258 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



has a head, big and flat, much greater than suit- 

 able to his body ; a mouth very wide and usually 

 gaping. He is without teeth, but his lips are 

 very rough, much like to a file. He hath two 

 fins near to his gills, which be roundish or crested ; 

 two fins also under the belly, two on the back, 

 one below the vent ; and the fin of his tail is 

 round. Nature hath painted the body of this 

 fish with whitish, blackish, brownish spots. They 

 be usually full of eggs or spawn all the summer, I 

 mean the females ; and those eggs swell their 

 vents almost into the form of a dug. They be- 

 gin to spawn about April, and, as I told you, 

 spawn several months in the summer. And in 

 the winter the minnow and loach and bull-head 

 dwell in the mud, as the eel doth, or we know 

 not where ; no more than we know where the 

 cuckoo and swallow and other half-year birds, 

 which first appear to us in April, spend their six 

 cold, winter, melancholy months. This bull-head 

 does usually dwell and hide himself in holes or 

 amongst stones in clear water, and in very hot 

 days will lie a long time very still, and sun him- 

 self, and will be easy to be seen upon any flat 

 stone or any gravel, at which time he will suffer 

 an angler to put a hook baited with a small worm 

 very near unto his very mouth ; and he never re- 

 fuses to bite, nor indeed to be caught with the 

 worst of anglers. Matthiolus commends him much 

 more for his taste and nourishment than for his 

 shape or beauty. 



