COMArnX TROUT. 
227 
any conslrlerable length on the siihject of the amusement of 
angling, as that has heen treated of in so many volumes; 
hut although medicated haits have heen long neglected or 
discarded hy British fishermen we will venture a reference to 
one mentioned hy Bloch, as we have no recollection of having 
seen it referred to hy any English writers. It is formed of a 
mingling together of castor and camphor with the aid of heat, 
and while yet in a melted state a piece of linen is dipped in it 
and kept for use, a slip of it being wrapped about the hook. 
The practice of fishing with a fly has heen thought almost 
peculiarly English, and of ancient date in this country, and 
Duhamel in France copies all that he has to say of it from 
Walton and Cotton; hut in both these particulars there is reason 
for doubt. The “Book of St. Albans” gives some directions for 
what it terms “dubbing,” a practice referred to by Izaak Walton, 
and which in some distant degree bears a likeness to the modern 
method of fly-fishing. But neither does this dubbing with a fly 
obtain a principal place in this old treatise, the very little of 
which appears to limit it to “Eysshynge wyth an angle,” or 
earthworm; nor was the patriarch of the art, Izaak Walton, much 
better vei'sed in it, for it is to his friend Charles Cotton we are 
chiefly indebted for what afterwards grew to be a new phase in 
the art. And again, although it is often said that the Trout 
was unknown to the ancients, or unrecognised by them, there is 
evidence that not only was it common and fished for in Macedonia, 
(as in the lakes of Italy,) but that the method of taking it with 
a fly was in use in the former country. 
Aristotle had spoken in a cursory manner of a fish, the name 
of which is read as Thrissa, but which the learned Gesner 
supposes to be more properly Thrassa and Thratta, and that it 
was the same with the Trout; and that the fish itself must have 
been known to that eminent philosophic naturalist, himself a 
native of Macedonia, is clear from a narrative of jElian; although 
of the name of the fish, as being local, the latter expresses his 
ignorance. He says “I have received information of the following 
method of catching fish in Macedonia. In the river Astrajos, 
which runs between Bernsea and Thessalonica, there are fish 
■which are ornamented with spots of different colours, but the 
names they bear are best learnt from the people of Macedonia, 
Their food is the flies which frequent that river; and these flies 
