Our ancestors four hundred years ago had, in proportion to the population of London, much more abundant and much cheaper fish than we have now. According to the "Noble Boke off Cookry," a reprint of which, from the rare manuscript in the Holkham Collection, has just been edited by Mrs. Alexander Napier, Londoners in the reign of Henry VII. could regale on "baked porpois," "turbert," "pik in braissille," "mortins of ffishe," "eles in bruet," "fresh lamprey bak," "breme," in "sauce" and in "brasse," "soal in brasse," "sturgion boiled," "haddock in cevy," "codling haddock," "congur," "halobut," "gurnard or rocket boiled," "plaice or flounders boiled," "whelks boiled," "perche boiled," "freeke makrell," "bace molet," "musculles," in "shelles" and in "brothe," "tench in cevy," and "lossenge for ffishe daies." For the rich there were "potages of oysters," "blang mang" and "rape" of "ffishe," to say nothing of "lampry in galantyn" and "lampry bak." Our forefathers ate more varieties of fish, cooked it better, and paid much less for it than we do, with all our railways and steamboats, our Fisheries' Inspectors, our Fisheries Exhibion and new Fish Markets with their liberal rules and regulations. To be sure, those same forefathers of ours not only enacted certain very stringent laws against "forestalling" and "regrating," but were likewise accustomed to enforce them, and to make short work upon occasion of the forestalled and regraters of fish, as of other commodities. In Donald Lupton's "London and the Covntrey Carbonadoed and Quartred into seuerall Characters. London, Printed by Nicholas Okes, 1632," the nymphs of the locality are thus described:--