202 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



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

 deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; 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 you. Never- 

 theless, 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 unbeb'ef, 

 or both : and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth con- 

 cerning 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 any thing rather 

 than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he had 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 

 moveable string 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 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 'tis 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 can give a name to ; as Grotius 

 in lu's Sopham, and others, have observed. 



But whither am I strayed in this discourse ? I will end it by 

 telling you, that at the mouth of some of these rivers of ours, 

 Herrings are so plentiful, as namely, near to Yarmouth in Nor- 

 folk, and in the west country, Pilchers so very plentiful, as you 

 will wonder to read what our learned Camden relates of them 

 in his Britannia, p. 178, 186. 



Well, scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what, by reading 

 and conference, I have observed concerning fish-ponds. 



between Temple- Mills, and Old-Ford, and crossing the Stratford road, 

 enter the Thames, together with the principal stream, a little below 

 Blackwall. 





