little experience will teach you better than I can by words. Therefore I will for the present say no more of this; but come next to give you some directions how to bait your hook with a frog.

VENATOR. But, good master, did you not say even now, that some frogs were venemous; and is it not dangerous to touch them?

PISCATOR. Yes, but I will give you some rules or cautions concerning them. And first you are to note, that there are two kinds of frogs, that is to say, if I may so express myself, a flesh and a fish frog. By flesh-frogs, I mean frogs that breed and live on the land; and of these there be several sorts also, and of several colours, some being speckled, some greenish, some blackish, or brown: the green frog, which is a small one, is, by Topsel, taken to be venemous; and so is the paddock, or frog-paddock, which usually keeps or breeds on the land, and is very large and bony, and big, especially the she-frog of that kind: yet these will sometimes come into the water, but it is not often: and the landfrogs are some of them observed by him, to breed by laying eggs; and others to breed of the slime and dust of the earth, and that in winter they turn to slime again, and that the next summer that very slime returns to be a living creature; this is the opinion of Pliny.* And Cardanus + undertakes to give a reason for the raining of frogs: but if it were in my power, it should rain none but water-frogs; for those I think are not venemous, especially the right water-frog, which, about February or March, breeds in ditches, by slime, and blackish eggs in that slime about which time of breeding, the he and she frogs are observed to use divers summersaults, and to croak and make a noise, which the landfrog, or paddock-frog, never does.

Now of these water-frogs, if you intend to fish with a frog for a Pike, you are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for that the Pike ever likes best. And thus use your frog, that he may

continue long alive :

Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from

In his 19th book, De Subtil, ex.

Hieronymus Cardanus, an Italian physician, naturalist, and astrologer, well known by the many works he has published: he died at Rome, 1576. It is said that he had foretold the day of his death; and that, when it approached, he suffered himself to die of hunger, to preserve his reputation. He had been in England, and wrote a character of our Edward VI.-H.

There are many well-attested accounts of the raining of frogs; but Mr Ray rejects them as utterly false and ridiculous; and demonstrates the impossibility of their produc tion in any such manner. Wisdom of God in the Creation, 310. See also Derham's Phys. Theol. 244, and Pennant's Zoology, 4to, Lond. 1776, vol. iv. p. 10.-H.

the middle of April till August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained, none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how I say, put your hook, I mean the arming-wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills; and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the armingwire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer.

And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell you, how your hook thus baited must or may be used; and it is thus : having fastened your hook to a line, which if it be not fourteen yards long should not be less than twelve, you are to fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt; and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except half a yard of it or rather more; and split that forked stick, with such a nick or notch at one end of it as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. And choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water till the Pike bites; and then the Pike having pulled the line forth of the cleft or nick of that stick in which it was gently fastened, he will have line enough to go to his hold and pouch the bait. And if you would have this ledger-bait to keep at a fixt place undisturbed by wind or other accidents which may drive it to the shore-side, for you are to note, that it is likeliest to catch a Pike in the midst of the water, then hang a small plummet of lead, a stone, or piece of tile, or a turf, in a string, and cast it into the water with the forked stick to hang upon the ground, to be a kind of anchor to keep the forked stick from moving out of your intended place till the Pike come: this I take to be a very good way to use so many ledger-baits as you intend to make trial of.

Or if you bait your hooks thus with live fish or frogs, and in a windy day, fasten them thus to a bough or bundle of straw, and by the help of that wind can get them to move across a pond or mere, you are like to stand still on the shore and see sport presently, if there be any store of Pikes. Or these live baits may make sport, being tied about the body or wings of a goose or duck,

and she chased over a pond.* And the like may be done with turning three or four live baits, thus fastened to bladders, or boughs, or bottles of hay or flags, to swim down a river, whilst you walk quietly alone on the shore, and are still in expectation of sport. The rest must be taught you by practice; for time will not allow me to say more of this kind of fishing with live baits.

