THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 139 



frog of that kind ; yet these will sometimes come into the 

 water, but it is not often ; and the land-frogs are some of 

 them observed by him to breed by laying eggs, and others to 

 breed of the slime and dust of the earth, and that in winter 

 they turn to slime again, and that the next summer that very 

 slime returns to be a living creature ; this is the opinion of 

 Pliny, and Cardanus* (in his tenth book De Subtilitate) under- 

 takes to give a reason for the raining of frogs : but if it were 

 in my power, it should rain none bub water-frogs, for those I 

 think are not venomous, especially the right water-frog, which 

 about February or March breeds in ditches by slime, and 

 blackish eggs in that slime, about which time of breeding the 

 he and she-frogs are observed to use divers summersaults, 

 and to croak and make a noise, which the land-frog, or padock- 

 frog, never does. Now of these water-frogs, if you intend to 

 fish with a frog for a pike, you are to choose the yellowest 

 that 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,t 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, J my next must be to 



* Hieronymus Cardanus, an Italian physician, naturalist, and astrologer, 

 well-known by the many works he has published : he died at Rome 15 76. It is 

 said that he had foretold the day of his death, and that, when it approached, 

 he suffered himself to die of hunger to preserve his reputation. H. 



t It is this expression, with the instructions given in the paragraph, on which 

 is mainly founded the charge of cruelty against Walton, and no doubt gave 

 rise to the lines of Byron so frequently quoted : 



" That quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 

 Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it." 



" Don Juan" canto xiii. 



% Ledger-hook. The name is now applied to a certain sort of apparatus 

 the best used for fishing for barbel. In my notes about the end of chapter 

 the 14th, which treats of the barbel, the ledger-hook or line is fully described. 



ED. 



