158 ON SURREY HILLS. 



catch one and throw him into it, his frantic efforts 

 to gain the bank again are very curious. When his 

 tribe visit the ponds and pools in spawning-time, the 

 pike will have nothing to do with them. The rustics 

 will tell you "he hates 'em like pisen then." Only 

 when the frog has left the water and gone to live on 

 the land, making himself plump and handsome, the 

 pike becomes enamoured of him again ; and at that 

 season you will hear the rustic angler say, " I shell 

 try summat else ; I shell go an' kick up a chawly off 

 the moor." When he has kicked him up, as he terms 

 it, he proceeds with his frog as follows : Holding the 

 " chawly " by the hind-legs, he takes him to the water. 

 Any one that has held a frog in this fashion knows 

 that in the creature's struggles to escape its body is held 

 upright. Whilst the man has it so in his left hand, he 

 brings the first joint of the second finger of his right 

 hand down to the middle of the thumb, and, holding 

 it at the back of froggy's head, lets drive, or, as he 

 says, "snicks him," killing him at once. So effectual 

 is this operation that I have never known a frog to 

 move after it. From those horny fingers it acts with 

 the force of a catapult. This is the first part of the 

 proceeding. The next step is to fix a double hook 



