I'm THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART I. 



quotes venerable Bede, 1 to say, that in England there is 

 an island called Ely, by reason of the innumerable num- 

 ber of Eels that breed in it. But that Eels may be bred 

 as some worms, and some kind of bees and wasps an-, 

 either of dew, or out of the corruption of the earth, seems 

 to be made probable by the barnacles and young goslings 

 bred by the sun's heat and the rotten planks of an old 

 ship, and hatched of trees ; both which are related for 

 truths by Du Bartas and Lobel,* and also by our learned 

 Camden, and laborious Gerhard 3 in his Herbal. 



It is said by Rondeletius, that those Eels that are bred 

 in rivers that relate to or be nearer to the sea, never 

 return to the fresh waters, (as the Salmon does always 

 desire to do,) when they have once tasted the salt water; 

 and I do the more easily believe this, because I am cer- 

 tain that powdered beef is a most excellent bait to catch 

 an Eel. And though Sir Francis Bacon will allow the 

 Eel's life to be but ten years; yet he, in his History of 

 Life and Death, mentions a Lamprey, belonging to the 

 Roman emperor, to be made tame, and so kept for almost 



(I) Tto moat universal scholar of Ms tint : he was horn at Durham about 6? J, 

 and bred under Su John of Beverley. It if said, th-l Pope Sergius the First 

 inritrd bin to Rome ; thoafh others My, be never stirred out of his c. II. llr 

 w mmu of great virtue, and remarkable for a mot sweet and engaging dis- 

 poaittoa: he died in7H, and lie* buried at Durham. Hit works make right 

 olMBt* ia folio. See hi* Life in the Biogr. Britann. 



(I) Mttthtmt do Looef, or L'Obel, ma eminent physicun and botanist of the 

 sixteenth century, was native of Lisle, in Flanders. He was a disciple of 

 Roodeletios; and being invited to London, by king James the First, published 

 there his Hitteria Plantarum, and died in the year l6lf>. Vide Hoffinaunl 

 ' Lexicon Untvcrtalf." art. " Matthi< Lobelias." This work is entitled 

 PlMtmrum scst Utirpittm Hutoria, and v*s first published at Antwerp in 1576, 

 od ropobluhed at London in 1605. He was author likewise of two other 

 works; the former of which has for its title Baltami, OpobaUami, Carpobal- 

 ***<, 4 XylobaUami t cummocortice,Erplnnatio. Lood. 15Q8; and the latter, 

 9Urptmm JUuttrationei. Lotc. 1655. 



(3) The person here mentioned is John Gerard, one of the first of our Eng- 

 lish Botanists: he was by profession a Surgeon; and published, in 15y7, an 

 Herbal, in a large folio, dedicated to the lord treurer Burleigh ; and. two 

 yean after, a Catalogue of Plantt, Hcrbt, tee. to the number of eleven hun. 

 dred, railed and naturalized by himself in a large garden near his house in Hoi- 

 born. The la'ter is dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. 



