the lost credit of the poor despised Chub. And now I will give you some rules how to catch him and I am glad to enter you into the art of fishing by catching a Chub; for there is no fish better to enter a young angler, he is so easily caught, but then it must be this particular way.

Go to the same hole in which I caught my Chub, where, in most hot days, you will find a dozen or twenty Chevens floating near the top of the water. Get two or three grasshoppers as you go over the meadow; and get secretly behind the tree, and stand as free from motion as is possible. Then put a grasshopper on your hook, and let your hook hang a quarter of a yard short of the water, to which end you must rest your rod on some bough of the tree. But it is likely the Chubs will sink down towards the bottom of the water, at the first shadow of your rod, (for a Chub is the fearfullest of fishes,) and will do so if but a bird flies over him and makes the least shadow on the water. But they will presently rise up to the top again, and there lie soaring till some shadow affrights them again. I say, when they lie upon the top of the water look out the best Chub, (which you, setting yourself in a fit place, may very easily see,) and move your rod as softly as a snail moves,t to that Chub you intend to catch; let your bait fall gently upon the water three or four inches before him, and he will infallibly take the bait. And you will be as sure to catch him; for he is one of the leather-mouthed fishes, of which a hook does scarce ever lose its hold; and therefore give him play enough, before you offer to take him out of the water. Go your way presently; take my rod, and do as I bid you; and I will sit down and mend my tackling till you return back.

Venator. Truly, my loving master, you have offered me as fair as I could wish. I'll go, and observe your directions. Look you, master, what I have done! that which joys my heart, caught just such another Chub as yours was.

Piscator. Marry, and I am glad of it: I am like to have a towardly scholar of you. I now see, that with advice and practice, you will make an angler in a short time. Have but a love to it, and I'll warrant you.

Venator. But, master, what if I could not have found a Grasshopper?

Piscator. Then I may tell you, that a black snail, with his belly slit, to shew his white, or a piece of soft cheese, will usually do as well. Nay, sometimes a worm, or any kind of

This fearfulness of fishes of shadows seems to me to disprove Walton's opinion of their quick-sightedness, inasmuch as they see nothing distinctly. J. R. "No throwing," says Titus, in BLACKWOOD'S Magazine. "Put your bait in as gently as a thief at a public dinner puts his hand into the high sheriff's pocket." -J. R.

By, as the Ant-fly, the Flesh-fly, or Wall-fly; or the Dor or Beetle, which you may find under cow-dung; or a Bob, which you will find in the same place, and in time will be a Beetle; it is a short white worm, like to and bigger than a Gentle; or a Cod-worm; or a Case-worm: any of these will do very well to fish in such a manner.

And after this manner you may catch a Trout, in a hot evening when, as you walk by a brook, and shall see or hear him leap at flies, then, if you get a Grasshopper, put it on your hook, with your line about two yards long; standing behind a bush or tree where his hole is: and make your bait stir up and down on the top of the water. You may, if you stand close, be sure of a bite, but not sure to catch him, for he is not a leather-mouthed fish. And after this manner you may fish for bim with almost any kind of live fly, but especially with a Grasshopper.

Venator. But before you go farther, I pray, good master, what mean you by a leather-mouthed fish?

Piscator. By a leather-mouthed fish, I mean such as have their teeth in their throat, as the Chub, or Cheven; and so the Barbel, the Gudgeon, and Carp, and divers others have. And the hook being stuck into the leather, or skin, of the mouth o such fish, does very seldom or never lose its hold; but, on the contrary, a Pike, a Perch, or Trout, and so some other fish, which have not their teeth in their throats, but in their mouths, (which you shall observe to be very full of bones, and the skin very thin, and little of it:) I say, of these fish the hook never takes so sure hold but you often lose your fish, unless he have gorged it.

Venator. I thank you, good master, for this observation. But now what shall be done with my Chub, or Cheven, that I have caught?

:

And for

Piscator. Marry, sir, it shall be given away to some poor body; for I'll warrant you I'll give you a Trout for your supper and it is a good beginning of your art to offer your first fruits to the poor, who will both thank God and you for it, which I see by your silence you seem to consent to. your willingness to part with it so charitably, I will also teach you more concerning Chub-fishing: You are to note, that in March and April he is usually taken with worms; in May, June, and July, he will bite at any fly, or at cherries, or at Beetles with their legs and wings cut off, or at any kind of snail, or at the Black Bee that breeds in clay walls. And he never refuses

The Anthophora retusa of naturalists. It is the female only that is black, the male being brown, with a feathering of hairs on his feet. Of these Linnæus made two species.-J. R.

