•330 
The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare’s Time. 
weighs the advantages of the sport of fishing with other 
amusements, but he is too cautious to pronounce any 
decided opinion on the matter. 
“ Fishing,” he writes, “ is a kinde of hunting by water, be it with 
nets, weeles, baits, angling or otherwise, and yeelds all out as much 
pleasure to some men, as dogs, or hawks. . . . James Dubravius, that 
Moravian, in his book De Pise, telleth, how travelling by the highway 
side in Silesia, he found a nobleman booted up to the groines, wading 
himself, pulling the nets, and labouring as much as any fisherman of 
them all: and when some belike objected to him the baseness of his 
office, he excused himself, That if other men might hunt hares, why 
should not he hunt carpes ? ’ Many gentlemen in like sort, with us, will 
wade up to the arm-holes, upon such occasions, and voluntarily under¬ 
take that to satisfie their pleasure, which a poor man for a good stipend 
would scarce be hired to undergo. . . . But he that shall consider the 
variety of baits, for all seasons, and pretty devices which our anglers 
have invented, peculiar lines, false flies, severall sleights, etc., will say, 
that it deserves like commendation, requires as much study and per¬ 
spicacity as the rest, and is to be preferred before many of them: because 
hawking and hunting are very laborious, much riding, and many 
clangers accompany them: but this is still and quiet: and if so be the 
angler catch no fish, yet he hath a wholesome walk to the brook side, 
pleasant shade, by the sweet silver streams; he hath good aire and 
sweet smels of fine fresh meadow flowers ; he hears the melodious har¬ 
mony of birds; he sees the swans, herns, ducks, water-hens, cootes and 
many other fowle, with their brood, which he thinketh better than the 
noise of hounds, or blast of homes, and all the sport that they can 
make.” 
With regard to the wholesomeness of fish as an article 
of diet. Burton writes:— 
“ Gomesius doth immoderately extol sea-fish, which others as much 
vilifie, and, above the rest, dryed, sowced, indurate fish, as ling, fuma¬ 
des, red-herrings, sprats, stock-fish, aberdine, poor-john, all shell-fish. 
Tim. Bright excepts lobster and crab. Messarius commends salmon, 
which Bruerinus contradicts. Magninus rejects congre, sturgeon, turbot, 
mackerel, skate.” (Yol. i. p. 218.) 
Although the number of fish known at this time nearly 
equals that of birds and quadrupeds, the habits of the 
finny tribes were so little studied that they are rarely 
