CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE. 249 
feet, which cannot endure cold; wherefore nature 
hath provided that it hunts a bird in the evening, 
sits upon it all night to keep its feet warm, lets it go 
in the morning without hurt, and hunts another bird 
to prey upon.” Making a warming-pan of a fag at 
school must sink in the scale of inventions after this. 
Surely in the following we have the original of 
Tennyson’s “violent sea ?”—““Huntingdonshire hath 
its share of fens, and there are several violent meers, 
which have plenty of fish, but the waters are often 
furiously disturbed in the calmest weather to the 
great danger and terror of the fishermen, supposed to 
be occasioned by eruptions of wind underneath. 
Wittlesey Meer, six miles long and three broad, is 
clear water and full of fish, yet like the rest it is 
troubled much with wind ; the air about is fogey and 
stinking, fatal to strahgers, but the natives bear it 
well and live long.” 
As the witty Curran sought to soothe sleep-dis- 
pelling Boreas by an offering of a box of peppermint 
lozenges cast from his bedroom window, may not 
the modern growth of the peppermint plant upon the 
banks of these once windy-meers have had an even 
more successful effect in smoothing their agitated 
beds ? 
Rivers that take it into their heads to run dry 
when they might naturally be expected to be over- 
flowing, and vice versa, are very common. 
