1 86 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART i. 



fire, where it is not to boil apace, but leisurely and very softly, 

 until it become somewhat soft, which you may try by feeling it 

 betwixt your finger and thumb ; ' and when it is soft, then put 

 your water from it : and then take a sharp knife, and turning the 

 sprout end of the corn upward with the point of your knife, take 

 the back part of the husk off from it, and yet leaving a kind of 

 inward husk on the corn, or else it is marred; and then cut off that 

 sprouted end, I mean a little of it, that the white may appear ; 

 and so pull off the husk on the cloven side, as I directed you ; and 

 then cutting off a very little of the other end, that so your hook 

 may enter ; and if your hook be small and good, you will find this 

 to be a very choice bait, either for winter or summer, you some- 

 times casting a little of it into the place where your float swims. 



And to take the Roach and Dace, a good bait is the young 

 brood of wasps or bees, if you dip their heads in blood ; especially 

 good for Bream, if they be baked, or hardened in their husks in an 

 oven, after the bread is taken out of it ; or hardened on a fire-shovel : 

 and so also is the thick blood of sheep, being half dried on a 

 trencher, that so you may cut into such pieces as may best fit the 

 size of your hook ; and a little salt keeps it from growing black, 

 and makes it not the worse, but better : this is taken to be a 

 choice bait, if rightly ordered. 



There be several oils of a strong smell that I have been told of, 

 and to be excellent to tempt fish to bite, of which I could say much. 

 But I remember I once carried a small bottle from Sir George 

 Hastings * to Sir Henry Wotton, they were both chemical men, 

 ac a great present: it was sent, and received, and used, with great 

 confidence ; and yet, upon inquiry, I found it did not answer the 

 expectation of Sir Henry ; which, with the help of this and other 

 circumstances, makes me have little belief in such things as many 

 men talk of. Not but that I think that fishes both smell and hear, 

 as I have exprest in my former discourse : but there is a mysterious 

 knack, which though it be much easier than the philosopher's 

 stone, yet is not attainable by common capacities, or else lies 

 locked up in the brain or breast of some chemical man, that, like 

 the Rosicrucians,t will not yet reveal it. But let me nevertheless 



* .See note, p. 72. 



t The Rosicrncians were a sect of frantic enthusiasts, who sprung up in Germany about 

 the beginning of the fourteenth century : they professed to teach the art of making gold ; 

 and boasted of a secret, in their power, to protract the period of human life, and even to 

 restore youth. Their founder having been to the Holy Land, pretended to have learned 

 all this from the Arabs. They propagated their senseless philosophy by tradition ; and 

 revealed their mysteries only to a chosen few, and to this practice the author alludes. 

 Lemery, in his book O/ Chemistry, has thus defined their art : " Ars sine arte ; iiijitt 



