to have practised the ordering of fish-ponds, and the breeding of fish, both for delight and profit. His book On Fish and Fish-ponds, in which are many pleasant relations, was, in 1599, translated into English, and published in quarto, by George Churchey, Fellow of Lion's Inn, with the title of A New Book of Good Husbandry, very pleasant and of great Profit, both for Gentlemen and Yeomen, containing the order and manner of Making of Fish-ponds, etc.-H.

Page 156.-Cardanus.-Jerome Cardan, an Italian physician, naturalist, and mathematician, born at Pavia, September 24, 1501. He was a natural child, and some potion, which his mother took to procure abortion, greatly affected his constitution, rendering him irritable, eccentric, and, notwithstanding the great respect shown him for his learning, unhappy. He was addicted to gaming and astrology. His books (ten volumes folio, Lyons, 1663) show great eccentricity of character and wildness of opinions. He cast his own nativity, and having predicted the day of his death, starved himself that his prophecy might be true, at Rome, September 21, 1576. In 1552 he was in Great Britain, when he cast the nativity (Hawkins says, wrote a character") of Edward VI., and made some remarkable prognostications. The book referred to in the text is his De Subtilitate, libri xxi., Par., 1551, 8vo. Walton is quoting through Casaubon, or Topsell. As to the raining of frogs, it might occur, as in similar cases, from the young frogs having been taken up by winds or water-spouts.-B.

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Page 159.-M. B.-Who this was has not been discovered.

Page 160.-Hops and turkeys, etc.-Erroneously quoted by Walton from Baker's Chronicles (p. 317, ed. 1665), where it is,

Turkeys, Carps, Hoppes, Piccarel and Beer,

Came into England all in one year;

Pike or

i.e., the fifteenth year of Henry VIII. This is, however, all error. pickerel were the subject of legal regulations in the time of Edward I. Turkeys were brought from America about 1521. Hops were introduced about 1524.—B.

Page 161.-Jovius.-Paulus Jovius, a physician and historian, born at Como, in Italy. He wrote his first work, a treatise, De Piscibus Romanis, while studying at Rome, 1523. He afterwards entered the Church, and was made Bishop of Nocera. Disappointed of further promotion, he retired to Florence, where he wrote the history of his own times, from 1494 to 1544, published there in three vols. folio, 1556. His style is not inelegant, and he had a ready wit; but he was credulous, licentious, and sycophantic. He died 1558. He must not be confounded with Paulus Jovius, another Bishop of Nocera, in 1586, who was also a man of letters.-B.

Page 161.-Lake Lurian.-Should be Larian. The modern Lake Como.-B.

Page 161.-the elephant is said to be two years in his dam's belly.-The period of gestation is twenty months.-B.

Page 162.-a person of honour, etc.—In the margin of fifth edition "Mr. Fr. Ru."-conjectured by Nicolas to have been Francis Rufford, of Sapy, in Worcestershire, who died about 1678, aged eighty-two.

Page 164.-The age of carps.-The carp's tenacity of life is very great; in Holland they sometimes suspend them in a damp cellar in nets full of moss, which are moistened with milk, and the fish not only live but grow fat. All writers agree in attributing to them great longevity, even to a hundred and fifty or two hundred years, though, as Vaniere says, they become white with age.—B.

Page 170.-this Gesner affirms.-Dr. Bethune says that similar stories are often told in America-which we may well believe.

Page 170.-the French esteem this fish highly.-The bream seems formerly to have been a favourite dish in England. Sir William Dugdale has preserved a curious instance of the great price, at least in the interior parts of the kingdom, which it bore as long ago as the 7th year of Henry V., when it was rated at 20d. And he informs us that in the 32nd Henry VI., 1454, “A pye of four of them, in the expences of two men employed for three days in taking them, in baking them, in flour, in spices, and conveying it from Sutton in Warwickshire to the Earl of Warwick at Mydlam in the North Country, cost xvjs. ijd.”—Antiquities of Warwickshire, p. 668.-N.

Nicolas also quotes the following pretty lines from Skelton :

In the middes a cundite, that curiously was cast

With pypes of golde, engushyng out streames
Of cristall, the clerenes these waters far past
Enswimmyng with roches, barbils, and breames
Whose skales ensilured again the son beames
Englistred: that joyous it was to beholde

Than farthermore about me my sight I reuolde.

