We fancy him poring on winter evenings over the pages of Aldrovandus and Gesner and Pliny and Topsell's histories of serpents and four-footed beasts, and humbly accepting the teaching of more learned men, who had recorded so many strange facts unobserved by the simple angler. He produces a couple of bishops, Dubravius and Thurso, as eye-witnesses, to testify to a marvellous anecdote of a frog jumping upon a pike's head and tearing out his eyes, after 'expressing malice or anger by swollen cheeks and staring eyes.' Even Walton cannot forbear a quiet smile at this quaint narrative. But he is ready to believe, in all seriousness, that eels, 'like some kinds of bees and wasps,' are bred out of dew, and to confirm it by the parallel case of young goslings bred by the sun 'from the rotten planks of an old ship and hatched up trees.' Science was not a dry museum of hard facts, but a quaint storehouse of semi-mythical curiosities; and therefore excellently fitted to fill spare hours, when he could not meditatively indulge in 'the contemplative man's recreation.' Walton found some queer texts for his pious meditations, and his pursuit is not without its drawbacks. But his quaintness only adds a zest to our enjoyment of his book; and we are content to fall in with his humour, and to believe for the nonce that the love of a sport which so fascinates this simple, kindly, reverent nature must be, as he takes for granted, the very crowning grace of a character moulded on the principles of sound Christian philosophy. Angling becomes synonymous with purity of mind and simplicity of character.