THE CUiMPLETE ANGLER. 211 



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, thai 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 sometimes casting a little of it into the 

 place where your float swims. 



And to take the roach and dace, a good bait is the 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 it 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 chymical 

 men — as a great present ; it was sent, and received, and used 

 with great confidence : and yet, upon enquiry 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 fishes both 

 smell and hear, as I have expressed in my former discourse ; but 

 there is a mysterious knack, which, though it be much easier 

 than the philosopher's stone, yet it is not attainable by common 

 capacities, or else lies locked up in the brains or breast of some 

 chymical man, that, like the Rosicrucians,* will not yet reveal 



* Rosicrucians. The early history of this extraordinary and«nthusiastic 

 sect was purposely made obscure by themselves. Their own account of it, 

 as given to the public, was, that a German named Christian Rosenkranz, who 

 travelled among different nations of the East in the fourteenth century, 

 became acquainted with certain doctrines, derived from the Gymnosophists 

 of India, the Persian Magi, the Egyptian Gnostics and the Hebrew Cabal- 

 ists, which were of great importance in morals, chemical philosophy, and 

 medicine. These secrets were buried with him in his tomb, which he 



