166 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. 



and it may be, by giving that very great trout the rod, that 

 is, by casting it to him into the water, 1 I might have caught 

 him at the long run ; for so I use always to do when I meet 

 with an overgrown fish ; and you will learn to do so too, here- 

 after ; for I tell you, scholar ! fishing is an art or, at least, 

 it is an art to catch fish. 



Yen. But, master ! I have heard that the great trout you 

 speak of is a salmon. 



Pise. Trust me, scholar ! I know not what to say to it. 

 There are many country people that believe hares change 

 sexes every year : and there be very many learned men think 

 so too, 2 for in their dissecting them, they find many reasons 

 to incline them to that belief. And to make the wonder 

 seem yet less, that hares change sexes, note that Dr. Meric 

 Casaubon affirms, in his book of credible and incredible 

 things, that Gaspar Peucerus, 3 a learned physician, tells us 

 of a people that, once a year, turn wolves, partly in shape, 

 and partly in conditions. 4 And, so, whether this were a 

 salmon when he came into fresh water, and his not returning 



sea-trout. General Popham fed trout to a very large size in his preserves 

 at Hungerford, for which purpose he purchased large quantities of fresh- water 

 shrimps. We have already (page 106) noticed a trout weighing 2241bs. ED. 



1 Cotton disapproves of this plan, in Part II. Chap. XII., although 

 there is no doubt it must be done under some circumstances. rEc. 



2 This curious notion is got from Topsell, p. 266. ED. 



3 Gaspar Peucer was Melancthon's son-in-law, and editor of his works, 

 He wrote various medical treatises, and one on moneys, weights and 

 measures. He suffered an imprisonment of ten years, during, which time he 

 wrote his thoughts on the margin of books with an ink made of burnt 

 crusts and wine. He was born 1525, and died 1602, aged 78. ED. 



4 Among the many strange delusions which have afflicted men, that of 

 supposing themselves transformed into brutes of various kinds, such as 

 horses (kippanthropy), dogs (cynantkropy), wolves (lycanthropy), or others, 

 has been so frequent as to give names to several forms of mania, classed by 

 Sauvages in his Nosology under the general head of Zoanthropy. Raulin, 

 affirms that a whole cloister of nuns imagined themselves to be cats, 

 mewing, &c., as such : a few years since there might have been seen in the 

 hospital of Bellevue near New York, a man who fancied himself to be a hog,, 

 and had attained singular skill in grunting as he rolled among the straw 

 of his cell ; and the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel iv. 33) seems 

 to have been a maniacal boanthropy, upon which many curious conjectures 

 have been made. It is remarkable that the wolf-man, Lycantkropos of the- 

 Greeks (see Vossii Etymologia, 269, for Lucomanes), Loup garou of the 

 French, Wahr-wolf of the Germans, has been known from far antiquity 

 down to comparatively modern times. AM. ED. 