Page 176.-From St. James's-tide until Bartholomew-tide.-From July 25 to August 24.

Page 177.-The Tench, the physician of fishes.-That the tench possesses healing properties is a widely held belief, for which one of Walton's editors, Mr. Christopher Davies, seems to think there may be some slight basis of fact. “The skin of a freshly caught tench from clear waters," he says, "always seems to me to have a peculiarly cool, soft, and pleasant feel. It has been ascertained by experiment that pike will not feed upon tench."

Sir Harris Nicolas quotes Lord Burleigh's papers to this effect: "The perche

and the pike will agree best together, and the pike will not hurt the tenche, as being the physician of all freshe water fishe."

Page 183.-Come, live with me.

-Written by Donne in imitation of Marlowe. As printed in Donne's Poems (1635) it slightly varies from Walton's version, reading for

Verse 2, line 3.
Verse 6, line 4.
Verse 7, line 4.

“And there th' innamour'd fish will stay."

"Bewitch poor fishes wandering eyes."
"Alas, is wiser far than I."

Page 186.-Lobel.-Lobel, sometimes called l'Obel, but more correctly Matthias de Lobel, a native of Lisle, who studied at Montpelier, and was a pupil of Rondeletius. He was eminent as a physician, and principally as a botanist. After travelling extensively, he visited England by invitation of James I., who appointed him his botanist and physician. He superintended the Botanical Garden of Lord Zouch at Hackney, and in 1570 published at London his Nova Stirpium Adversaria, afterwards Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia, which, with his Adversaria, was published at Antwerp, 1576. He wrote some other works, and died 1616, aged 78.-H. & B.

Page 186.-Gerard.—John Gerard was one of the first of our English botanists, was by profession a surgeon, and published, in 1597, an Herbal in a large folio, dedicated to the Lord Treasurer Burleigh; and, two years after, A Catalogue of Plants, Herbs, &c., to the number of eleven hundred, raised and naturalised by himself in a large garden near his house in Holborn. The latter is dedicated to

Sir Walter Raleigh.

The reference is from book iii. 171, "On the goose tree, barnacle tree, or the tree bearing geese," which has a curious woodcut.-H. & B.

Page 188.-this lamprey that Crassus the orator (who kept her) lamented her death. -Walton alludes to the story told in Lord Bacon's Apothegms (215), of Crassus retorting upon Domitius, who ridiculed him for weeping over a pet muræna of his which had died-"That's more than you did for both your wives." Plutarch (De Soler. Anim.) says it was a mullet, and that Domitius had buried three wives. The reader will perceive the anachronism into which Walton has fallen by confounding Domitius with the Emperor Domitian. The fish belonged to Crassus himself.-H. & B.

Page 188.-eels . . . upon dry ground.-Dr. Plot, in his History of Staffordshire, p. 242, mentions certain waters and a pool that were stocked by eels that had, from waters they liked not, travelled in arido, or over dry land, to these other.-H. A well-known fact.

Page 188.-our Camden relates.-Camden's relation is to this effect, viz., "That at a place called Sefton, in the above county, upon turning up the turf,

men find a black, deadish water, with small fishes therein."-Britannia, Lancashire. Fuller, who also reports this strange fact, humorously says, "that the men of this place go a-fishing with spades and mattocks;" adding, that fishes are thus found in the country about Heraclea and Suis, in Pontus.-H.

Page 191.-the eel dangerous meat.-Among the curious fancies respecting the medicinal qualities of the eel, is one of Pliny's, gravely vouched for by Galen, De Remediis Parabilibus (iii. p. 540, ed. Kühn), that wine in which eels have been suffocated cures a habit of drunkenness. On the other hand, in The Salernian

School of Regimen, we read:

To eat of eels will make you hoarse
(A learned doctor doth discourse),

But then 'twill soon relieve the pam,

To drink, and drink, and drink again.—(88–91.)—B.

Page 191.- —as Solomon says of honey.-Proverbs xxv. 16. Walton quotes inaccurately. The verse runs : 66 Hast thou found honey? eat so much as is sufficient for thee, lest thou be filled therewith, and vomit it."

