hand, of some fifty sea fish, known to the icthyophagist, only mackerel, mullet, plaice, turbot, and conger can claim Latin nomenclature, or, if we grant that blenny comes from blennus, and not vice versa, and throw in John Dory, we have forty-three non-Latin sea fish, to seven Latins only. Roughly speaking, then, we may say that river fish are Normans, and sea fish are Saxons and Britons. The reason of this is not far to seek. The Normans were anglers. They preserved the rivers, whereas the seas were not preserved; and the Saxons caught, sold, ate, and named the denizens of the deep at their own pleasure.

Most names of fishes bear on the face of them the fact that they are named by the taker, rather than by the eater. Salmon, on the monger's slab has nothing to do with salio, I leap. That name was given by

those who had watched these noble fellows spring aloft in the sunlight with a glitter of fine burnished silver, and come down with a fearless splash into the foaming pools. The cooks and diners have only a second-handright to call sturgeon, herring, tench, carp, sprats, dace, or lampreys by those names. The grayling, out of water, is not grey, nor

is he like a semi-spiritual shadow when he is fairly grassed, the name Umber hardly belongs to him then. Neither is a perch particularly dusky when he gleams in gold and red upon the bank. He is dark only when you see him swimming. Herrings, even in a barrel, do not suggest a host; and trout lose their lovely silver and their pink spots before they touch the pan. Gudgeon are not greedy, and dace do not dart in the basket. The fresh-water fishes must have been named by Norman fishers then, and not, like beef, mutton and pork, merely by Norman eaters, named by the riverside, not at the table.

This ancient importance from which most of the sweet water fishes are now fallen, was of course, partly a matter of sport, but much more due to religion. Nowadays we can get our fresh food stuffs across all roads, and to all doors. Turbot is to be had by all who can pay for it, or if not, the housewife in the country just omits that course. But when fast days were strictly kept under penalty of fine or mulct; when meat was forbidden altogether at least once a week, and four and five times of the year; besides, when roads were so impassable that five miles from the coast was almost as much in

land as Oxford or Worcester, then it is plain that rivers, and river-fish, must have been of enormous importance. Ælfric's fisherman, (before the Conquest) complains that he cannot catch as much fish as he could sell, though he includes minnows, periwinkles, and even whales among his game. The difficulty was met, partly by artificial pools, ponds, and stews, and by a great trade in salt fish ; but, no doubt, many an honest gentleman would have been only too glad to buy roach at five a penny of our moneywhich is the most that can now be got for them. The stews of Southwark, (of less catholic reputation at the last) dated, it is said, from Stephen's reign. Fishponds, no doubt, supplied Bristol for centuries. The moats of castles, granges, and episcopal palaces are not only antique precautions for safety they are tributes to a now despised race. Where are the bream and pike who made Ross famous in the thirteenth century? or the great store of pike and tench which were the pride of Ledbury? The bishops, (who still retain so much that belongs to an elder world) seem to have forsaken their mediæval protégés. Bishop Swinfield of Hereford took rents in salmon

and eels, and he kept three fish-days every week in the year besides Lent and Emberdays. What does his successor care for the bisces aquæ dulcis nowadays? What magnum vivarium does any, of our prelates stock? It is doubtful whether one of them attains even Bishop Jewel's attention for he took delight in the abundance of fish which haunted the river that ran through his garden at Salisbury, and caused an iron lattice to be made for their protection (Folkerzheimer, letter to Simler, 1562). It would be easy, if it were not tedious, to add a hundred instances more. But now patricians do not angle for gudgeon, nor do bishops foster pike and tench. Ichabod ! Salmon, grayling, and trout still hold their own, but the rest are a despised race. Public house clubs cultivate them and apologetic authors write about the catching of pike, but the keeper eats even these, it appears, or is it the cat? The lion and the lizard keep the courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.

This practical neglect and scorn has its excuses. Whitings taste better than chubs, after Mary Ann has done her worst upon them. We are now such a self-restrained

people, so little given to appetite, so instinctively sympathetic with the hungry and the needy, that we have no need to keep days of abstinence even once a week. Or if we do, out of mere Prayerbookolatry, we can easily order the fishmonger to supply us with Grimsby's best-or worst. But when a respectable body like the Camden Society is indifferent as to the barest accuracy in the treatment of fishes, what justice can we expect from meaner quill drivers? In the Italian relation of the Island of England, made in Henry VII's reign, we find the translator (one Charlotte Sneyd, and no angler for certain) thus renders the original.

They have, as I read, and which has been confirmed to me by the inhabitants themselves, a great abundance of large rivers, springs and streams, in which are found every species of Italian fish, excepting however, carp, tench, and perch; but on the other hand they have a quantity of salmon a most delicate fish, which they seem to hold in great estimation, because these people. greatly prefer sea fish; of which, indeed, they have many more than we have."

Carpioni, temoli, persici are the three words in the original. Carp is right, but