184 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



hold of moss or weeds, that be the water never so swift, it is not 

 able to force him from the place that he contends for. This is 

 his constant custom in summer, when he and most living crea- 

 tures sport themselves in the sun : but at the approach of winter, 

 then he forsakes the swift streams and shallow waters, and by 

 degrees retires to those parts of the river that are quiet and 

 deeper ; in which places, and I think about that lime, he spawns, 

 and, as I have formerly told you, with the help of the melter, 

 hides his spawn or eggs in holes, which they both dig in the 

 gravel, and then they mutually labor to cover it with the same 

 sand, to prevent it from being devoured by other fish.* 



There be such store of this fish in the river Danube,! that 

 Rondeletius says, they may in some places of it, and in some 

 months of the year, be taken by those that dwell near to the river 

 with their hands, eight or ten load at a time : he says, they begin 

 to be good in May, and that they cease to be so in August ; but it 

 is found to be otherwise in this nation : but thus far we agree 

 with him, that the spawn of a barbel, if it be not poison, as he 

 says, yet that it is dangerous meat, and especially in the month 

 of May ; which is so certain, that Gesner and Gasius:}: declare, 



* Palmer Hackle says that Walton is mistaken, and that the barbel 

 " deposits its spawn on the surface of stones in narrow and rapid parts 

 of the stream" (p. 5S), which is confirmed by other observers. — Am. EJ. 



t Donovan, British Fishes, xxix., says: " After a dreadful carnage be- 

 tween the Turks and the Austrians, on the banks of the Danube, barbels 

 were found in it of such immense size as to be a matter of record." — Am. 



Ed. 



t Hawkins could find no account of Gasius. The physician intend- 

 ed was Antonius Gazius of Padua, of whom a short account is given 

 in Moreri {Diet. Hist., edit. Par., 1759, tom. v., p. 113). His principal 

 work, to which Walton alludes, was his Corona Florida Medieina;, sive 

 De Conservatione Sanitatis, first published at Venice in 1491, when he 

 was only twenty-eight years old, chapters cxxx-vii., which relate to the 

 qualities of river fish as food. He died in 1530, not 152S, as some writers 

 have asserted. See also Manget, Bibl. Serip. Medic., tom. ii., lib. vii. 

 Sir Harris JVicholas. The unhealthiness of the barbel's spawn, and, at 

 limes, of its flesh, seems to be confirmed, though some writers doubt it. 

 What Walton says, is stated by Aldrovandus, who cites Platina, Gesner, 

 •and Gazius, or, as he writes it (probably a misprint), Gadius ; he also 

 (luotes Rondeletius and Salvian, for the opinion of some that the poisonous 

 ([uality was derived from the blossoms of the willow, on which the fish 



