"The Compleat ^Angler 



or blackish. He is a sharp biter at a small worm, and in hot 

 weather makes excellent sport for young anglers, or boys, or women 

 that love that recreation, and in the spring they make of them 

 excellent minnow- tansies ; for being washed well in salt, and their 

 heads and tails cut off, and their guts taken out, and not washed 

 after, they prove excellent for that use ; that is, being fried with 

 yolks of eggs, the flowers of cowslips, and of primroses, and a little 

 tansy ; thus used they make a dainty dish of meat. 



The loach is, as I told you, a most dainty fish ; he breeds and 

 feeds in little and clear swift brooks or rills, and lives there upon the 

 gravel, and in the sharpest streams : he grows not to be above a finger 

 long, and no thicker than is suitable to that length. This loach is 

 not unlike the shape of the eel : he has a beard or wattles like a 

 barbel. He has two fins at his sides, four at his belly, and one at his 

 tail ; he is dappled with many black or brown spots, his mouth is 

 barbel-like under his nose. This fish is usually full of eggs or spawn ; 

 and is by Gesner, and other 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 told 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 



225 



