CHAP. VIII. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 135 



the raining of frogs : ! but if it were in my power, it should 

 rain none but water-frogs ; for those I think are not venom- 

 ous, especially the right water-frog, which, about Feb- 

 ruary 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 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 sow 

 the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arm- 

 ing-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above the upper 

 joint, to the armed-wire ; and, in so doing, use him as 

 though y6u loved him, 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 bait- 

 ing your ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next 

 must be to tell you, how your hook thus baited must or 

 may be used; and it is thus: having fastened your hook 

 to a line, which if it be not fourteen yards long should not 

 be less than twelve, you are to fasten that line to any 

 bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, 



(J) There are many well. attested accounts of the raining of frogs : but Mr. 

 Ray rejects them as utterly false aud ridiculous ; and demonstrates the impos- 

 sibility or their production iu any such manner, Wisdom of God in the Crea- 

 tion, 310. See also Derhatn's Phys. Theol. 244. and Pennant's Zoology, 4to. 

 Lond. 1776. vol. iv. p JO. 



