that write of the Umber declare him to be very medicinable. And Gesner says, that the fat of an Umber, or Grayling, being set, with a little honey, a day or two in the sun, in a little glass, is very excellent against redness, or swarthiness, or any thing that breeds in the eyes. Salvian* takes him to be called Umber from his swift swimming, or gliding out of sight more like a shadow, or a ghost, than a fish. Much more might be said both of his smell and taste: but I shall only tell you, that St Ambrose, the glorious bishop of Milan, who lived when the church kept fasting days, calls him the Flower-fish, or flower of fishes; and that he was so far in love with him that he would not let him pass without the honour of a long discourse; but I must, and pass on to tell you how to take this dainty fish.

First note, that he grows not to the bigness of a Trout; for the biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches. He lives in such rivers as the Trout does, and is usually taken with the same baits as the Trout is, and after the same manner; for he will bite both at the Minnow, or worm, or fly, (though he bites not often at the Minnow,) and is very gamesome at the fly; and much simpler, and therefore bolder than a Trout; for he will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet risc again. He has been taken with a fly made of the red feathers of a Parakita, a strange outlandish bird; and he will rise at a fly not unlike a gnat, or a small moth, or, indeed, at most flies that are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close all winter, but is very pleasant and jolly after mid April, and in May, and in the hot months. He is of a very fine shape, his flesh is white, his teeth, those little ones that he has, are in his throat, yet he has so tender a mouth, that he is oftener lost after an angler has hooked him than any other fish. Though there be many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove, and in Trent, and some other smaller rivers, as that which runs by Salisbury, yet he is not so general a fish as the Trout, nor to me so good to eat or to angle for. And so I shall take my leave of him; and now come to some observations on the Salmon, and how to catch him.

Hippolito Salviani, an Italian physician of the sixteenth century: he wrote a treatise De Piscibus, cum eorum figuris, and died at Rome, 1572, aged 59.

+"Grayling," says Sir Humphry Davy, "if you take your station by the side of a river, will rise nearer to you than Trout, for they lie deeper, and therefore are not so much scared by an object on the bank; but they are more delicate in the choice of the flies than Trout."-J. R.

The haunts of the Grayling are so nearly the same with those of the Trout, that, in fishing for either, you may, in many rivers, catch both. They spawn about the beginning of April, when they lie mostly in sharp streams.

Baits for the Grayling are chiefly the same as those for the Trout, except the Minnow, which he will not take so freely. He will also take gentles

THE SALMON - Salma salar. - LINNEUS.

Piscator. THE Salmon is accounted the king of fresh water fish; and is ever bred in rivers. relating to the sea, yet so high, or far from it, as admits of no tincture of salt or brackishness. He is said to breed, or cast his spawn, in most rivers, in the month of August:* some say, that then they dig a hole, or grave, in a safe place in the gravel, and there place their eggs,

very eagerly. When you fish for him with a fly, you can hardly use one too small.

The Grayling is much more apt to rise than descend; therefore, when you angle for him alone, and not for the Trout, rather use a float, with the bait from six to nine inches from the bottom, than the running line.

The Grayling is found in great plenty in many rivers in the north, particularly the Humber. And in the Wye, which runs through Herefordshire and Monmouthshire into the Severn, I have taken, with an artificial fly, very large ones; as also great numbers of a small, but excellent fish, of the Trout kind, called a Lastspring; of which somewhat will be said in a subsequent note. They are not easily to be got at without a boat, or wading; for which reason, those of that country use a thing they call a thorricle, or truckle; in some places it is called a coble, from the Latin corbula, a little basket; it is a basket, shaped like the half of a walnut shell, but shallower in proportion, and covered on the outside with a horse's hide; it has a bench in the middle, and will just hold one person, and is so light, that the countrymen will hang it on their heads like a hood, and so travel with a small paddle, which serves for a stick, till they come to a river, and then they lanch it and step in. There is great difficulty in getting into one of these truckles, for the instant you touch it with your foot it flies from you; and, when you are in, the least inclination of the body oversets it. It is very diverting to see how upright a man is forced to sit in these vessels, and to mark with what state and solemnity he draws up the stone which serves for an anchor, when he would remove, and lets it down again: however, it is a sort of navigation that I would wish our piscatory disciple never to attempt.

*Their usual time of spawning is about the latter end of August, or the beginning of September; but it is said that those in the Severn spawn in May.

or spawn, after the melter has done his natural office, and then hide it most cunningly, and cover it over with gravel and stones; and then leave it to their Creator's protection, who, by a gentle heat which he infuses into that cold element, makes it brood and beget life in the spawn, and to become Samlets early in the spring next following.*

The Salmons having spent their appointed time, and done this natural duty in the fresh waters, they then haste to the sea before winter, both the melter and spawner; but if they be stopped by flood-gates, or weirs, or lost in the fresh waters, then those so left behind by degrees grow sick, and lean, and unseasonable, and kipper; that to say, have bony gristles grow out of their lower chaps, not unlike a Hawk's beak, which hinder their feeding; and, in time, such fish so left behind pine away and die. It is observed, that he may live thus one year from the sea; but he then grows insipid and tasteless, and loses both his blood and strength, and pines and dies the second year. And it is noted, that those little Salmons called Skeggers, which abound in many rivers relating to the sea, are bred by such sick Salmons that might not go to the sea, and that though they abound, yet they never thrive to any considerable bigness.†

But if the old Salmon gets to the sea, then that gristle which shews him to be kipper, wears away, or is cast off, as the Eagle is said to cast his bill, and he recovers his strength, and comes next summer to the same river, if it be possible, to enjoy the former pleasures that there possessed him; for, as one has wittily observed, he has, like some persons of honour and riches which have both their winter and summer houses, the fresh rivers for summer, and the salt water for winter, to spend his life in; which is not, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed in his History of Life and Death, above ten years. And it is to be observed, that though the Salmon does grow big in the sea, yet he grows not fat but in fresh rivers; and it is observed, that the farther they get from the sea, they be both the fatter and better.

