292 THE COMPLETE ANGLES. % [PART I. 



very seldom or never rises above the gravel, on which, I told 

 you, he usually gets his living. 



The MILLERS-THUMB, or BULL-HEAD, is a fish of no 



The Millers-Thumb, or Bull-Head. 



pleasing shape. He is by Gesner compared to the sea-toad- 

 fish, for his similitude and shape. It has a head, big and flat, 

 much greater than suitable to his body ; a mouth very wide 

 and usually gaping. He is without teeth, but his lips are 

 very rough, much like to a file. He hath two fins near to 

 his gills, which be roundish or crested; two fins also under 

 the belly ; two on the back ; one below the vent ; and the 

 fin of his tail is round. Nature hath painted the body of 

 this fish with whitish, blackish, brownish spots. They be 

 usually full of eggs or spawn all the summer, I mean the 

 females ; and those eggs swell their vents almost into the 

 form of a dug. They begin to spawn about April, and, as I 

 told you, spawn several months in the summer. 1 And in the 

 winter the 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 cuckoo and swallow, and other half-year- 

 birds, which first appear to us in April, spend their six cold, 

 winter, melancholy months. This bull-head 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 



1 I have been assured that wl en the Miller's-Thumb ha? deposited its 

 spawn, it keeps near the spot tO the *pawn has vivified, contrary to the 

 habits of any other fish. ED. 



