74 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



Again, who is " the ingenious Spaniard " (p. 67) who says 

 that " rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were 

 made for wise men to contemplate, and fools to pass by without 

 consideration ? " The sentiment has been generally attributed to 

 Juan Valdesso, but is not to be found in his ' Considerations,' 

 which was translated at Oxford by Farrar in 1638. 



Some of the " many strange creatures collected by John 

 Tradescant, and others added by my friend Elias Ashmole, Esq., 

 who now keeps them carefully and methodically at his house near 

 to Lambeth, near London," are described (p. 71). They were 

 subsequently removed to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and 

 are mentioned in a catalogue of the collection entitled * Museum 

 Tradescantium,' printed in 1656, or three years after the publica- 

 tion of the first edition of ' The Complete Angler.' 



The Cuttle, Sepia officinalis, is curiously confounded with the 

 Angler-fish, Lophius piscatorius, of which an illustration is given 

 (p. 74), to remove misconception. The habits of the Hermit Crab, 

 Eupagurus bemhardus, of which also a figure is given, and here 

 reproduced, are thus quaintly noticed : — 



"And there is a fish called a Hermit, that at a certain age gets into a 

 dead fish's shell, and like a hermit dwells there alone, studying the wind 

 and weather, and so turns her shell that she makes it defend her from the 

 injuries that they would bring upon her." 



The habits of the Otter are perhaps more copiously described 

 than those of any other animal mentioned by Walton, and a 

 characteristic and quite unconventional figure of the beast, by 

 Mr. G. E. Lodge, is given (p. 92) from life. Of course, Walton's 

 idea about the use of the herb Benione to keep away Otters from 

 fish-ponds (vol. i. p. 92 ; vol. ii. p. 64, n.), was derived from Top- 

 sell's * Historie of Four-footed Beastes,' 1607, which, in turn, was 

 mainly a translation of Gesner's * Historia Animalium.' 



The antiquity of fish-hooks is alluded to (vol. i. pp. 65, 80), as 

 also of fish-bowls for keeping fish in dining-rooms (p. 110). Five 

 years before the date of Walton's fifth edition, viz. in 1671, 

 Dr. Martin Lister published 'A Table of Spiders found in 

 England,' enumerating " thirty and three kinds." Walton, who 

 quotes this fact, would be astonished (were he living now) to 

 know that in Great Britain alone more than 500 species have 

 been described. 



