of FISH. ELL, scholar, since the ways and weather do both favour us, and that we yet 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 Doctor Heylin's geography, and others, in number 325, but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as followeth : The chief is Thamesis, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamesis, 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, etc. We saw so many woods and princely bowers, 2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn: it hath its beginning in Plinlimmon-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 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 Estuarium 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 prais'd, The crystal Trent for fords and fish renown'd, And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is rais'd, Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee, York many wonders of her Ouse can tell, Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood, 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 anything rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me, he 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 movable 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 |