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C. J. Cornish - The Naturalist on the Thames
the race by eel-fishing. Formerly these boats, whose owners lived and slept on board them for six months
in the year, were quite successful in catching eels and flounders. In the Chiswick parish registers a
number of those married or buried are entered as being "fishermen," which clearly means that that was
their business in life. The number of professed eel catchers' boats gradually dwindled to one, and the
owner of this catches a fair quantity of most excellent eels, those taken off Mortlake, opposite the finish
of the University boat-race, being especially fine in flavour. Another eel-like fish, formerly taken in great
numbers, and of the finest quality, but now almost forgotten, is also returning. This is the lampern.
Lamperns, unlike eels, come into the rivers to spawn, and go back to the sea later or to the brackish
waters. Men employed in scooping gravel out of the river at Hammersmith, lately noticed numbers of
lamperns coming up on to the gravel-beds at low-water, and moving the gravel into little hollows,
previously to dropping their spawn. Twelve years ago the great body of the migrating lamperns were all
poisoned by the river, and lay in tens of thousands in the mud at Blackwall Point. As they have now
succeeded in getting up to spawn, the shoals may be seen next year in something like their old numbers.
The flounders have not yet reappeared to stay. Porpoises come up above London nearly every year. The
first I saw were two above Hammersmith Bridge early on that momentous May morning in 1886, when
Mr. Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill was thrown out. I had been up with a friend to hear the result of the
division, and had seen the wild joy which followed its announcement in the lobby, and then walked home
at dawn, and so met the early porpoises. A few years later a fine grampus was found one night lying half
dead by the bows of one of the torpedo-boat destroyers at Chiswick. Its "lines" struck the expert minds
there as so good that it was carefully measured, and the results were found to correspond almost exactly
with a mathematical curve - I think called a curve of sines. The hollow over the blow-hole was filled up
with mud and measured over, and here there was a little discrepancy. The mud was removed, and the
measurement taken over the surface of the hollow, and the figures found to be what were expected.
CHISWICK EYOT
It has been said that Thames eyots always seem to have been put in place by a landscape gardener.
Chiswick Eyot is no exception to the rule. It covers nearly four acres of ground, and lies like a long ship,
parallel with the ancient terrace of Chiswick Mall, from which it is separated by a deep, narrow stream,
haunted by river-birds, and once a famous fishery.
A salmon, perhaps the last, was caught between the eyot and Putney in 1812, though the rent of the
fishery used to be paid in salmon, when it was worked by the good Cavalier merchant, Sir Nicholas
Crispe. The close-time for the fishery was observed regularly at the beginning of the century, the fishing
commencing on January 1st, and ending on September 4th. There are those who believe that with the
increased purification of the Thames, the next generation may perhaps throw a salmon-fly from Chiswick
Eyot. In the early summer of 1895 a fine porpoise appeared above the island. At half-past eight it
followed the ebb down the river, having "proved" the stream for forty miles from its mouth, and being
apparently well pleased with its condition. At Putney it lingered, as might be expected of a Thames
porpoise, opposite a public-house. Two sportsmen went out in a boat to shoot it; instead, they hit some
spectators on the bank. Flowers abound on the eyot. The irises have all been taken, but what was the
lowest clump, opposite Syon House, has lost its pride of place, for now there are some by the Grove Park
Estate below Kew Bridge. The centre of the eyot is yellow with patches of marsh-marigold in the hot
spring days. Besides the marsh-marigolds there are masses of yellow camomile, comfrey, ragged robin,
and tall yellow ranunculus, growing on the muddy banks and on the sides of the little creeks among the
willows, and a vast number of composite flowers of which I do not know the names. Common reeds are
also increasing there, with big water-docks, and on the edge of the cam-shedding of the lawn which
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