238 



THE COMPLETE ANGLEK. 



[PART r. 



and the rotten planks of an old ship, and hatched of trees ; l 



both which are related for 

 truths by Du Bartas and 

 Lobel, 2 and also by our 

 learned 

 borious 



and 



in 



la- 



his 



Camden 

 Gerard 3 

 Herbal. 



It is said by Ttondele- 

 tius, that those eels that 

 are bred in rivers that re- 

 late 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 ; 4 and I do 

 the more easily believe 

 this, because I am certain 

 that powdered beef is a most excellent bait to catch an eel. 



John Gerard. 



1 All this, though according to the belief of that age, is absurd. ED. 



2 Matthias de Lobel, or L'Obel, an eminent physician and "botanist of the 

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

 of Rondeletius; and being invited to London by King James the First, 

 published there his "Historia Plantarum," and died in the year 1616. 

 This work is entitled " Plantarum seu Stirpium Historia," and was first 

 published at Antwerp in 1576, and republished at London in 1605. He 

 was author likewise of two other works, the former of which has for its 

 title "Balsami, Opobalsami, Carpobalsami, et Xylobalsami, cum suo cortice 

 Explanatio" (Lond. 1598); and the latter, "Stirpium Illustrationes " 

 (Lond. 1655). H. 



3 John Gerard was one of the first of our English botanists ; was by 

 profession a surgeon ; and published, in 1597, an Herbal, in a large 

 folio, dedicated to the Lord Treasurer Burleigh, and, two years after, a 

 Catalogue of Plants, Herbs, &c. to the number of eleven hundred, raised 

 and naturalised by himself in a large garden near his house in Holborn. 

 The latter is dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. H. [The passage referred 

 to is lib. iii. chap. 171, " of the goose-tree, barnacle-tree, or tree bearing 

 geese," of which we have already spoken in note, at page 142. The notion 

 that the barnacle -goose grew out of rotten timber, like a fungus, is found in 

 Olaus Magnus de Gent. Septent. folio, 1555, and other early writers. ED.] 



4 Eels, if they can possibly do so, make their way from rivers, ponds, 

 &c., to brackish water, where they are now generally believed to cluster 

 in the mud in large quantities, and in which their spawn is deposited. 

 The temperature in brackish water is supposed to be two degrees warmer 

 than that of either the sea or the fresh water of a river, and this is pro- 



