CHAP. XVIIL] THE FIFTH DAY. 193 



learned physicians, commended for great nourishment, and to be 

 very grateful both to the palate and stomach of sick persons. He 

 is to be fished for with a very small worm, at the bottom ; for he 

 very seldom, or never, rises above the gravel, on which I fold 

 you he usually gets his living. 



The MILLER'S-THUMB, or BULL-HEAD, is a fish of no pleasing 

 shape. He is by Gesner compared to the Sea-toad-fish, for his 

 similitude and shape. It has a head big and flat, much greater 

 than suitable to his body ; a mouth very wide, and usually gap- 

 ing ; 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 begin 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 

 (ve know not where, no more than we know where the cuckoo 

 and swallow, and other half-year birds, 8 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 himself, 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 refuses 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. 



There is also a little fish called a STICKLEBAG, a fish without 

 scales, but hath his body fenced with several prickles- I know 

 not where he dwells in winter ; nor what he is good for in 

 summer, but only to make sport for boys and women-anglers, and 

 to feed other fish that be fish of prey, as Trouts in particular, who 

 will bite at him as at a Penk ; and better, if your hook be rightly 

 baited with him, for he may be so baited ns, his tail turning like 

 the sail of a windmill, will make him turn more quick than any 



VARIATION.] 8 Summer birds. tit, 3^, and tfh edit. 



* Petrns Andreas Mattkiolus, of Sienna) an eminent physician of the sixteenth 

 century, famous for his Commentaries on some of the writings of Dioscorides. H. 



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