s, who would spend their whole time upon their
banks, not coveting to labour with their hands nor follow any good trade.
Of all these there are none more prejudicial to their neighbours that
dwell in the same water than the pike and eel, which commonly devour such
fish or fry and spawn as they may get and come by. Nevertheless the pike
is friend unto the tench, as to his leech and surgeon. For when the
fishmonger hath opened his side and laid out his rivet and fat unto the
buyer, for the better utterance of his ware, and cannot make him away at
that present, he layeth the same again into the proper place, and sewing
up the wound, he restoreth him to the pond where tenches are, who never
cease to suck and lick his grieved place, till they have restored him to
health, and made him ready to come again to the stall, when his turn shall
come about. I might here make report how the pike, carp, and some other of
our river fishes are sold by inches of clean fish, from the eyes or gills
to the crotch of the tails, but it is needless: also how the pike as he
ageth receiveth divers names, as from a _fry_ to a _gilthead_, from a
_gilthead_ to a _pod_, from a _pod_ to a _jack_, from a _jack_ to a
_pickerel_, from a _pickerel_ to a _pike_, and last of all to a _luce_;
also that a salmon is the first year a _gravellin_, and commonly as big as
a herring, the second a _salmon peal_, the third a _pug_, and the fourth a
_salmon_: but this is in like sort unnecessary.

I might finally tell you how that in fenny rivers' sides, if you cut a
turf, and lay it with the grass downwards upon the earth in such sort as
the water may touch it as it passeth by, you shall have a brood of eels.
It would seem a wonder; and yet it is believed with no less assurance by
some, that than a horse hair laid in a pail full of the like water will in
a short time stir and become a living creature. But sith the certainty of
these things is rather proved by few than the certainty of them known unto
many, I let it pass at this time. Nevertheless this is generally observed
in the maintenance of fry as well in rivers as in ponds, that in the time
of spawn we use to throw in faggots made of willow and sallow (and now and
then of bushes for want of the other), whereby such spawn as falleth into
the same is preserved and kept from the pike, perch, eel, and other fish,
of which the carp also will feed upon his own, and thereby hinder the
store and increase of proper kind. S