CHAP. XIX.] THE FIFTH DA Y. 197 



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 mofe to impart them to you. Never- 

 theless, 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. 

 This good man, that dares do anything rather than tell an un- 

 truth, did, I say, tell me he had lately dissected one strange fish, 

 and he thus described it to me : — 



" This 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 eight inches broad. He is of a slow 

 motion ; and usually lies or lurks close in the mud ; and has a 

 movable 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." ^ 



And, scholar, do not wonder at this ; for besides the credit of 

 the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes which are 

 of the like and more unusual shapes, are very often taken on the 

 mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore. And this will be 

 no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt ; where, 'tis known, 

 the famous river Nilus does not only breed fishes that yet want 

 names, but, by the overflowing of that river, and the help of the 

 sun's heat on the fat slime which that river leaves on the banks 

 when it falls back into its natural channel, such strange fish and 

 beasts are also bred, that no man can give a name to ; as Grotius 

 in his " Sopham," * and others, have observed. 



VARIATION. 



w and then sucks them into his mouth, and devours them. — u^, 2d, and jd edit. 



the perusal of which last-named author will leave the reader in very little doubt .but that 

 these trenches are the very same that now branch off from the river between Temple 

 Mills and Old Ford, and, crossing the Stratford road, enter the Thames, together with 

 the principal stream, a little below Blackwall. — H. 



* " Of artificial meat, so many dishes, 



The several kinds unknown to Nile of Fishes, 



