viii Preface. 



— not continued in later editions — which Mascall has preserved, and one of 

 which has been curiously mistranslated. This is the chapter (66), p. 36, 

 headed "To make it drie." The words in Estienne are "Pour les seiches" — 

 to take "Crayfish." 



Many of the miscellaneous paragraphs which complete the book are probably 

 Mascall's own. They comprise the modes of capturing the otter and the 

 water-rat, the heron, dabchick, and other birds preying on fish, breeding miller's 

 thumbs and crayfish, bobbing for eels, making bird-lime, and, by way of 

 conclusion, "a pretie way to take a pye." 



But the most noticeable feature of the book is the wTiter's solicitude for 

 " replenishing the waters," protecting the spawning fish, and putting down unfair 

 weapons of destruction. To this subject he recurs again and again, and his 

 heart is ever with his pen. In Chapter (77) "To breede millar's thumbes and 

 loches," which is certainly his own, after telling us how fish " out of season are 

 forbid to be taken and sold " in France, he adds emphatically : " I would to 

 God it were so here with vs in England, and to haue more preseruers, and less 

 spoylers of fish out of season and in season : then we should have more plentie 

 then we haue through this Realme. Also I would wish that all stoppe nets, and 

 drags with casting nets, were banished in all common riuers throught this Realme 

 for three moneths : as in March, Aprill, and May, wherein they take fish out of 

 season as well as others, with great spoyles of spawne, both of great and small 

 fish, for they vse such nets with small mesh, that kils all fish afore they come 

 to any growth and good seruice for the common wealth " (p. 44). He adds that 

 the "water Bayles" neglect their duties and allow the fishermen to do as they 

 please, while the owners of the waters are equally indifferent, and extort such 

 rents from the fishermen that the latter are compelled to take all the fish they 

 can get. If "careful! men were put in office" he thinks we should have in 



