And the Loach that I
told you of will do the like: no bait is more tempting, provided the
Loach be not too big.
And now, scholar, with the help of this fine morning, and your patient
attention, I have said all that my present memory will afford me,
concerning most of the several fish that are usually fished for in fresh
waters.
Venator. But, master, you have by your former civility made me hope
that you will make good your promise, and say something of the several
rivers that be of most note in this nation; and also of fish-ponds, and the
ordering of them: and do it I pray, good master; for I love any discourse
of rivers, and fish and fishing; the time spent in such discourse passes
away very pleasantly
The FIFTH day-continued
Of Rivers, and some Observations of Fish
Chapter XIX
Piscator
WELL, 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 Dr. Heylin's Geography and others, in number three hundred
and twenty-five; but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as
followeth.
The chief is THAMISIS, 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 Thamisis, or Thames; hence it flieth betwixt
Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Essex: and so
weddeth itself to the Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean.
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