106 TUE COMPLETE AKGLEE. [PAKT I. 



but there are not many that are so ; for usually they be in 

 their perfection in the month of May, and decline^with the 

 buck. Now you are to take notice, that in several countries 

 as in Germany, and in other parts compared to ours, fish 

 do differ much in their bigness and shape, and other ways, 

 and so do trouts. It is well known, that in the Lake 

 Leman, the lake of G-eneva, there are trouts taken of three 

 cubits 1 long ; as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good 

 credit. And Mercator 2 says, the trouts that are taken in 

 the Lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandise 

 of that famous city. And you are further to know, that 

 there be certain waters that breed trouts remarkable, both 

 for their number and smallness. I know a little brook 

 in Kent, 3 that breeds them to a number incredible, and you 

 may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater 

 than about the size of a gudgeon. There are also, in divers 

 rivers especially that relate to, or be near to the sea, as 

 Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor a little trout 

 called a samlet, or skegger trout ; 4 in both which places I 





Skegger Trout. 



1 That is, four feet and a half, a length scarcely credible, although it is 

 known that trout attain a great size in very large lakes. One of the largest 

 English trout on record, was taken in a small stream which runs through 

 the park at Drayton Manor, the seat of Sir Robert Peel. It weighed 

 twenty-two pounds and a half. The skeleton of it is preserved in the 

 College of Surgeons, and a painting of it is in the possession of Professor 

 Owen. ED. 



2 Gerard Mercator, of Ruremond in Flanders, a man of so intense appli- 

 cation to mathematical studies, that he neglected the necessary refreshments 

 of nature. He engraved with his own hand, and coloured, the maps to 

 his geographical Atlas. He wrote several books of Theology, and died 

 1594. H. 



3 Probably the Cray, which is famous for small trout. R. 



4 The skegger, which used to be so common in the Thames, is now never 