Page 192.-as the Jews do, to whom they [eels] are forbidden by the law.—Levit. xi. 9, 10; Deut. xiv. 9, 10.

Page 195.-Gasius.-Antonius Gazius of Padua, of whom a short account is given in Moreri (Dict. Hist., edit. Par., 1759, tom. v., p. 113). His principal work, to which Walton alludes, was his Corona Florida Medicina, sive De Conservatione Sanitatis, first published at Venice in 1491, when he was only twenty-eight years old, chapters cxxx-vii., which relate to the qualities of river fish as food. He died in 1530, not 1528, as some writers have asserted. See also Manget, Bibl. Scrip. Medic., tom. ii. lib. vii.-N.

Page 196.-Doctor Sheldon.-Gilbert Sheldon (1598-1677). A Royalist divine, who was made Bishop of London at the Restoration, and succeeded Juxon (1663) as Archbishop of Canterbury. He was also Chancellor of Oxford, where he built the theatre which goes by his name.

Page 201.-Allamot salt.—Allamot is most probably a corruption of Alto Monte in Calabria, where there is a salt mine, formerly of great value and much worked, though now neglected. Even that acrid salt could hardly turn a bleak into an anchovy.-B.

Page 201.-a Paternoster line.-A Pater-noster line is a line of gut or twisted hair, on which are tied, about eight inches apart, beginning at the bottom, three or more hooks on snells (or pieces of gut) about three inches or less long. As the hooks are distributed somewhat like the beads of a rosary, Hawkins says "it is called a Pater-noster."-B.

Page 207.-of which Diodorus speaks.-The famous historian, Diodorus Siculus. Walton propably quoted from The History of the World, by Diodorus Siculus; done into English by Mr. (Henry) Cogan, 1653.—B.

Page 208.-Phineas Fletcher.-In the first edition Walton wrote "Phineas Fletcher, who, in his Purple Island, has so excellently imitated our Spenser's Faerie Queen." Phineas Fletcher belonged to a poetical family; his father, Dr. Giles Fletcher, was, according to Wood, "a learned man and excellent poet; his brother Giles was the author of Christ's Victory and Triumph; so that Benlowes, in his commendatory verses to Phineas, well says:

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Thou art a poet born, who know thee know it;

Thy brother, sire, thy very name's a poet.

He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, and beneficed with the living of Hilgay, Norfolk. His first production was Sicelides, a Piscatory, which he wrote. about 1614, but did not publish until 1631, when it appeared without his name as it hath been acted in King's College, Cambridge," 4to. The scene of it is laid in Sicily. In 1632 he published a small prose treatise, 12mo., De Literatis Antique Britannia, having special reference to Cambridge; and in 1633, The Purple Island, with Piscatorie Eclogues, and other Poeticall Miscellanies, by P. F. Printed by the Printers to the Universitie of Cambridge, 4to. The Purple Island is a poetical description, in the Spenserian stanza, of the human anatomy, and notwithstanding the difficulty of his subject, it shows much poetical skill, while some passages occur in it of no small merit. His Piscatorie Eclogues, less elaborate, are very pleasing, as are some of his miscellanies. The quotation in the text is from the third, fifth, and sixth verses of the XIIth (last) canto of The Purple Island. Walton has used his wonted freedom in altering his author, thus: where the original has, "His bed of wool yields," &c., our author writes, "His bed more safe than soft," &c. Fletcher also wrote, "Never his humble house or state torment him :" and his last line is,

And when he dies, green turfs with grassie tomb content him.

The Piscatory Eclogues were republished with a preface and illustrative notes, by Alex. Fraser Tytler (afterwards Lord Woodhouselee), at Edinburgh, 1771, duo. Not only in the Eclogues, but throughout his writings, Fletcher's angling propensities are discoverable.-B.

Page 210.-an old catch.-This song is given in the first edition with the music for a treble and a bass, composed, probably at the request of Walton, by Henry Lawes, an eminent musician, master of music to Charles I., and composer of the music of Milton's Comus, as it was performed at Ludlow Castle, the residence of the Earl of Bridgewater. It is proper to add, that Walton is mistaken in calling it an "Old Ketch" (1st ed.); for it is not a catch, but rather in the style of a madrigal (Major).-B.