MINNOW, LOACH, AND BULL-HEAD. 331 



his similitude and shape. It has a head big and flat, much 

 greater than suitable to his body ; a mouth very wide, and 

 usually gaping ; he is without teeth, but his lips are very 

 Tough, much like to a file. He hath two fins near to his 

 gills, which be roundish or crested ; two fins also under the 

 belly; two on the back; one below the vent; and the fin 

 of his tail is round. Nature hath painted the body of this 

 fish with whitish, blackish, and brownish spots. They be 

 usually full of eggs or spawn all the summer, I mean the 

 females ; and those eggs swell their vents almost into the 

 form of a dug [teat]. They begin to spawn about April, 

 and, as I told you, spawn several months in the summer. 

 And in the winter, the minnow, and loach, and bull-head 

 dwell in the mud, as the eel doth ; or we know not where, 

 no more than we know where the cuckoo and swallow, and 

 other half-year birds, which first appear to us in April, spend 

 their six cold, winter, melancholy months. This fish does 

 usually dwell and hide himself in holes, or amongst stones 

 in clear water ; and in very hot days will lie a long time 

 very still and sun himself, and will be easy to be seen upon 

 any flat stone or any gravel ; at which time he will suffer 

 an angler to put a hook, baited with a small worm, very 

 near unto his mouth ; and he never refuses to bite, nor in- 

 deed to be caught with the worst of anglers. Matthiolus a 

 commends him much more for his taste and nourishment, 

 than for his shape or beauty. 



There is also a fish called a Sticklebag, a fish without 

 scales, but hath his body fenced with several prickles. I 

 know not where he dwells in winter, nor what he is good 

 for in summer, but only to make sport for boys and women 

 anglers, and to feed other fish that be fish of prey, as trout 



