak. 



Fish where thou wilt, thou shalt have sport thy fill ; 



When others fail, thou shalt be sure to kill. 



t The following melancholy catastrophe should operate as a general 

 caution against usi: g, in the composition of baits, any ingredient prejudi- 

 cial to the human constitution : " Newcastle, June 16, 1788. Last week, 

 in Lancashire, two young men having caught a large quantity of Trout by 

 mixing the water in a small brook with lime, ate heartily of the Trout at 

 dinner the next day ; they were seized, at midnight, with violent pains in 

 the intestines ; and though medical assistance was immediately procured, 

 they expired before noon in the greatest agonies." 



$ There is a fish in many rivers, of the Salmon kind, which, though very 

 small, is thought by some curious persons to be of the same species; and 

 this, I take it, is the fish known by the different names of Salmon-pink, 

 Shedders, Skeggers, Last-springs, and Gravel Last-springs. But there is 

 another small fish very much resembling these in shape and colour, called 

 the Gravel Last-spring, found only in the rivers Wye and Severn, which is, 

 undoubtedly, a distinct species. These spawn about the beginning of 

 September : and in the Wye I hnve taken them with an Ant-fly as fast as 

 I could throw. Perhaps this is what Walton calls the Tecon. 



* Ivy. 



I 



