Abundance of Salmon. 
349 
CHAPTER XV. 
Fl uellen speaks “ but by guess ” when he Salmon 
volunteers the information that— 
“there is a river in Macedon; and there is also moreover a river at 
Monmouth: it is called "Wye, at Monmouth; hut it is out of my 
prains what is the name of the other river; but ’tis all one, ’tis alike as 
my fingers is to my fingers, and there is Salmons in both.” (Henry V., 
iv. 7, 27.) 
Mr. John Booth, speaking of the myth, as he calls it, 
of the salmon being at one time so plentiful in our 
English rivers that parents stipulated that their children, 
when bound apprentices, should not be dieted on this fish 
more than twice in the week, asks if the stipulation, if 
ever made, may not have been against fish generally, and 
not against salmon in particular. Herrings, eels, cod, 
plaice, and other kinds of white fish were common enough, 
and were much cheaper food than meat, fresh or salt. 
Salmon, he contends, always fetched a good price com¬ 
pared with other articles of food (Notes and Queries , voh 
vi., 3rd series, p. 13). 
Fynes Moryson, in his European tour, 1591, finds 
salmon so plentiful in Hamburg that a stipulation was 
there made by the servants that they should not be 
expected to eat this fish more than twice a week. Perhaps 
the fish may have been dried and imported, or the like 
contract may have been made by German servants in 
