318 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



off the husk on the cloven side, as I directed you, and then 

 cutting off a very little of the other end, that so your hook 

 may enter ; and if your hook be small and good, you will 

 find this to be a very choice bait either for winter or sum- 

 mer, you sometimes casting a little of it into the place where 

 your float swims. 



And to take the roach and dace, a good bait is the young 

 brood of wasps or bees, if you dip their heads in blood ; es- 

 pecially good for bream, if they be baked or hardened in 

 their husks in an oven, after the bread is taken out of it, or 

 hardened on a fire-shovel ; and so also is the thick blood of 

 sheep, being half dried on a trencher, that so you may cut 

 it into such pieces as may best fit the size of your hook, and 

 a little salt keeps it from growing black, and makes it not the 

 worse but better : this is taken to be a choice bait if rightly 

 ordered. 



There be several oils of a strong smell that I have been 

 told of, and to be excellent to tempt fish to bite, of which I 

 could say much ; but I remember I once carried a small 

 bottle from Sir George Hastings to Sir Henry Wotton, they 

 were both chymical men, as a great present : it was sent 

 and received, and used with great confidence ; and yet upon 

 enquiry, I found it did not answer the expectation of Sir 

 Henry, which, with the help of this and other circumstances, 

 makes me have little belief in such things as many men talk 

 of: not but that I think fishes both smell and hear, as I 

 have expressed in my former discourse; but there is a 

 mysterious knack, which, though it be much easier than the 

 philosopher's stone, yet it is not attainable by common 

 capacities, or else lies locked up in the brain or breast 

 some chyro'cal man, that, like the Rosicrucians, will not y 



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