6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coal-pits. These, and the rest of principal note, are thus comprehended in one of Mr. Drayton's Sonnets.

Our flood's queen, Thumes, for ships and swans is crown'd,
And stately Severn for her shore is prais'd;
The crystal Trent for fords and fish renown'd,
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is rais'd;

Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee,

York many wonders of her Ouse can tell;
The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be,
And Kent will say her Medway doth excel;

Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame,
Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood;
Our western parts extol their Willy's fame,
And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.

These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my old deceased friend, Michael Drayton; and because you say, you love such discourses as these of rivers and fish, and fishing, I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to you. Nevertheless, scholar, if I should begin but to name the several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, or both: and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth concerning one lately dissected by Dr. Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom to communicate it; one that loves me and my art; one to whom I have been be

holden for many of the choicest observations that I have imparted to you. This good man, that dares do any thing rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he lately dissected one strange fish, and he thus described it to me :

"The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length; his mouth wide enough to receive or take into it the head of a man; his stomach seven or eight inches broad: he is of a slow motion, and usually lies or lurks close in the mud; and has a moveable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter of a yard long, by the moving of which,-which is his natural bait, when he lies close and unseen in the mud, he draws other smaller fish so close to him, that he can suck them into his mouth, and so devours and digests them."

And, scholar, do not wonder at this; for besides the credit of the relator, you are to note, many of these, and fishes which are of the like and more unusual shapes, are very often taken on the mouths of our sea-rivers, and on the sea-shore: and this will be no wonder to any that have travelled Egypt, where 'tis known the famous river Nilus does not only breed fishes that yet want names, but by the overflowing of that river, and the help of the sun's heat on the fat slime which that river leaves on the banks when it falls back into its natural channel, such strange fish and beasts are also bred, that no man can give a name to; as Grotius, in his Sopham, and others have observed.

But whither am I strayed in this discourse? I will end it by telling you, that at the mouth of some of these rivers of ours, Herrings are so plentiful, as namely, near to Yarmouth, in Norfolk, and in the west country Pilchards so very plentiful, as you will wonder to read what our learned Camden relates of them in his Britannia, p. 178, 186.

Well, scholar, I will stop here, and tell you what, by reading and conference, I have observed concerning fish-ponds.