136 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



and so carrying your arming 1 wire along his back, unto or near 

 the tail of your fish, betwixt the skin and the body of it, draw 

 out that wire or arming of your hook at another scar near to 

 his tail : then tie him about it with thread, but no harder than 

 of necessity to prevent hurting the fish ; and the better to avoid 

 hurting the fish, some have a kind of probe to open the way for 

 the more easy entrance and passage of your wire or arming : but 

 as for these, time and a little experience will teach you better 

 than I can by words. Therefore I will for the present say no 

 more of this ; but come next to give you some directions how 

 to bait your hook with a Frog. 



Venator. But, good master, did you not say even now, that 

 some frogs were venomous ; and is it not dangerous to touch 

 them ? 



Piscator. Yes, but I will give you some rules or cautions 

 concerning them. And first you are to note, that there are two 

 kinds of frogs, that is to say, if I may so express myself, a flesh 

 and a fish frog.* By flesh frogs, I mean frogs that breed and 

 live on the land ; and of these there be several sorts also, 

 and of several colours, some being speckled, some greenish, 

 some blackish or brown : the Green Frog, wlu'ch is a small 

 one, is by Topsel taken to be venomous : and the Paddock, 

 or Frog-paddock, which usually keeps or breeds on the land, 

 and is very large and bony and big, especially the she 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 Car- 

 danus f undertakes to give a reason for the raining of frogs 

 but if it were in my power, it should rain none but 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 paddock 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 



* The whole of this paragraph is full of cross error. There are, indeed, 

 two species of English Frogs, the Common and the Natterjack, but it does 

 not appear that Walton knew the latter. J. R. 



t In his 19 hook, De Subtil ex. 



j '1 here are many well attested accounts of the raining of frogs ; Imt 

 Mr Ray rejects them as utterly false and ridiculous ; and demonstrates the 

 impossibility of their production in any siu-h manner. Wisdom of God in 

 the Creation, 310. See also Derham's Physico-Theology, 44, and Pennant's 

 Zoology, quarto, Lond. 1776, vol. iv. p. 10. 



