136 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



I might say more of this, but it might be thought curiosity 

 or worse, and shall therefore forbear it ; and take up so much 

 of your attention as to tell you, that the best of pikes are 

 noted to be in rivers ; next, those in great ponds or meres ; 

 and the worst, in small ponds. 



But before I proceed farther, I am to tell you, that there 

 is a great antipathy betwixt the pike and some frogs : and 

 this may appear to the reader of Dubravius, a bishop in 

 Bohemia, who, in his book " Of Fish and Fish-ponds,"'"" re- 

 lates what he says he saw with his own eyes, and could not 

 forbear to tell the reader, which was : 



"As he and the Bishop Thurzo were walking by a large 

 pond in Bohemia, they saw a frog, when the pike lay very 

 sleepily and quiet by the shore side, leap upon his head ; and 

 the frog having expressed malice or anger by his swollen 

 cheeks and staring eyes, did stretch out his legs and embraced 

 the pike's head, and presently reached them to his eyes, tear- 

 ing with them and his teeth, those tender parts : the pike 

 moved with anguish, moves up and down the water, and 

 rubs himself against weeds and whatever he thought might 

 quit him of his enemy ; but all in vain, for the frog did con- 

 tinue to ride triumphantly, and to bite and torment the pike, 

 till his strength failed, and then the frog sunk with the pike 

 to the bottom of the water ; then presently the frog appeared 

 again at the top and croaked, and seemed to rejoice like a 

 conqueror ; after which he presently retired to his secret 

 hole. The bishop, that had beheld the battle, called his 



emitting upon it his spawn or milt. The reader will remark, that Walton has 

 already said, at the beginning of this chapter, of pike, "'Tisnot to be doubted 

 but that they are bred, some by generation, and some not." In the present 

 passage : " A he and she-pike will usually go together out of a river into 

 some ditch or creek, and there the spawner casts her eggs, and the milter hovers 

 over her all that time she is casting her spawn, but touches her not" he sets 

 himself right, and gives the real process of pike re-production. One of 

 Walton's greatest errors is, that he places such confidence in what were in his 

 day called learned writers, particularly German ones. They were as bad natu- 

 ralists in his time as they are now, and for the excellent reason that they 

 indulge in day-dreams about the abnormal habits and singular instincts of 

 animalia, instead of trying to account for them by facts derived from actual, 

 observation. The Tudesque theories about river-fish are the vaguest imaginable ;. 

 and if Walton had relied more on his own experience and good sense, than 

 on the dreaminess of Gesner, and similar gobe-mouche naturalists, the " Complete 

 Angler" would not have been the medium of conveying to credulous readers 

 statements concerning the habits offish, birds, and quadrupeds, as silly as they 

 are opposed to all the recognised laws of nature. ED.] 



* Translated into English in 1599, by George Churchey, of Lyon's Inn. 



