HAP. VIII. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



ml colours, some being speckled, some greenish, some 

 blackish, or brown: the green frog, which is a small 

 one, is, by Topsel, taken to be venomous ; and so is 

 the padock, or frog-padock, which usually keeps or 

 breeds on the land, and is very large and boney, 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 rarth, 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 * Carda- * in hit 19** 

 nus t undertakes to give a reason for the ^\^ Q 

 raining of frogs \ : but if it were in my 

 power, it should rain none but vater-frogs ; for (hose I 

 think are not venomous, 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 padock-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 g^t, 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 the middle of April till August; and, 

 then, the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues 

 so for at least six months without eating, but is 

 sustained, none, but he whose name is Wonderful, 



f 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 for-told the day of his death ; and that, when it ap- 

 proached, he suffered himself to die of hunger to preserve his reputation. 

 He had been in England, and wrote a character of our Edward VI. 



J 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 production in any such manner. Witdom of God 

 ia tin Crtatie:-, 310* See alsoDerham's Pbyt. Tbcol. 244. 



O 



