Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex and so weddeth himself to the Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious river feeleth the violence and benefit of the sea more than any river in Europe; ebbing and flowing, twice a day, more than sixty miles; about whose banks are so many fair towns and princely palaces, that a German' poet thus truly spake :

Tot campos, &c.

We saw so many woods and princely bowers,
Sweet fields, brave palaces, and stately towers;
So many gardens drest with curious care,

That Thames with royal Tiber may compare.

2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn: it hath its beginning in Plinilimmon-hill, in Montgomeryshire; and his end seven miles from Bristol; washing, in the mean space, the walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers other places and palaces of note.

"Tame (sayeth Leland) springeth out of the hilles of Hertfordshire, at a place called Bulburne, a few miles from Penlye, (the house of a family of gentlemen called Verneys); it runneth from thence to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and to Tame (a market-town in Oxfordshire, whearunto it gyveth the name,) then passinge under Whetley-bridge, it cometh to Dorchester, and hard by joyneth with Isis, or Ouse, and from that place joyneth with it in name also." Dictionarium Topographicum, voce THAME.

Unfortunately, Leland's manuscript has lost twenty-five leaves in that part of it where one might expect to find this passage. But the following extract, from an author of great authority, and who had a seat in the county of Hertford, will determine the question.

"The Thame (the most famous river of England) issues from three heads, in the parish of Tring: the first rises in an orchard, near the parsonage-house; the second in a place called Dundell; and the other proceeds from a spring named Bulbourne, which last stream joins the other waters at a place called Newmill; whence all, gliding together in one current, through Puttenham in this county, pass by Aylesbury (a fair market-town in Buckinghamshire) to Etherop, (an ancient pleasant seat of that noble family of the Dormers, earls of Caernarvon ;) and crossing that county, by Notley-abbey, to Thame, (a market-town in Oxfordshire, which borrows its name from this river,) hasteneth away by Whateley-bridge to Dorchester, (an ancient episcopal seat,) and thence congratulates the Isis; but both emulating each other for the name, and neither yielding, they are complicated by that of Thamisis." Sir Henry Chauncy's Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, p. 2. See also the later Maps of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

(1) Who this German poet was I cannot find; but the verses, in the original Latin, are in Heylin's Cosmography, page 240, and are as follow:

Tot campos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos,
Artifici excultos dextra, tot vidimus arces;
Ut nunc Ausonio, Thamisis, cum Tibride certet.

3. Trent, so called from thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers; who, having his fountain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the counties of Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the turbulent current of Humber, the most violent stream of all the isle. This Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river having a spring-head of his own, but it is rather the mouth or astuarium of divers rivers here confluent and meeting together, namely, your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent; and (as the Danow, having received into its channel the river Dravus, Savus, Tibiscus, and divers others) changeth his name into this of Humberabus, as the old geographers call it.

4. Medway, a Kentish river; famous for harbouring the royal navy.

5. Tweed, the north-east bound of England; on whose northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable town of Berwick.

6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coal-pits.' These, and the rest of principal note, are thus comprehended in one of Mr. Drayton's Sonnets.

Our floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd;
And stately Severn for her shore is prais'd;
The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd;
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is rais'd.

Carlegian Chester vaunts her holy Dee;

York many wonders of her Ouse can tell;
The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be,
And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.

(1) It would have been beside the author's purpose, and indeed inconsistent with the brevity of his work, to have given such a description and history of the rivers of this kingdom, as some readers would wish for. Such, however, may find, in Selden's Notes on the Polyolbion, a great variety of curious and useful learning on the subject. And it were to be wished that some person skilled like Leland, Camden, Lambarde, or that excellent person above mentioned, in the antiquities of this country, if any such there are, would undertake the delightful task of surveying them, and giving their history.

In the meanwhile we would recommend to our angler the use of a map of the county where he fishes; by means whereof he may see the rivers contained in it, with their courses; which is perhaps as much as a mere angler need know about the matter.

Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame;

Our Northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood;
Our Western parts extol their Willy's fame,

And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.1

These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my old deceased friend, Michael Drayton; and because you say you love such discourses as these, of rivers, and fish, and fishing, I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to you. Nevertheless, scholar, if I should begin but to name the several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, or both: and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth concerning one lately dissected by Dr. Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom to communicate it; one that loves me and my art; one to whom I have been beholden for many of the choicest observations

(1)“ LEE flu. Lygan, Saxon. Luy, Mar. [forsun Marcellinus] Lea, Polydoro. The name of the water which (runnyn betwene Ware and London) devydethe, for a great part of the way, Essex and Hertfordshire. It begynnethe near a place called Whitchurche; and from thence, passinge by Hertford, Ware, and Waltham, openethe into the Thamise at Ham in Essex; wheare the place is, at this day, called Lee Mouthe. It hathe, of longe tyme, borne vessells from London, 20 miles towarde the head; for, in tyme of Kinge Alfrede, the Danes entered Leymouthe, and fortified, at a place adjoyninge to this ryver, 20 myles from London; where, by fortune, Kinge Alfrede passinge by, espied that the channell of the ryver might be in such sorte weakened, that they should want water to return withe their shippes: he caused therefore the water to be abated by two greate trenches, and settinge the Londoners upon theim, he made theim batteil: wherein they lost four of their capitaines, and a great nomber of their common souldiers; the reste flyinge into the castle which they had builte. Not longe after, they weare so pressed that they forsoke all, and left their shippes as a pray to the Londoners; which breakinge some, and burninge other, conveyed the rest to London. This castle, for the distance, might seme Hertforde; but it was some other upon that banke, which had no longe continuance; for Edward the elder, and son of this Alfrede, builded Hertforde not longe after." Vide Lambarde's Dictionarium Topographicum, voce LEE. Drayton's Polyolbion, Song the Twelfth, and the first Note thereon,

Other authors, who confirm this fact, also add, That for the purpose aforesaid he opened the mouth of the river. See Sir William Dugdale's History of the embanking and draining the Fens, and Sir John Spelman's Life of Ælfred the Great, published by Hearne, in 8vo. 1709; the perusal of which last-named author will leave the reader in very little doubt but that these trenches are the very same that now branch off from the river between Temple-Mills and OldFord, and, crossing the Stratford road, enter the Thames, together with the prin cipal stream, a little below Blackwall.

that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares do any thing rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he had lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described it to me:

"The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length; his mouth wide enough to receive, or take into it, the head of a man; his stomach, seven or eight inches broad. He is of a slow motion; and usually lies or lurks close in the mud; and has a moveable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long; by the moving of which, which is his natural bait, when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him, that he can suck them into his mouth, and so devours and digests them."

And, scholar, do not wonder at this; for besides the credit of the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes which are of the like and more unusual shapes, are very often taken on the mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore. And this will be no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt; where, 'tis known, the famous river Nilus does not only breed fishes that yet want names, but by the overflowing of that river, and the help of the sun's heat on the fat slime which that river leaves on the banks when it falls back into its natural channel, such strange fish and beasts are also bred, that no man can give a name to; as Grotius in his Sopham, and others, have observed.

But whither am I strayed in this discourse. I will end it by telling you, that at the mouth of some of these rivers of ours, Herrings are so plentiful, as namely, near to Yarmouth in Norfolk, and in the west country Pilchers so very plentiful, as you will wonder to read what our learned Camden relates of them in his Britannia, p. 178, 186.

Well, scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what by reading and conference I have observed concerning fishponds.

CHAP. XX.

Of FISH-PONDS, and how to order them.

DOCTOR LEBAULT, the learned Frenchman, in his large discourse of Maison Rustique, gives this direction for making of fish-ponds. I shall refer you to him, to read it at large: but I think I shall contract it, and yet make it as useful.1

He adviseth, that when you have drained the ground, and made the earth firm where the head of the pond must be, that you must then, in that place, drive in two or three rows of oak or elm piles, which should be scorched in the fire, or half-burnt, before they be driven into the earth; for being thus used, it preserves them much longer from rotting. And having done so, lay faggots or bavins of smaller wood betwixt them; and then earth betwixt and above them and then, having first very well rammed them and the earth, use another pile in like manner as the first were: and note, that the second pile is to be of or about the height that you intend to make your sluice or flood-gate, or the vent that you intend shall convey the overflowings of your pond in any flood that shall endanger the breaking of the pond-dam.

Then he advises, that you plant willows or owlers about it, or both; and then cast in bavins in some places not far from the side, and in the most sandy places, for fish both to spawn upon, and to defend them and the young fry from the many fish, and also from vermin, that lie at

(1) A translation of this work under the title of "Maison Rustique, or the Country Farme, compiled by Charles Steuens and John Liebault, Doctors of Physicke, and translated into English by Richard Surflet," appeared in quarto, Lond. 1600: and a second edition, with large additions, by Gervase Markham, fol. Lond. 1616.