And for your DEAD BAIT for a Pike: for that you may be taught by one day's going a-fishing with me, or any other body that fishes for him; for the baiting your hook with a dead gudgeon or a roach, and moving it up and down the water, is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret: it is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a Pike; and then cast it into a likely place; and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water, and so up the stream; and it is more than likely that you have a Pike follow with more than common eagerness. And some affirm, that any bait anointed with the marrow of the thigh-bone of a heron is a great temptation to any fish.†

These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of note, that pretended to do me a courtesy.‡ But if this direction

A rod twelve feet long, and a ring of wire,
A winder and barrel, will help thy desire

In killing a Pike: but the forked stick,

With a slit and a bladder, and that other fine trick,
Which our artists call snap, with a goose or a duck,
Will kill two for one, if you have any luck:

The gentry of Shropshire do merrily smile,
To see a goose and a belt the fish to beguile.
When a Pike suns himself, and a-frogging doth go,
The two-inched hook is better, I know,
Than the ordinary snaring. But still I must cry,
"When the Pike is at home, mind the cookery."

Barker's Art of Angling.-H.

This latter recipe does not occur in the first edition. The Pike loves a still, shady, unfrequented water, and usually lies amongst, or near weeds; such as flags, bulrushes, candocks, reeds, or in the green fog that sometimes covers standing waters, though he will sometimes shoot out into the clear stream. Their time of spawning is about the end of February or the beginning of March; and chief season, from the end of May to the beginning of February. Pikes are called Jacks, till they become twenty-four inches long. The baits for Pike, besides those mentioned by Walton, are a small trout; the gudgeon, loach, and millers-thumb; the head end of an eel with the skin taken off below the fins; a small jack; a lob-worm; and in winter, the fat of bacon. And notwithstanding what Walton and others say against baiting with a perch, it is certain that Pikes have been taken with a small perch with the back fins cut off, when neither a roach nor bleak would tempt them. Let your baits for Pike be as fresh as possible. Dead ones should be carried in fresh bran, which will dry up that moisture that otherwise would infect and rot them.

As this volume is to be considered a reprint of Walton's "Complete Angler," and not a new treatise on the art of fishing, it is deemed unnecessary to give directions for trolling, although a method of Pike-fishing almost universally practised, and one of which Walton has said so little. He, however, who wishes for instructions, may consult the

to catch a Pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain this direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely good; for I have tried it, and it is somewhat the better for not being common. But with my direction you must take this caution, that your Pike must not be a small one, that is, it must be more than half a yard, and should be bigger.

"First, open your Pike at the gills, and if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these, take his guts; and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small, with thyme, sweet marjoram, and a little winter-savoury; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you are to mix with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted. If the Pike be more than a yard long, then you may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice: These, being thus mixt, with a blade or two of mace, must be put into the Pike's belly; and then his belly so sewed up as to keep all the butter in his belly if it be possible; if not, then as much of it as you possibly can. But take not off the scales. Then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth, out at his tail. And then take four or five or six split sticks, or very thin laths, and a convenient quantity of tape or filleting; these laths are to be tied round about the Pike's body, from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick, to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit. Let him be roasted very leisurely; and often basted with claret wine, and anchovies, and butter, mixt together; and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. When you have roasted him sufficiently, you are to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape that ties him, such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of; and let him fall into it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly; and by this means the Pike will be kept unbroken and complete. Then, to the sauce which was within, and also that sauce in the pan, you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter, and to squeeze the iuice of three or four oranges. Lastly, you may either put it into the Pike, with the oysters, two cloves of garlic, and take it whole out, when the Pike is cut off the spit; or, to give the sauce a haut goût, let the dish into which you let the Pike fall be rubbed "Complete Troller," by Ro. Nobbes, 12mo, 1682; the "Angler's sure Guide" already alluded to; Howitt's "Angler's Manual,' 1808; and particularly Daniels' "Field Sports," vol. ii., wherein will be found everything necessary to be known on the subject.

with it: The using or not using of this garlic is left to your discretion. M. B." This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men; and I trust you will prove both, and therefore I have trusted you with this secret.