Next, I shall tell you, that though they make very hard shift to get out of the fresh rivers into the sea, yet they will make a harder shift to get out of the salt into the fresh rivers, to spawn, or possess the pleasures that they have formerly found in them: to which end, they will force themselves through flood-gates or

Walton's phrase, "some say," expresses a doubt; but I can affirm, from repeated observation, that his account is correct.-J. R.

A great deal of this is obviously fanciful and erroneous.-J. R. The migration of the Salmon, and divers other sorts of fishes, is analogous to that of birds; and Mr Ray confirms Walton's assertion, by saying, that "Salmon will yearly ascend up a river four or five hundred miles, only to cast their spawn, and secure it in banks of sand till the young be hatched and excluded, and then return to sea again."- Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of the Creation, p. 130.

over wears or hedges, or stops in the water, even to a height beyond common belief. Gesner speaks of such places as are known to be above eight feet high above water. And our

Camden mentions, in his Britannia, the like wonder to be in Pembrokeshire, where the river Tivy falls into the sea; and that the fall is so downright, and so high, that the people stand and wonder at the strength and sleight by which they see the Salmon use to get out of the sea into the said river; and the manner and height of the place is so notable, that it is known far by the name of the " Salmon-leap." Concerning which, take this also out of Michael Drayton, my honest old friend, as he tells it you in his Polyolbion:

As when the Salmon seeks a fresher stream to find
(Which hither from the sea comes yearly by his kind,)
As he towards season grows; and stems the watery tract
Where Tivy, falling down, makes a high cataract,
Forced by the rising rocks that there her course oppose.
As though within her bounds they meant her to enclose;
Here, when the labouring fish does at the foot arrive,
And finds that by his strength he does but vainly strive;
His tail takes in his mouth, and, bending like a bow
That's to full compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw,
Then springing at his height, as doth a little wand
That bended end to end, and started from man's hand,
Far off itself doth cast: so does the Salmon vault;
And if, at first, he fail, his second summersault
He instantly essays, and from his nimble ring
Still yerking, never leaves until himself he fling
Above the opposing stream.

This Michael Drayton tells you of this leap, or summersault, of the Salmon.*

And, next, I shall tell you, that it is observed by Gesner and others, that there is no better Salmon than in England; and that though some of our northern counties have as fat and as large as the river Thames, yet none are of so excellent a taste.†

And as I have told you, that Sir Francis Bacon observes, the age of a Salmon exceeds not ten years; so let me next tell you, that his growth is very sudden. It is said, that after he is got

In the Statistical Account of Benley, we are told of a Salmon leap, by the side of which a kettle was kept boiling, and the Salmon frequently, on inissing their spring, fell into this kettle and were boiled alive.-J. R.

+ The following interesting article of intelligence appeared in one of the London Journals, 18th April, 1789.-"The largest Salmon ever caught was yesterday brought to London. This extraordinary fish measured upwards of four feet from he point of the nose to the extremity of the tail, and three feet round the thickest part of the body; its weight was seventy pounds within a few ounces. A fishmonger in the Minories cut it up at one shilling per pound, and the whole was sold almost immediately."

into the sea, he becomes, from a Samlet not so big as a Gudgeon, to be a Salmon, in as short a time as a gosling becomes to be a goose. Much of this has been observed, by tying a riband, or some known tape or thread, in the tail of some young Salmons which had been taken in weirs as they have swimmed towards the salt water, and then by taking a part of them again with the known mark, at the same place, at their return from the sea, which is usually about six months after; and the like experiment hath been tried upon young swallows, who have, after six months' absence, been observed to return to the same chimney, there to make their nests and habi stions for the summer following: which has inclined many to think, that every Salmon usually returns to the same river in which it was bred, as young pigeons taken out of the same dovecot have also been observed to do.

And you are yet to observe farther, that the he Salmon is usually bigger than the Spawner: and that he is more kipper, and less able to endure a winter in the fresh water than the she is yet she is, at that time of looking less kipper and better, as watery and as bad meat.

And yet you are to observe, that as there is no general rule without an exception, so there are some few rivers in this nation that have Trouts and Salmons in season in winter, as it is certain there be in the river Wye in Monmouthshire, where they be in season, as Camden observes, from September till April.* But, my scholar, the observation of this and many other things I must in manners omit, because they will prove too large for our narrow compass of time, and, therefore, I shall next fall upon my direction how to fish for this Salmon.

And, for that: First you shall observe, that usually he stays not long in a place, as Trouts will, but, as I said, covets still to go nearer the spring-head; † and that he does not, as the Trout and many other fish, lie near the water-side, or bank, or roots of trees, but swims in the deep and broad parts of the water, and usually in the middle and near the ground, and that there you are to fish for him; and that he is to be caught, as the Trout is, with a Worm, a Minnow (which some call a Penk,) or with a Fly.

And you are to observe, that he is very seldom observed to bite at a Minnow, yet sometimes he will, and not usually at a Fly, but more usually at a Worm, and then most usually at a Lob, or Garden Worm, which should be well scoured, that is to

* In the River Lea, which runs into the sea at the Cove of Cork, Salmon are likewise in season the whole year round, as I can myself testify, having resided at Cork the greater part of a year. J. R.

+ The Salmon delights in large rapid rivers, especially such as have pebbly, gravelly, and sometimes weedy bottoms.