3. Any sort of grain boiled is good to feed with, especially peas and malt coarse ground. The grains after brewing, while sweet and fresh, are very proper; but one bushel of malt, not brewed, will go as far as two of grains. Chippings of bread and orts of a table, steeped in tap-droppings of strong beer or ale, are excellent food for carp. Of these, the quantity of two quarts to thirty carps is sufficient; and so fed morning and evening is better than once a day only.

There is a sort of food for fishes that may be called accidental, and is no less improving than the best that can be provided; and this is when the pools happen to receive the waste of commons where sheep have pasture: the water is enriched by the soil, and will feed a much greater number of carp than it otherwise would do; and further, the dung that falls from cattle standing in the water, in hot weather, is also a very great nourishment to fish.

The best food to raise pikes to an extraordinary size or fatness is eels; and without them it is not to be done, but in a long time: setting these aside, small perches are the best meat. Breams put into a pike-pond breed exceedingly, and are fit to maintain pikes, who will take care they do not increase over much. The numerous fry of roaches, and other small fish, which come from the greater pools into the pike-quarters, will likewise be good diet for them. Pikes in all streams, and carp in all hungry springing waters, being fed at certain times, will come up, and take their meat almost from your hand.

The best feeding-place is towards the mouth of the pond, at the depth of about half a yard; for by that means the deep will be kept clean and

C

neat. The meat thrown into the water, without other trouble, will be picked up by the fishes, and nothing be lost: yet there are several devices for giving them food, especially peas; as a square board let down with the peas upon it.

Where fishes are fed in large pools or ponds, when their numbers are great, malt boiled, or fresh grains, is the best food. Thus carp may be fed and raised like capons, and tenches will feed as well; but perches are not for a stew in feeding time.

As to the benefits that redound from keeping fish, besides furnishing the table and raising money, your land will be improved, so as to be really worth and yield more this way than by any other employ whatsoever for suppose a meadow of two pounds per acre; four acres in pond will return every year a thousand fed carps, from the least size to fourteen or fifteen inches long, besides pikes, perches, tenches, and other fry. The carps are saleable, and will bring sixpence, ninepence, and perhaps one shilling each, amounting in all to twenty-five pounds, which is six pounds five shillings per acre.

You should 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 so doing fish are both more inclined to breed, and are refreshed and fed the better.

There are many circumstances that conduce much to the feeding of pikes, perches, chubs, carps, roaches, daces, and breams, particularly conveniency of harbour; for those fish that lie amongst weeds and boggy places are the fattest, though not the sweetest. In these kind of places they are secured from the assaults of their nume

rous enemies, and enjoy a more safe and contented repose, rest and quietness being as natural and helpful to their feeding as to other creatures. Some waters are more nourishing than others: a thick kind, if it is not foul or muddy, is of a better consistency, and the parts better disposed and qualified for nutrition, than those of a more thin and rarified substance. No element that is pure and without mixture is well adapted for nourishment, neither can fishes live by pure water, respiration, or sucking in those slender particles of their beloved element alone, without the concurrence and assistance of some grosser and terrene qualities, which are intermingled with those liquid bodies.

Having mentioned that fishes are exposed to numerous enemies, I shall conclude this chapter by giving the reader a poetical enumeration of them.

A thousand foes the finny people chace,

Nor are they safe from their own kindred race:
The pike, fell tyrant of the liquid plain,

With ravenous waste devours his fellow train;
Yet, howsoe'er with raging famine pined,
The tench he spares, a salutary kind.

Hence too the perch, a like voracious brood,
Forbears to make this generous race his food;
Though on the common drove no bound he finds,
But spreads unmeasured waste o'er all the kinds.
Nor less the greedy trout and glutless eel
Incessant woes and dire destruction deal.
The lurking water-rat in caverns preys,
And in the weeds the wily otter slays.
The ghastly newt in muddy streams annoys,
And in swift floods the felly snake destroys.
Toads for the shoaling fry forsake the lawn,
And croaking frogs devour the tender spawn,
Neither the 'habitants of land nor air

(So sure their doom) the fishy numbers spare!
The swan, fair regent of the silver tide,

Their ranks destroys, and spreads their ruin wide:

The duck her offspring to the river leads,
And on the destined fry insatiate feeds:
On fåtal wings the pouncing bittern soars,
And wafts her prey from the defenceless shores:
The watchful halcyons to the reeds repair,
And from their haunts the scaly captives bear:
Sharp her'ns and corm'rants too their tribes oppress
A harass'd race, peculiar in distress :

Nor can the muse enumerate their foes,
Such is their fate, so various are their woes.

CHAP. II.

The best Manner of making and chusing Rods, Lines, Hooks, &c.

HE best time to provide stocks is in the winter solstice, when the trees have shed their leaves, and the sap is in their roots; for after January the sap ascends again into the trunk and branehes, at which time it is improper to gather stocks or tops. As for the stocks, they should be lower grown, and the tops the best rush ground shoots that can be got; not knotty, but proportionable and slender, for if otherwise they will never cast nor strike so well, and the line, by reason of their unpliableness, must be much endangered. Now when both stock and top are gathered in one season, and as straight as possible to be got, bathe them over a gentle fire, and never use them till they are well seasoned, which will be in one year and four month, but longer keeping them will make them better: and for preserving them when made into rods, both from rotting and being worm-eaten, rub them over thrice a year

with sallad or linseed oil; if they are bored, pour in either of the oils, and let them soak therewith for twenty-four hours, then pour it out again, and it will preserve them from the least injury. In general the length of the rod is to be determined by the breadth of the river you angle in; but a long rod is always of more use than one too short, provided it is truly made: one of about five yard and a half long you will experimentally find to be quite sufficient. When you have taken your stocks and tops from the place that you put them in for seasoning (where they must have remained sixteen months at least), match them together in just proportion, and let the rod consist of five or six pieces; if you ferrule it, observe that they fit with the greatest nicety, and in such a manner as when put all together they may not wriggle in the least, but be in proportion and strength as if the whole rod were but one piece. If you bind them together, it must be with thread strongly waxed, having first cut the pieces with a slope or slant that they may join each other with the greatest exactness, and then spread a thin layer of shoemaker's wax over the slants, or a glue which I have set down in the arcana for the angler's use afterwards you must cut about six inches off the top of the rod, and in its place whip on a smooth, round, and taper piece of whalebone, and at the top of that a strong loop of horse-hair: then the whole will be completed, and thus made will always ply with a true bent to the hand. Your fly-rods may be made in the same manner; but note, must be much more pliant_than_the others, and more taper from stock to top. of service to them to lay by some time before you use them.

It is