32 ANGLING LITERATURE OF 



Of the salar lie writes in another place : 



" Purpureusque salar stellatus tergora guttis." 



Olaus Magnus describes the progress of a band of 

 salmon, shining in their glittering panoply of scales, 

 gleaming fitfully in the sun, and sweeping like an invading 

 army irresistibly onwards, apparently without intermission 

 or end, as a spectacle well worthy of admiration. They 

 have been noticed on these occasions to swim, as wild 

 geese fly, wedgeways ; some large old salmoness forming 

 the apex of the triangle, and the young males bringing up 

 the rear. When on a forced march, they can proceed, 

 according to some biographers, at the rate of thirty miles 

 an hour, taking several flying leaps as they go of from 

 twelve to fifteen feet in height. 



Among the Fathers of the Church who make allusions 

 to fish and fishing may be mentioned Clemens Alex- 

 andrinus, and Sts. Basil, Ambrose, and Athanasius. 



St. Isidorus of Seville, in his De Or dine Creaturarum, 

 gives an account of fish, and the rivers and seas they 

 inhabit. 



We find some account, in the early history of Welsh 

 literature, that angling occasionally furnished a topic for 

 versifying among the poets of Wales. Taliesin is men- 

 tioned as one of the piscatory bards, who flourished about 

 A.D. 560, and wrote a poem of some length on one of the 

 Welsh kings having been found in a salmon weir, and 



