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The Animal-Lore of Shahspeares Time. 
large in body ; it was my chance to buy one about Putny, as I came 
from Mr. Secretary Walsingham his house about ten years since : which 
I caused to be boiled with salt, wine, and vinegar, and a little thime, 
and I protest that I never did eat a more white, firm, dainty, and 
wholesome fish.” (Page 184.) 
This author must have had a good memory to be able 
to recall the flavour of a dish after so many years had 
elapsed. 
The Tench, on the contrary, was considered unwhole- 
k some, or, as one writer expresses it, “of a 
most unclean and damnable nourishment.” 
It was frequently eaten nevertheless, and was usually 
served in jelly. 
The tench was sometimes called “the physician of 
fishes,” and the touch of a tench was even supposed to 
have the power of curing the wounds of a human being. 
Izaak Walton reports that “ the tyrant pike will not be 
a wolf to its physician, but forbears to devour him though 
he be never so hungry.” The cause of this forbearance 
is thus explained by Harrison:— 
“ The pike is freend unto the tencb, as to bis leach and surgeon. 
For when the fishmonger hath opened his side and laid out his rivet 
and fat unto the buier, for the better utterance of his ware, and cannot 
make him away at that present, he laieth the same againe into the 
proper place, and sowing up the wound, he restoreth him to the pond 
where tenches are, who never cease to sucke and licke his greeved 
place, till they have restored him to health, and made him readie to 
come againe to the stall, when his turne shall come about.” 
Fuller, in bis description of Dorsetshire, writes of the 
tench:— 
“ Plenty hereof are bred in the river Stowre ; which is so much the 
more observable, because generally this fish loveth ponds better than 
rivers, and pits better than either. It is very pleasant in taste, and is 
called by some the physician of fishes: though in my opinion he may 
better be styled the surgeon; for it is not so much a disease as a 
wound that he cureth, nor is it any potion but a playster which he 
affordeth; viz. his natural unctuous glutinousness, which quickly con- 
