CHAP. VII. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 125 



But in these 1 have no great faith ; yet grant it proba- 

 ble; and have had from some chemical men, (namely, from 

 Sir George Hastings and others,) an affirmation of them 

 to be very advantageous. But no more of these : espe- 

 cially not in this place, 1 



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 for- 

 bear to name, may be fish of another kind, and differ as 

 we know a Herring and a Pilchard do, a ) which", I think 

 are as different as the rivers in which they breed, and 

 must, by me, be left to the disquisitions of men of more 

 leisure, and of greater abilities than I profess myself to 

 have. 



And lastly, I am to borrow so much of your promised 

 patience as to tell you, that the Trout, or Salmon, being 

 in season, have, at their first taking out of the water, 

 (which continues during life) their bodies adorned, the one 

 with such red spots, and the other with such black or 

 blackish spots, as give them such an addition of natural 

 beauty, as I think was never given to any woman by the 



an angler, as I do his being the author of the above book; neither of which cir- 

 cumstances would, I think, have been omitted by Walton, had the several facts 

 been true. 



(1) The following intelligence appeared in one of the London papers, !21st 

 June, 1788, and should operate as a general caution against using, in the com- 

 position of baits, any ingredient prejudicial to the human constitution. "New- 

 castle, June 16. 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 imme- 

 diately procured, they expired before noon, in the greatest agonies." 



(2) 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 river Wye and Severn ; which is, undoubtedly, a dis- 

 tinct species ; These spawn about the beginning of September : and in the Wye 

 I have taken them with an ant-fly as fast as I could throw. Perhaps this is what 

 Walton calls the Tecon. 



