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And you are to know, that in Hampshire, which I think exceeds all
England for swift, shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, and store of
Trouts,
they used to catch Trouts in the night, by the light of a torch
or straw,
which, when they have discovered, they strike with a Trout-spear,
or
other ways. This kind of way they catch very many: but I would not
believe it till I was an eye-witness of it, nor do I like it now
I have seen
it.
Venator. But, master, do not Trouts see us in the night?
Piscator Yes, and hear, and smell too, both then and in the day-time:
for
Gesner observes, the Otter smells a fish forty furlongs off him
in the
water: and that it may be true, seems to be affirmed by Sir Francis
Bacon, in the eighth century of his Natural History, who there
proves
that waters may be the medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus:
"
That if you knock two stones together very deep under the water,
those
that stand on a bank near to that place may hear the noise without
any
diminution of it by the water " . He also offers the like
experiment
concerning the letting an anchor fall, by a very long cable or
rope, on a
rock, or the sand, within the sea. And this being so well observed
and
demonstrated as it is by that learned man, has made me to believe
that
Eels unbed themselves and stir at the noise of thunder, and not
only, as
some think, by the motion or stirring of the earth which is occasioned
by that thunder.
And this reason of Sir Francis Bacon has made me crave pardon
of one
that I laughed at for affirming that he knew Carps come to a certain
place, in a pond, to be fed at the ringing of a bell or the beating
of a
drum. And, however, it shall be a rule for me to make as little
noise as I
can when I am fishing, until Sir Francis Bacon be confuted, which
I
shall give any man leave to do.
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