CHAP. viii. THE FOURTH DAY. 113 



you can get, 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 knows 

 how : I say, put your hook, I mean the arming- wire, through 

 his mouth and out at his gills ; and then with a fine needle and 

 silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the 

 arming-wire of your hook ; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper 

 joint, to the arming-wire ; and, in so doing, use him as though 

 you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, 

 that he may live the longer. 



And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your 

 ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell you 

 how your hook thus baited must or may be used, and it is thus : 

 Having fastened your hook to a line, which, if it be not fourteen 

 yards long, should not be less than twelve, you are to fasten 

 that line to any bough near to a hole where a pike is, or is likely 

 to lie, or to have a haunt, and then wind your line on any forked 

 stick, all your line, except half a yard of it, or rather more, and 

 split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of 

 it as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about 

 the stick than so much of it as you intend ; and choose your 

 forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog 

 from pulling the forked stick under the water till the pike bites; 

 and then the pike having pulled the line forth of the cleft or 

 nick of that stick in which it was gently fastened, he will have 

 line enough to go to his hold and pouch the bait ; and if you 

 would have this ledger-bait to keep at a fixed place, undisturbed 

 by wind or other accidents, which may drive it to the shore side 

 (for you are to note, that it is likeliest to catch a pike in the midst 

 of the water), then hang a small plummet of lead, a stone, or 

 piece of tile, or a turf in a string, and cast it into the water with 

 the forked stick, to hang upon the ground, to be a kind of 

 anchor to keep the forked stick from moving out of your in- 

 tended place till the pike come. This I take to be a very 



