72 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
together with the royal fish, the Sturgeon,* are taken. As to fowls, 
let us, if it be not troublesome to you, recount those which abide there and 
thereabout, as we have done with the rest. There are numberless Geese, 
Fiscedule, + Coots, Didappers, Water-crows, Herons and Ducks, of which 
the number is very great. At midwinter or when the birds moult their quills, 
T have seen them caught by the hundred, and even by three hundreds more or 
less, sometimes they are taken in nets and snares as well as by bird-lime.”} 
Want of space forbids our attempting to fill up the outlines 
thus boldly sketched, and thus we must look in vain for another 
glimpse of fen zoology till we find one, of all places in the world, in 
the ‘ Ephemerides’ of Casaubon, a foreigner anda scholar! This 
distinguished man, in 1611, accompanied Andrews, then Bishop 
of Ely, on a visit to part of his diocese, and the journal kept, as 
was his wont, shows what a remarkably acute observer he must 
have been. As Mr. Pattison, the editor of an excellent memoir of 
him (‘Isaac Casaubon, 1559—1614’), says, ‘‘In this summer retreat 
[Downham Market], Casaubon enjoyed forty-eight days of peace 
and leisure. . . . The flat fen of Donnington is not a favourable 
specimen of our rural scenery, but Casaubon thought it beautiful, 
coming from 8. Mary Axe. Though he had lived at Montpellier, 
he thought the apricots of the Isle of Ely rivalled those of France 
in flavour. He was struck with the wealthy appearance of the 
country. He saw something of provincial life, accompanying the 
Bishop on a progress or visitation, which he made to Wisbech and 
the neighbourhood.” We will hazard another translation, of an 
entry made at Wisbech, on the 20th September of that year :— 
historian, however, in copying from some older record (a practice not confined to 
monkish annalists) may have written the word wrongly, and we cannot help 
suggesting that there has been a corruption of some such word as leaxas, which 
would signify Salmon, possibly through this very Lachia. 
* The word in the original is Rwmbus, which, in its usual form of Rhombus, 
undoubtedly signifies Turbot, as our authors have translated it. But what could a 
Turbot be doing in the fresh waters of the Isle of Ely? The expletive of “the royal 
fish” points to the Sturgeon, and in the ‘ Promptorium Parvulorum’ (the work, be it 
remembered, of an East Anglian) we find (Ed. Way, p. 481) “Sturione, or Sturiowne, 
fysche (sturgyn, K. sturiowne or storyon, 8.) Rumbus.” We therefore do not hesitate 
to accept this rendering here, and may remark that there are many cases of the name 
of an animal being diverted from its common meaning by medizyal authors. 
+ In the translation of this word there is again a difficulty. The most obvious 
suggestions are that it is a corruption of Piscedule or Ficedule ; but no such name 
as the former is known, and the latter, ‘‘ Fig-eaters,” seems strangely out of place in 
such company. Could we read it Querquedule, Teals, all would be easy. 
+ Lib. ii. cap. 105 (Ed. D. J. Stewart, 1848). 
