tion, the following lines:

"So slow Boötes underneath him sees

In th' icy islands, goslings hatch'd of trees, Whose fruitful leaves, falling into

the water

Are turn'd, 'tis known, to living fowls soon after.

So rotten planks of broken ships do change

To barnacles, O transformation strange!

'Twas first a green tree, then a broken hull,

Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull."

With the works of Conrad Gesner, the most learned naturalist of the sixteenth century, Walton was intimately acquainted. He frequently quotes him, more frequently than he does any other writer. To Gesner too, it now appears to be clearly established, he was indebted for some, at any rate, of the illustrations which appeared in the earlier editions of "The Compleat Angler." That he himself possessed a copy of Gesner's famous work the "Historia Animalium," or, at any rate, had easy access to one, seems to be beyond question. There is, however, no copy among Walton's books, which his son, the Rector of Polshot, afterward bequeathed to the Cathedral Library of Salisbury. But in the Cathedral Library of Winchester there is a fine copy of Gesner's great work. It is an original edition, in folio, published at Tiguri, that is, Zurich, by Christopher Froschover, between the years 1551 and 1558. The four books, into which the work is divided, treat successively of mammals, oviparous quadrupeds, birds, and fishes. The work is adorned with several hundred woodcuts, which are printed in outline only, the coloring being purposely left to the rubricator. In our copy, which is bound in three massive volumes, some of the woodcuts have been painted, and some

be that this splendid edition, now among Bishop Morley's books in the Cathedral Library of Winchester, was the actual

copy used by Izaak Walton, and through which he became acquainted with the illustrations of the trout, pike, carp, tench, perch, and barbel, which he after

ward utilized, on a reduced scale, for the first edition of "The Compleat Angler"? Morley and Walton were, we know, on most intimate terms. In dedicating his

Richard Hooker." It is clear then that Walton had ample opportunities of consulting Morley's library, which on his death the bishop bequeathed to Winches

ter Cathedral. If only therefore we could be quite certain that our copy of Gesner, now among Morley's books in the Cathedral Library, had actually belonged to the good Bishop of Winchester, there would be a reasonable presumption that Izaak Walton had made use of it in his preparation of "The Compleat Angler." The very possibility that he may have done so adds immensely, it will be admitted, to the value and interest of our "Gesner."

From Gesner, Izaak Walton quotes the strange belief that "fishes are bred, some by generation, and some not, as namely, of a weed called pickerel-weed." For no assertion has our honest fisherman been more severely taken to task, although he simply states it on the authority of the "learned Gesner." There is a passage, for instance, in a contemporary writer, one Captain Richard Franks, who in his "Northern Memoirs" speaks thus disparagingly of our author: "When I met him (Izaak Walton) at Stafford, I urged his own argument upon him that pickerelweed of itself breeds pickerel; which question was no sooner stated, but he transmits himself to his authority, viz. Gesner, which I readily opposed, and offered my reasons to prove the contrary. . . but dropping his argument, and leaving Gesner to defend it, he huffed away." The word "pickerel' means of course a young pike, but what "the weed called pickerel-weed" was

"Life of Dr. Sanderson" to George Morley, Walton speaks of a "friendship begun almost forty years past." Indeed he was actually residing with Bishop Morley when he wrote the "Life of Mr.

which, "unless learned Gesner be much mistaken," produced such marvellous results, cannot now be determined. It probably refers either to some species of Potamogeton or pondweed,

or to one of the water-crowfoots.

In classing bats among the birds, Izaak Walton is again following Gesner, and also in the curious statement that "there is a herb, called benione, which being hung in a linen cloth near a fish-pond, or any haunt that an otter uses, makes him to avoid the place, which proves he smells both by water and land." Walton does not tell us what species the herb called "benione" actually was; but I strongly suspect the reference is, not, with most authorities, to assafætida, but to the Herba benedicta, or Blessed Herb (Geum urbanum, L.), concerning which we learn from the German Herbal, the Ortus Sanitatis printed at Mainz in 1491, and which Gesner was undoubtedly acquainted with, that "where the root is in the house the devil can do nothing, and flies from it: wherefore it is blessed above all other herbs." We are further told that where the Blessed-herb is growing in a garden or a field, "no venomous beast will approach within the scent of it."

meadows, our fisherman sees "here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to

But of all the plants mentioned by Izaak Walton that which he calls "culverkeys" remains the crux criticorum among botanists. The word occurs twice in "The Compleat Angler," once in the course of the narrative, and once in a song attributed to "Jo, Da," in the first edition, but altered to "Jo. Davors Esqre." in the fifth edition. Sitting under a willow-tree by the waterside and looking down the

the present month of May." And the verse of the song quoted in commendation of the author's happy life, runs as follows: "So I the fields and meadows green may view,

And daily by fresh rivers walk at will, Among the daisies and the violets blue,

Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil, Purple narcissus like the morning rays,

Pale gander-grass and azure culverkeys.” These musical and graceful lines occur in a little poem called "The secrets of Angling, by J. D.," published in 1615. Walton, though he was familiar with the poem, and quotes six of its verses in "The Compleat Angler," was evidently in ignorance as to the real author of it. Indeed the question of authorship was only set at rest in the year 1811, by the discovery in the Stationer's Registers of the following entry, under date "23 Mch. 1612"-"The Secretes of Angling, in three bookes, by John Dennys Esquier." The writer, it appears, lived at Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, where the old family mansion still stands, and dying in 1609 was buried in the parish church. His poem, which is perhaps the most charming in our angling literature, was not published until three or four years after his death. A first edition of this very rare work is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, and two other copies are known to exist. In addition to "The Secretes of Angling" and "The Compleat Angler," the word "culverkeys" also occurs in a passage of Aubrey's "Natural History of Wilts," published in 1685, where we read:

"At Priory St. Maries, and in the Minchin meadowes there, but especially at Broun's Hill, which is opposite to the house where, in an unfortunate hour, I drew my first breath, there is an infinite variety of plants, and it would have tempted me to have been a botanist, had I had leisure, which is a jewell I could be never master of. In this ground there grew culver-keys, hares-parsley, wild vetch, maiden's-honesty, wild vine bayle."

Against this passage the illustrious naturalist John Ray appended the note: "Culver-keys, hares-parsley, mayden'shonesty are country names unknown to me." In Henry Lyte's "Herball," however, published in 1578, the plant seems to be identified with Aquilegia vulgaris, for the author says: "It is called in English Columbine, the flowres of whiche do seeme to expresse the figure of a Dove or Culver." Beyond these notices the name appears to be unknown among our early writers and herbalists. It is clear from the passages I have quoted that "culverkeys" was a meadow-plant, that it had blue flowers, and that it blossomed in the month of May. The last two characteristics would suit the columbine, but the species can hardly be regarded as a meadow-plant. Hence, many other species have been suggested. Doctor Prior, in his "Names of British Plants," is in favor of the bluebell or common hyacinth. Canon Ellacombe thinks it must be the meadow geranium, which, he says truly, is "certainly 'azure' almost beyond any other British plant." Others have suggestel the meadow orchis, and the snake's-head or fritillary. It is now impossible to identify with any certainty the "azure culverkeys" of Aubrey and Dennys and Izaak Walton. With John Ray we can only say "it is a country name unknown to me." But in the absence of more direct evidence I should feel inclined to agree with the old herbalist Henry Lyte, and to identify "culverkeys" with the common columbine; a conclusion accepted, I notice, by Archdeacon Nares in his "Glossary," published in 1822, where he says "Culver being columba, and the little flowerets like keys."