214 THE COMPLETE .ANGLER. PART I, 



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 cuckow 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 very mouth : and he 

 never refuses to bite, nor indeed to be caught with the 

 worst of anglers. Matthiolus ! commend.s him much more 

 for his taste and nourishment, than for his shape or 

 beauty. 



There is also a little fish called a STICKLEBAO, a fish 

 without scales, but hath his body fenc'd 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 Trouts in particular, who will bite at 

 him as at a Penk; and better, if your hook be rightly 

 baited with him; for he may be so baited as, his tail 

 turning like the sail of a wind-mill, will make him turn 

 more quick than any Penk or Minnow can. For note, 

 that the nimble turning, of that, or the Minnow, is the 

 perfection of Minnow-fishing. To which end, if you put 

 your hook into his mouth, and out at his tail ; and then, 

 having first tied him with white thread a little above his 



tice to keep them in a Urge glass-vessel like a punch bowl, with fine gravel 

 strewed at the bottom ; frequently changing the water, and feeding them with 

 bread nJ gentle*. 1 hose who can take more pleasure in angling for, than in 

 beholding them, which I confess I could never do, may catch them with gen- 

 tle* ; but though costly, they are but coarse food. 



(1) Petrus Andreas Matthioltu, ol Sienna, an eminent physician of the six- 

 tveueh rentury, famous (or his Commentaries on some of the writings of Dios- 



