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 country would have been saved the disgrace of a similar folly, and the ninety thousand pounds which were wasted upon it. But it has been the fashion of modern historians to reject all the circumstances of history, and give only a caput mortuum of results. That a first lord of the admiralty should have read Monstrellet was not to be expected; but it might have been expected that he would have known what the rise of the tide is at Boulogne.

 

This fish, not long after its introduction into England, found its way into the Thames "by the violent rage of sundry land floods, that brake open the heads and dams of divers gentlemen's ponds, by which means it became somewhat partaker of this commodity ."

