I 3 6 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART i. 



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 black- 

 ish, 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 land- 

 frogs 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 t 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 land- 

 frog, 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 igth book, De Subtil, ex. 



t 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 fore- 

 told 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. 



t 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 

 P/iys. Theol. 244, and Pennant's Zoology, 410, Lond. 1776, vol. iv. p. 10. H. 



