BEST'S ART OF ANGLING. PART I. CHAP. I. A Description of Fishes according to Natural His-. tory, with the best Methods of breeding, feeding, &c. Fire; the water, as their proper place of NISHES, in natural history, are animals that 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 clothed 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 center of gravity is placed in the fittest part of the body for 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 airbladder 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 occasion, 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 is also an amphibious kind, which lives indifferently on land or water; as the castor, otter, &c. Aristotle, and after him Mr. Willoughby, more accurately distinguishes fishes into cetaceous, cartilaginous, and spinous. The cetaceous, called also belluæ 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 cartilaginous are produced from large eggs, like birds, which are also excluded the womb like those of birds. The spinous 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 that breathe with gills, not into cartilaginous and spinous, but into viviparous and oviparous. The viviparous, that breathe with gills, he subdivides into long; such as the gatei and canes, or sharks and dog-fish: and broad; such as the pastinaca, raja, &c.: the subdivisions of each whereof, he gives in his chapter of cartilaginous fishes in general. The oviparous, that breathe with gills, are the most numerous; and these he subdivides into such as are what we usually call flat fish, and such as swim with their backs upright, or at right angles with the horizon. The plain or flat fish, called usually plani spinosi, are either quadrati, as the rombi and passeres, or those of the turbot or flounder kind; or longiusculi, as the sola, or sole-kind. Such as swim with their backs erect are either long and smooth, and without scales, as the eelkind, or shorter and less smooth; and these have either but one pair of fins at their gills, which are called orbes and congeneres, or else another pair of fins also on their bellies: the latter he subdivides into two kinds-1st, such as have no prickly fins on their backs, but soft and flexible ones; 2nd, such as have prickly fins on their backs. Those fishes which have only soft and flexible fins on their backs may be divided into such as have three, two, or but one single fin there. 'No fish but the aselli have three fins on their backs. Fishes with two fins on their backs are either the truttaceous, trout-kind; or the gobionites, loche or gudgeon kind. Fishes with but one soft back-fin are of three sorts. The first has one long continued fin from head to tail, as the hipparus of Rondeletius, &c. The fins of the second are but short, and placed just in the middle of their back: and these are either marine, as the herring-kind; or fluviatile, as those we call leather-mouthed fishes, such as carp, tench, &c. : Fishes with prickly fins on their backs are of two kinds such as have two prickly fins on their backs, and in these the interior radii of their fins are always prickly; 2nd, such as have but one prickly fin there. The English fishes that we have in our ponds, rivers, &c. are as follow: 1. Cyprinus, the Carp. 2. Tinca, the Tench. 3. Cyprinus latus, the Bream or Bruma. 4. Orfus Germanorum, the Rudd, Oerve, or Nersling. 5. Capito seu Cephalus, the Chubb or Chevin. 6. Barbus, the Barbel. 7. Leucissus, the Dace or Dare. 8. Rutilus seu Rubellio, the Roach. 9. Alburnus, the Bleak or Bley. 10. Gobius fluviatilis, the Gudgeon. 11. Cobites fluviatilis barbatula, the Loche or Loach. 12. Varius, seu Phoxinus lavis, the Pink or Minnow. These twelve are called Malacostomi, or leather-mouthed fishes, because they have no teeth in their jaws, but only deep down in their mouths. To proceed. 13. Passer fluviatilis sive amphibious, the Flounder. 14. Anguilla, the Eel. 15. Gobio fluviatilis, the Bull-head or Miller's Thumb. 16. Thymallus, the Gragling, Grayling, or Umber. 17. Salmo, the Salmon. 18. Trutta fluviatilis duum generum, the Trout. 19. Albula Salmoni similis, the Guinniad. 23. Trutta Salmonata, the Salmon-Trout. 21. Trutta La |