CHAP. XIX.] THE FIFTH DAY. 29 



Carlegion- Chester vaunts her holy Dee ; 



York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 

 The Peak her Dove, whose banks so fertile be, 



And Kent will say her Medway doth excel. 

 Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame ; 



Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood ; 

 Our western parts extoll their Willy's fame, 



And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood. 1 



These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my 

 old deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; and because you say,. 

 you love such discourses as these of rivers and fish and 

 fishing, I love you the better, and love the more to impart 

 them to you : nevertheless, scholar, if I should begin but to 

 name the several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken 

 in many of those rivers that run into the sea, I might beget 

 wonder in you, or unbelief, or both : and yet I will venture 

 to tell you a real truth concerning one lately dissected by 

 Dr. "Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and 

 of equal freedom to communicate it ; one that loves me and 

 my art ; one to whom I have been beholden for many of the 

 choicest observations that I have imparted to you. Thia 

 good man, that dares do any thing rather than tell an 

 untruth, did, I say, tell me he 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 height 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." 2 



angler is that given by Hofland in his elaborate chapters on the Rivers 

 and Lakes of England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. See Angler's 

 Manual, pp. 275 442.] 



1 The Danes in their invasion of Britain, in the time of King Alfred, 

 came up the river Lea, in their ships, as far as Durelitum (Low Layton) ; 

 some say to Ware. See Drayton's Polyolbion, Song xii. and note thereon ; 

 and Lamborde's Top. Diet., voce Lee. 



2 This is no doubt meant for the Sea-frog, or Sea-angler (LopJiius 

 Piscatorius, figured at our page 75). Cuvier records one six feet in 



