Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 227 



Abundantly thereon ? The herring, king of fea, 

 The fatter-feeding cod, the mackerel brought by May, 

 The dainty fole and plaice, the dab, as of their blood ; 

 The conger finely foufed, hot fummer's cooleft food ; 

 The whiting known to all, a general wholefome difh, 

 The gurnet, rochet, mayd and mullet, dainty fifh ; 

 The haddock, turbet, berb, fifh nourifhing and ftrong ; 

 The thornback and the fcate, provocative among ; 

 The weaver, which although his prickles venom be, 

 By fifhers cut away, which buyers feldom fee, 

 Yet for the fifh he bears 'tis not accounted bad ; 

 The fea-flounder is here as common as the fhad, 

 The fturgeon, cut to keggs (too big to handle whole), 

 Gives many a dainty bit out of his lufty jole." 



And much more to the fame import, often profaic 

 enough, and a warning to poets who commit thern-^ 

 felves to enumerations of natural objects. We 

 will conclude with one more curious fuperftition 

 about the ofprey. Drayton's lines prove that the 

 bird was fufficiently common in Lincolnmire in his 

 time ; though, alas ! it has now been long extinct, 

 and the few that do crofs the county on migration 

 meet with the ufual fate of all rare birds, being at 

 once mot and " fet up " in glafs cafes, lafting 

 emblems of the felfim and wanton cruelty of their 

 captors : 



" The ofpray oft here feen, though feldom here it breeds, 

 Which over them the fifh no fooner do efpie, 

 But (betwixt him and them by an antipathy) 

 Turning their bellies up, as though their death they faw, 

 They at his pleafure lie to fluff his glutt'nous maw." 1 



1 Drayton's " Polyolbion," Song 25. 



