CHA.P. XIII.] 



THE rOUETH DAY. 



24 



small worm, but especially a little bluish worm, gotten out 

 of marsh-ground or meadows, which should be well scoured. 1 

 But this, though it be most excellent meat, yet it wants scales, 

 and is, as I told you, therefore an abomination to the Jews. 

 But, scholar, there is a fish that they in Lancashire boast 

 very much of, called a Char, taken there, and I think there 





The Char, or Alpine Trout. 



only, in a mere called Winander-Mere ; 2 a mere, says Camden, 

 that is the largest in this nation, being ten miles in length, 

 and some say, as smooth in the bottom as if it were paved 



1 The taking of flounders with a rod and line is a thing so accidental, that 

 it is hardly worth the mention. The same may be said of smelts, which, 

 in the Thames, and other great rivers, are caught with a bit of any small 

 fish, but chiefly of their own species. In the month of August, about the 

 year 1720, such vast quantities of smelts came up the Thames, that 

 women, and even children, became anglers for them ; and, as I have been 

 told by persons who well remember it, in one day, between London-bridge and 

 Greenwich, not fewer than two thousand persons were thus employed. H. 

 Hawkins is mistaken in saying that flounders are seldom caught by 

 angling. The author of "Angling in the Trent," published in 1801, 

 says, "I have known ten pounds weight taken by two anglers in one 

 afternoon, and a much greater quantity by flounder-lines. I have caught 

 them with lob-worms nearly a pound weight each, and with a minnow one 

 that weighed twenty-three ounces." ED. 



2 This is now known to be incorrect. The char is found in the deepest 

 waters of many of the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, as well as 

 in Winander-mere, and among them Keswick, Crummock-water, Uls- 



