THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 223 



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 th? belly, two on the back, one be- 

 low 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 win- 

 ter, the minnow, the loach, and bull-head, dwell in the mud, as 

 the eel doth, or we know not where ; no more than we know 

 where the cuckoo and swallow and other half-year birds, which 

 first appear to us in April, spend their six cold, winter, melan- 

 choly months. This bull-head does usually dwell and hide him- 

 self in holes, or amongst stones in clear water ; and in very hot 

 davs will lie a lono; 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* com- 

 mends him much more for his taste and nourishment, than for his 

 shape or beauty. 



There is also a little fish called a sticklebag ;f 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, 



* Peter Andrew Matthiolus, an eminent physician, born at Sienna, Tus- 

 cany, 150 1. He is best known by his Comment.iries on the Materia Medi- 

 ca of Dioscorides, in which he displayed great talent, though, as Sprengel 

 observes (in the preface to his edition of Dioscorides), he was not altogether 

 free from the errors of his age. The work to which Walton refers is pro- 

 bnbly, Epistolce Mcdicinales, Prag., 15G1. He died of the plague at 

 Trent, 1577. He must not be confounded with Matthiolus of Padua, 1490, 

 who wrote Jlrs J^''umerativa. 



t This sticklebag or stickleback is probably Gasterosteus trachurus of 

 Cuvier. It is very small and pugnacious, using the three sharp spines on 

 its back as deadly weapons of offence. Several species of stickleback are 

 found in our waters, exhibiting the same disposition. — Am. Ed, 



