CHAP. V. A Description of the Fish generally angled for in England and Wales, with the proper. Times and Seasons to fish for them; their peculiar Haunts, spawning Time, and most killing Baits. The most scientific Method of making Fishponds, Stews, &c. to which is added several Arcana in the Art of Angling. PART THE SECOND. ART OF ANGLING. CHAP. I. A Description of Fishes, according to Natural History, with the best Methods of breeding, feeding, &c. FISHES in natural history are animals that live in the water, as their proper place of abode. Naturalists observe a world of wisdom and design in the structure of fishes, and their conformation to the element they reside in. Their bodies are cloathed and guarded in the best manner, with scales or shells, suitable to their respective circumstances, the dangers they are exposed to, and the motion and business they are to perform. The centre of gravity is placed in the fittest part of the body of swimming, and their shape most commodious for making way through the water, and most agreeable to geometrical rules. They have several parts peculiar to themselves; as fins, to balance and keep them upright; an air bladder, or swim, to enable them to rise or sink to any height or depth of water, at pleasure; gills, or branchia, whereby they respire, as land animals do by lungs; the tail, an instrument of progressive motion, which serves to row them forward; eyes peculiarly formed to enable them to correspond to all the convergencies and divergencies of rays, which the variations of the watery medium, and the refractions thereof may occafion, in which respect they bear a near resemblance to birds. Fishes are distinguished into sea, or salt water fish, pisces marini; as the whale, herring, mackarel, &c. river or fresh water fish, pisces fluviales: as the pike, trout, &c. and pond or lake fish: as the carp, tench, &c. to which may be added, others which abide indifferently in fresh water, or salt as salmon, shad-fish, &c. There are also an amphibious kind, which live indifferently on land or water: as the castor, otter, &c. Aristotle, and after him Mr. Willoughby, more. accurately distinguish fishes into cetaceous, cartiliganous, and spinous. The cetaceous kind, called also bellua marina, have lungs, and breathe like quadrupeds; they copulate also like them, and conceive and bring forth their young alive, which they afterwards suckle with their milk. The cartiliganous sort are produced from large eggs, like birds; which are also excluded the womb like those of birds. The spinous kind are also oviparous; but their eggs are smaller, and they have spine up and down their flesh to strengthen it. Willoughby thinks it would be yet more proper to divide fishes into such as breathe with lungs, and such as breathe with gills; and then to subdivide those |