Grasshopper on the top of a swift stream,* nor, at the bottom, the young Humble-beef that breeds in long grass, and is ordinarily found by the mower of it. In August, and in the cooler months, a yellow paste, made of the strongest cheese, and pounded in a mortar, with a little butter and saffron, so much of it as, being beaten small, will turn it to a lemon colour. And some make a paste, for the winter months, (at which time the Chub is accounted best, for then it is observed, that the forked bones are lost, or turned into a kind of gristle, especially if he be baked,) of cheese and turpentine. He will bite also at a Minnow, or Penk, as a Trout will: of which I shall tell you more hereafter, and of divers other baits. But take this for a rule, that, in hot weather, he is to be fished for towards the mid-water, or near the top; and in colder weather nearer the bottom. And if you fish for him on the top, with a Beetle, or any fly, then be sure to let your line be very long, and to keep out of sight. And having told you that his spawn is excellent meat, and that the head of a large Cheven, the throat being well washed, is the best part of him, I will say no more of this fish at the present, but wish you may catch the next you fish for.

But, lest you may judge me too nice in urging to have the Chub dressed so presently after he is taken, I will commend to your consideration how curious former times have been in the like kind.

You shall read in Seneca, his Natural Questions, lib. iii. cap. 17, that the ancients were so curious in the newness of their fish, that that seemed not new enough that was not put alive into the guest's hand; and he says, that to that end they did usually keep them living in glass bottles in their dining-rooms, and they did glory much, in their entertaining of friends, to have that fish taken from under their table alive that was instantly to be fed upon. And he says, they took great pleasure to see their Mullets change to several colours, when they were dying. But enough of this; for I doubt I have staid too long from giving you some observations of the Trout, and how to fish for him, which shall take up the next of my spare time.

In the Thames, above Richmond, the best way of using the Grasshopper for Chub, is to fish with it as with an artificial fly ;the first joints of the legs must be pinched off; and in this way, when the weed is rotten, which is seldom till September, the largest Dace are taken.

+ The Bombus muscorum of naturalists.-J. R.

The hooks, No. 3. or 4, may be used, whipped upon a strong gut, with a quill float on it. He bites so eagerly, that on taking the bait. "you may," says Hawkins, "hear his jaws chop like those of a dog."-J. R.

CHAPTER IV.

OBSERVATIONS ON THE NATURE AND BREEDING OF THE TROUT, AND HOW TO FISH FOR HIM; AND THE MILKMAID'S SONG.

Piscator. THE Trout is a fish highly valued, both in this and foreign nations. He may be justly said, as the old poet said of wine, and we English say of venison, to be a generous fish a fish that is so like the Buck that he also has his seasons; for it is observed, that he comes in and goes out of season with the Stag and Buck. Gesner says, his name is of a German offspring; and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely, in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel; and that he may justly contend with all fresh-water fish, as the Mullet may with all sea-fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste; and that being in right season, the most dainty palates have allowed precedency to him.

And, before I go farther in my discourse, let me tell you, that you are to observe, that as there be some barren Does that are good in summer, so there be some barren Trouts that are good in winter: but there are not many that are so; for usually they be in their perfection in the month of May, and decline with the Buck. Now, you are to take notice, that in several countries, as in Germany and in other parts, compared to ours, fish do differ much in their bigness, and shape, and other ways; and so do Trouts. It is well known, that in the Lake Leman (the Lake of Geneva) there are Trouts taken three cubits long, as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit: and Mercator says, the Trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandise of that famous city. And you are farther to know, that there be certain waters that breed Trouts, remarkable both for their number and smallness. I know a little brook in Kent,* that breeds them to a number incredible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater than about the size of a Gudgeon. There are also, in divers rivers, especially that relate to, or be near to the sea, (as Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor,) a little Trout called a Samlet, or Skegger Trout† (in both which places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing,) that will bite as fast and as freely as Minnows: these be by some taken

The Cray, if I mistake not, which is about eight miles from where I am now writing, and is famous for small trout.-J. R.

This appears to be what is termed the Par in the north, and which, I think, is a peculiar species. -J. R.

to be young Salmons; but in those waters they never grow to be bigger than a Herring.

There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a Trout called there a Fordidge Trout, a Trout that bears the name of the town where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish ; many of them near the bigness of Salmon, but known by their different colour, and in their best season they cut very white : and none of these have been known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught by Sir George Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God: and he hath told me, he thought that Trout bit not for hunger, but wantonness; and it is rather to be believed, because both he then, and many others before him, have been curious to search into their bellies, what the food was by which they lived, and have found out nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity."

Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by good authors, that Grasshoppers† and some fish have no mouths, but are nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows not how: and this may be believed, if we consider that when the Raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no farther care, but leaves her young ones to the care of

The same is true of the Salmon, which has never any thing besides a yellow fluid in his stomach when caught. The same is also true of the Herring.-J. R.

+"It has been said by naturalists," says Sir John Hawkins, "particularly by Sir Theodore Mayerne, that the Grasshopper has no mouth, but a pipe in his breast, through which it sucks the dew, which is its nutriment." Nothing could be more absurd than this, which may be disproved by any body that chooses to examine the large and obvious jaws in the Grass hopper. So far from living on dew, Grasshoppers are so voracious that they make no ceremony, as I have often witnessed, and proved by experiment, of eating their own species. I can scarcely comprehend how Walton was not set right by some of his dignified Episcopal friends respecting the gross perversion of the text, respecting the young Ravens. Even supposing worms to be bred in the nests, the poor things could not help themselves theret.-J. R.