242 ANGLING. 



ferent kinds of grasshoppers are likewise used with 

 great success. The creeper or water cricket, an 

 aquatic larva, found under stones within the water- 

 mark, ought also to be attended to by the natural 

 bait-fisher. 



The palmer worms or wool beds, as they are 

 sometimes called, are the hairy caterpillars of certain 

 nocturnal moths. Though refused by almost all 

 birds except the cuckoo, they are swallowed by 

 trouts, and may be preserved alive for many 

 weeks in a box with damp earth, strewed over with 

 the leaves of the tree, bush, or other herbage, on 

 which the species was observed to feed. 



The young brood of wasps and bees are useful to 

 the angler ; and for eight or ten days after their 

 first appearance in summer there is no better or 

 more killing bait than a small reddish beetle called 

 the bracken clock in the north of England, the 

 Melolontha horticola of naturalists. Salmon roe is 

 greatly lauded by Barker, who appears to have 

 been the first to discover its merits. " I have 

 found an experience of late which you may angle 

 with, and take great store of this kind of fish. 

 First, it is the best bait for trout that I have seen 

 in all my time, and will take great store, and not 

 fail if they be there. Secondly, it is a special bait 

 for dace and dare, good for chub, or bottlin, or 

 grayling. The bait is a roe of a salmon or trout. 

 If it be a large trout, that the spawns be any 

 thing great, you must angle for the trout with 

 this bait as you angle with the brandling, taking a 

 pair of scissors and cut so much as a large hazel- 



