FISH-PONDS. 



31 



a score of hooks on a line than can now be got with eight 

 thousand ! " 



At one time it was usual for noblemen and other country 

 gentlemen to have fish-ponds; in fact, a fish-pond was as 

 necessary an adjunct of a large country house as its vegetable 

 or fruit garden. These ponds, as the foregoing sketch will, 

 show, were of the most simple kind, and were often enough 

 constructed by merely stopping a little stream at some suitable 

 place, and so forming a couple of artificial lakes, in which were 

 placed some large stones, or two or three bits of artificial rock- 

 work, so constructed as to afford shelter to the fish. In those 

 days fish-ponds were a necessity to noblemen and gentlemen in 

 the habit of entertaining guests or giving great dinner-parties ; 

 hence also the multiplicity of recipes in our older cookery-books 

 for the dressing of all kinds of fresh-water fishes ; besides, in 

 ancient times, before the Reformation, when Roman Catholicism 



