CHAP. XIV. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 175 



spawns; and, as I have formerly told you, with the help 

 of the melter, hides his spawn or eggs in holes, which 

 they both dig in the gravel: and then they mutually 

 labour to cover it with the same sand, to prevent it from 

 being devoured by other fish. 



There be such store of this fish in the river Danube, 

 that Rondeletius says they may, in some places of it, and 

 in some months of the year, be taken, by those who 

 dwell near to the river, with their hands, eight or ten load 

 at a time. He says, they begin to be good in May, and 

 that they cease to be so in August: but it is found 

 to be otherwise in this nation. But thus far we agree 

 with him, that the spawn of a Barbel, if it be not poison, 

 as he says, yet that it is dangerous meat, and especially 

 in the month of May ; which is so certain, that Gesner 

 and Gasius declare it had an ill effect upon them, even 

 to the endangering of their lives. 1 



This fish is of a fine cast and handsome shape, with 

 small scales, which are placed after a most exact and 

 curious manner: and, as I told you, may be rather said 

 not to be ill, than to be good meat. The Chub and he 

 have, I think, both lost part of their credit by ill-cookery; 

 they being reputed the worst, or coarsest, of fresh-water 

 fish. But the Barbel affords an angler choice sport, 

 being a lusty and a cunning fish; so lusty and cunning 

 as to endanger the breaking of the angler's line, by run- 

 ning his head forcibly towards any covert, or hole, or bank, 

 and then striking at the line, to break it off, with his tail ; 

 as is observed by Plutarch in his book De Industrid Ani- 



(1) Though the spawn of the Barbel is known to le of a poisonous nature, 

 ytu it is often taken by country people medicinally ; who find it, at once, a 

 most powerful emetic and cathartic. And, notwithstanding what is said of the 

 wholrsomeness of the flesh, with some constitutions it produces the same effects 

 at the spawn. About the month of September, in the year 1754, a servant of 

 mine, who had eaten part of a Barbel, though, as I had cautioned him, he ab- 

 stained from the spawn, was seized with such a violent purging and vomiting, 

 as had like to have cost him his life. Hawkins. 



