The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
General
The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I
Literature -- Collections
There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout called there a
Fordidge trout, a trout that bears the name of the town where it is
usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish; many of them
near the bigness of a salmon, but known by their different color; and
in their best season they cut very white; and none of these have been
known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught
by Sir George Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God: and he
hath told me, he thought _that_ trout bit not for hunger but
wantonness; and it is rather to be believed, because both he, then,
and many others before him, have been curious to search into their
bellies, what the food was by which they lived, and have found out
nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity.
Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by good
authors, that grasshoppers, and some fish, have no mouths, but are
nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows
not how: and this may be believed, if we consider that when the raven
hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her young
ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said, in the Psalms, "to
feed the young ravens that call upon Him." And they be kept alive and
fed by dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or some other ways
that we mortals know not; and this may be believed of the Fordidge
trout, which, as it is said of the stork (Jerem. viii: 7), that "he
knows his season," so he knows his times, I think almost his day of
coming into the river out of the sea, where he lives, and, it is like,
feeds nine months of the year, and fasts three in the river of
Fordidge. And you are to note that those townsmen are very punctual in
observing the time of beginning to fish for them, and boast much that
their river affords a trout that exceeds all others. And just so does
Sussex boast of several fish; as namely, a Shelsey cockle, a
Chichester lobster, an Arundel mullet, and an Amerly trout.
And now for some confirmation of the Fordidge trout: you are to know
that this trout is thought to eat nothing in the fresh water; and it
may be better believed, because it is well known, that swallows and
bats and wagtails, which are called half-year birds, and not seen to
fly in England for six months in the year, but about Michaelmas leave
us for a better climate than this; yet some of them that have been
left behind their fellows, have been found many thousands at a time,
in hollow trees, or clay caves; where they have been observed to live
and sleep out the whole winter without meat; and so Albertus observes,
that there is one kind of frog that hath her mouth naturally shut up
about the end of August, and that she lives so all the winter; and tho
it be strange to some, yet it is known to too many among us to be
doubted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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