There is also a little fish called a Sticklebag, a fish without scales, but hath his body fenced with several prickles. I know not where he dwells in winter; nor what he is good for in summer, but only to make sport for boys and women anglers, and to feed other fish that be fish of prey, as Trouts in particular, who will bite at him as at a Penk; and better, if your hook be rightly baited with him; for he may be so baited as, his tail turning like the sail of a windmill, will make him turn more quick than any Penk, or Minnow, can. For note, that the nimble turning of that, or the Minnow, is the perfection of Minnow fishing. To which end, if you put your hook into his mouth, and out at his tail; and then, having first tied him with white thread a little above his tail, and placed him after such a manner on your hook as he is like to turn, then sew up his mouth to your line, and he is like to turn quick, and tempt any Trout but if he do not turn quick, then turn his tail, a little more or less, towards the inner part, or towards the side of the hook; or put the Minnow or Sticklebag a little more crooked or more straight on your hook, until it will turn both true and fast, and then doubt not but to tempt any great Trout that lies in a swift stream. * And the Loach, that I told you of, will do the like: no bait is more tempting, provided the Loach be not too big.

And now, scholar, with the help of this fine morning, and your patient attention, I have said all that my present memory will afford me, concerning most of the several fish that are usually fished for in fresh waters.

Venator. But, master, you have, by your former civility, made me hope that you will make good your promise, and say something of the several rivers that be of most note in this nation; and also of fish-ponds, and the ordering of them and do it, I pray, good master; for I love any discourse of rivers, and fish, and fishing; the time spent in such discourse passes away very pleasantly.

The Minnow, if used in this manner, is so tempting a bait, that few fish are able to resist it. The present Earl of told me, that in the month of June last, at Kimpton Hoo, near Wellwyn, in Hertfordshire, he caught (with a Minnow) a Rud, which, insomuch as the Rud is not reckoned, nor does the situation of his teeth, which are in his throat, bespeak him to be a fish of prey, is a fact more extraordinary than that related by Sir George Hastings, in chap. iv. of a Fordidge Trout, (of which kind of fish none had been known to be taken with an angle,) which he caught, and supposed it bit for wantonness.

CHAPTER XIX.

OF SEVERAL RIVERS, AND SOME OBSERVATIONS OF FISH,

Piscator. WELL, scholar, since the ways and weather do both favour us, and that yet we see not Tottenham-Cross, you shall see my willingness to satisfy your desire. And, first, for the rivers of this nation; there be, as you may note out of Dr Heylin's Geography, and others, in number three hundred and twentyfive; but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as followeth :

The chief is Thamisis, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame, in Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Glouces tershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamisis, or Thames; hence it flieth betwixt 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 dress'd 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 Plynlimmon 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.

3. Trent, so called for thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers; who, having its 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 its own, but it is rather the mouth or

Who this German poet was I cannot find, but the verses, in the ori ginal Latin, are in Heylin's Cosmography, page 240, and are as follow: Tot campos sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot nortos, Artifici excultos dextra, tot vidimus arces;

Ut nunc Ausonio, Thamisis, cum Tibride certet.

æstuarium 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 flood's queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd;
And stately Severn for her shore is praised;
The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd;
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised.

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.

Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame;

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.*

"LEE flu. LYGAN, Saxon. Luy, Mar. [forsan 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 vessels from London, twenty miles towarde the head; for, in tyme of Kinge Alfrede, the Danes entered Leymouthe, and fortified, at a place adjoyninge to this ryver, twenty myles from London, where, by fortune, Kinge Alfrede passinge by, espied that the channel 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 Elfred 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 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 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 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 fish-ponds.

these trenches are the very same that now branch off from the river between Temple. Mills, and Old-Ford, and crossing the Stratford road, enter the Thames, together with the principal stream, a little below Blackwall.

CHAPTER 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.*

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 floodgate, 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 watch to destroy them, especially the spawn of the Carp and Tench, when it is left to the mercy of ducks or vermin.

He, and Dubravius, and all others advise, that you make choice of such a place for your pond, that it may be refreshed with a little rill, or with rain water, running or falling into it; by which fish are more inclined both to breed, and are also refreshed and fed the better, and do prove to be of a much sweeter and more pleasant taste.

To which end it is observed, that such pools as be large, and have most gravel, and shallows where fish may sport themselves, do afford fish of the purest taste. And note, that in all pools it is best for fish to have some retiring place; as namely, hollow banks, or shelves, or roots of trees, to keep them from danger,

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.