350 The Animal-Lore of Shalcspeare’s Time. 
England. In Sir Thomas Browne’s time, at least, the 
salmon was no longer common, though “ many,” he writes, 
“ are taken in the Ouse ; in the Bure or North River ; in 
the Waveney or South River; in the Norwich River but 
seldom ” (vol. iv. p. 334). Captain Franck, a Cromwellian 
trooper, writing in 1658, states that the price of a salmon 
formerly did not exceed the value of sixpence sterling, 
and he repeats the tradition regarding apprentices. Defoe 
also corroborates the statement that servants declined to 
eat this fish oftener than twice a week. These stories, if 
true, only indicate the abundance of salmon in particular 
localities: the difficulty of transport would necessarily 
make this fish cheap when taken in great numbers. Mr. 
Alexander Russel, the salmon’s biographer, observes, how¬ 
ever, that there is no confirmation for this tradition, so 
often repeated, and that the Royal Commissioners of 
Inquiry into the Salmon Fisheries of England and 
Wales, 1860, endeavoured in vain to obtain a sight of 
these indentures of apprentices, though they met with 
persons who declared they had seen such documents. He 
tells a story of a Highland laird of the last century, 
who, going to a London hotel with his gilly, ordered, 
from motives of economy, a beef-steak for himself, and 
“ salmon for the laddie.” On reckoning with his host, 
he discovered to his annoyance that he had to pay a 
shilling for his own dinner, and a guinea for “ the laddie’s ” 
(The Salmon, p. 96, 1874). 
Thomas Fuller writes that the salmon is— 
“ a daintie and wholesome fish, and a double riddle in nature: first, 
for its invisible feeding, no man alive ever found any meat in the maw 
thereof. Secondly, for its strange leaping (or flying rather), so that 
some will have them termed salmons, a saliendo. Being both bow and 
arrow, it will shoot it selfe out of the water an incredible heighth and 
length.” ( Worthies of England , vol. i. p. 446.) 
Drayton has an account of the method by which the 
salmon ascends mountain streams:— 