Let me next tell you, that Gesner tells us, there are no Pikes in Spain, and that the largest are in the Lake Thrasymene in Italy; and the next, if not equal to them, are the Pikes of England; and that in England, Lincolnshire boasteth to have the biggest. Just so doth Sussex boast of four sorts of fish, namely, an Arundel Mullet, a Chichester Lobster, a Shelsey Cockle, and an Amerly Trout.

But I will take up no more of your time with this relation, but proceed to give you some observations of the Carp, and how to angle for him; and to dress him, but not till he is caught,

CHAP. IX.

PISCATOR. THE Carp is the queen of rivers; a On the Carp. stately, a good, and a very subtile fish; that was not at first bred, nor hath been long in England, but is now

It may perhaps be deemed amusing to compare Walton's method of cooking the Pike, with that practised in the Royal kitchens in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as preserved in the Sloane MS. No. 1201. "For to make a pyke in galentyne. Take a pyke and quarter hym, and sethe hym in scharpe sawse, and than pille awey the skynne and ley hym in a fayre vessell of tre or of erthe, and than take whyte wyne and whyte vynegre, and take fayre breed and put thereto, and make it hoote over the fyre, and than drawe it thorough a streynor. Than caste thereto powdre of pepper and of galyngale of cloves, salt it fayre and gyffe it a lytell hete and stere it wele togedre and put it to thy fyssche, and whan thou wilte have of it. take uppe apece or two with the sawse, and cast powdre of gynger uppon it and serve it forth."

"A pyke boyled. Take and make a sawse of fayre water and salt and a lyttell ale and a percyle and then take a pyke and nape hym and drawe hym in the bely, and slytte hym thorow the bely, backe, and hede, and tayle with a knyfe in two peces, and smyte the sydes in quarteres, and wasshe hem clene, and yiffe thow wilt have hym rownde scoche hym by the hede in the backe, and drawe hym there, and scoche hym in two places or iij in the backe, but not thorough. And slytte the pouche and kepe the frye or the lyvre, and cutte awey the galle, and whan the sawse begynneth to boyle, skym it, and wasche the pyke, and cast hym thereinne, and cast the frye and the pouche thereto, and lete it boyle togedres. And then make the sawse thus: mynse small the pouche and the frye in a lytell gravey of the pyke, and cast thereto powdre of gynger, cavell, verjuice, and mustard, and salt."

It has been a common notion that the Pike was not extant in England till the reign of Henry the Eighth; but it occurs very frequently in the "Forme of Cury," compiled about 1390. The old name was Luce, or Lucy. An ancient MS. formerly in the possession of John Topham, Esq., written about 1250, mentions "Lupos aquaticos sive Luceos" amongst the fish which the fishmongers were to have in their shops. Three Lucies were the arms of the Lucy family, as early as the reign of Henry the Third; and in a contemporary Roll of arms they are thus described, "Geffrey de Lucy, de goules trois lucies d'or.' In the 6th Rich. II. Ao. 1382, the mayor and citizens of London prayed that no fishmonger, nor any other person free of the City, might thenceforward buy any kind of fish to sell again in the City, excepting pikes and fresh eels, "forspris pikes, anguilles fresshes," &c. Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 142.b In the Roll of the same Parliament, the words "horspris anguilles fresshes, beketes ou pikes," occur. Ibid. Compare Pennant's Zoology, vol. iii. p. 280, 4to. Lelandi Collectanea, vol. vi. 1, 5, 6. That the Pike was here in Edward the Third's time is evident from Chaucer's Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, edit. Tyrwh. p. 351, 352:

"Full many a fair partrich hadde he in mewe,
And many a Breme and many a Luce in stewe."