220 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART I. 



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 smaller 

 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 his 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 Norfolk, 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. 



