160 THE COMPLETE ANGLER, [PART i. 



heat and the rotten planks of an old ship, and hatched of trees ; 

 both which are related for truths by Du Bartas and Lobel,* and 

 also by our learned Camden, and laborious Gerhard f in his 

 Herbal. 



It is said by Rondeletius, that those Eels that are bred in rivers 

 that relate to or be nearer to the sea, never return to the fresh 

 waters, as the Salmon does always desire to do, when they have 

 once tasted the salt water ; and I do the more easily believe this, 

 because I am certain that powdered beef is a most excellent bait to 

 catch an Eel. And though Sir Francis Bacon will allow the Eel's 

 life to be but ten years, yet he, in his " History of Life and Death," 

 mentions a Lamprey, belonging to the Roman Emperor, to be 

 made tame, and so kept for almost threescore years ; and that 

 such useful and pleasant observations were made of this Lamprey, 

 that Crassus the orator, who kept her, lamented her death ; and 

 we read in Doctor Hakewill, that Hortensius was seen to weep at 

 the death of a Lamprey that he had kept long, and loved exceed- 

 ingly. ;{; 



It is granted by all, or most men, that Eels, for about six 

 months, that is to say, the six cold months of the year, stir not up 

 or down, neither in the rivers, nor in the pools in which they usually 

 are, but get into the soft earth or mud ; and there many of them 

 together bed themselves, and live without feeding upon anything, 

 as I have told you some swallows have been observed to do in 

 hollow trees, for those six cold months. And this the Eel and 

 Swallow do, as not being able to endure winter weather : for 

 Gesner quotes Albertus to say, that in the year 1125, that year's 

 winter being more cold than usually, Eels did, by nature's instinct, 

 get out of the water into a stack of hay in a meadow upon dry 



* Matthias ae Lobel, or UObel, an eminent physician and botanist of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury, was a native of Lisle in Flanders. He was a. disciple of Rondeletius ; and being 

 invited to London, by King James the First, published there his Historia Plantarum, 

 and died in the year 1616. Vide Hoffmann! Lexicon Universal?, art. "Matthias 

 Lobelius." This work is entitled Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia, and was first pub- 

 lished at Antwerp in 1576, and republished at London in 1605. He was author likewise 

 of two other works ; the former of which has for its title Balsami, Opobalsami, Carpo- 

 bahami, et Xylobalsami, cum suo cortice, Explanatio. Lond. 1598 ; and the latter, 

 Stirpium Illnstrationes. Lond. 1655. H. 



t The person here mentioned is John Gerard, one of the first of our English botanists : 

 he was by profession a surgeon ; and published, in 1597, an Herbal, in a large folio, 

 dedicated to the Lord-Treasurer Burleigh ; and, two years after, a Catalogue of Plants, 

 Herbs, &c., to the number of eleven hundred, raised and naturalised by himself in a large 

 garden near his house in Holborn. The latter is dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. H. 



\ Walton, page 119, has cited from Pliny an instance of the fondness of Antonia for a 

 tame Lamprey. Crassus was, for this his pusillanimity, reproached in the Senate of 

 Rome by Domitius in these words : " Foolish Crassus ! you wept for your Murena," or 

 Lamprey. " That is more," retorted Crassus, " than you did for your two wives." Lord 

 Bacon's Apothegtns, H. 



