they may think so with as good reason as we do that our smelts smell like violets at their first being caught, which I think is a truth. Aldrovandus says, the salmon, the grayling, and trout, and all fish that live in clear and sharp streams, are made by their mother Nature of such exact shape and pleasant colours purposely to invite us to a joy and contentedness in feasting with her. Whether this is a truth or not it is not my purpose to dispute; but 't is certain, all that write of the umber declare him to be very medicinable. And Gesner says that the fat of an umber or grayling, being set, with a little honey, a day or two in the sun, in a little glass, is very excellent against redness, or swarthiness, or anything that breeds in the eyes. Salvian takes him to be called umber from his swift swimming, or gliding out of sight more like a shadow or a ghost than a fish. Much more might be said both of his smell and taste; but I shall only tell you that St. Ambrose, the glorious Bishop of Milan, who lived when the Church kept fasting days, calls him the flower-fish, or flower of fishes; and that he was so far in love with him that he would not let him pass without the honour of a long discourse; but I must, and pass on to tell you how to take this dainty fish.

First, note that he grows not to the bigness of a trout; for the biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches. He lives in such rivers as the trout does, and is usually taken with the same baits as the trout is, and after the same manner; for he will bite both at the minnow, or worm, or fly: though he bites not often at the minnow, and is very gamesome at the fly, and much simpler, and therefore bolder than a trout; for he will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet rise again. He has been taken

with a fly made of the red feathers of a parakita, a strange outlandish bird; and he will rise at a fly not unlike a gnat or a small moth, or indeed at most flies that are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close all winter, but is very pleasant and jolly after mid-April, and in May, and in the hot months: he is of a very fine shape, his flesh is white; his teeth, those little ones that he has, are in his throat, yet he has so tender a mouth, that he is oftener lost after an angler has hooked him than any other fish. Though there be many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove and Trent, and some other small rivers, as that which runs by Salisbury, yet he is not so general a fish as the trout, nor to me so good to eat or to angle for. And so I shall take my leave of him, and now come to some observations of the salmon, and how to catch him.

APPENDIX VI.

a

HISTORICAL NOTE.

Hippolito Salviani, an Italian physician of the sixteenth century; he wrote a treatise "De Piscibus, cum sorum figuris," and died at Rome, 1572, aged 59.-H.

GENERAL NOTES.

Smelts have a decided cucumbery smell, which is so strong that persons have asserted that when the shoals of them come up the Yare, the smell can be detected by a keen-nosed person on the bank.

PRACTICAL ESSAY.

THE GRAYLING.

Grayling fishing comes in when trout fishing leaves off. In autumn and winter this handsome fish is in its best condition. It

is a local fish, only occurring in a limited number of rivers in England and Wales, and not at all in Scotland (except a few in the Clyde and Tweed) or Ireland. It likes streams not too swift, alternating with long and deep pools, flowing over a gravelly and

loamy soil.

The grayling may be caught by fly, worm, or gentle, just like the trout; but there is a special lure for it, and that is the artificial grasshopper. A very small pipe lead is slipped over the shank of a trout-worm hook, and pinched tight, or a thin piece of lead may be rolled round it. Over this light green Berlin wool or worsted is wrapped, with a few rings of red or yellow. (See cut.) This is baited with a bunch of gentles, and allowed to sink to the bottom

of the eddy or

pool, and then worked about all over, something

like trolling, or sinking and drawing. The best and largest fish are caught in this manner. It needs a sharp frost or two to bring the grayling well on the feed.

[Fourth Day..

PISC. The Salmon is accounted the king of fresh-water fish; and is ever bred in rivers relating to the sea, yet so high or far from it, as admits of no tincture of salt or brackishness. He is said to breed or cast his spawn, in most rivers, in the month of August: some say, that then they dig a hole or grave in a safe place in the gravel, and there place their eggs or spawn, after the melter has done