Piscator. Yes, but I will give you some rules or cautions concerning
them. And first you are to note, that there are two kinds of frogs, that
is to say, if I may so express myself, a flesh and fish frog. By
flesh-frogs, I mean frogs that breed and live on the land; and of these
there be several sorts also, and of several colours, some being
speckled, some greenish, some blackish, or brown: the green frog, which
is a small one, is, by Topsel, taken to be venomous; and so is the
paddock, or frog-paddock, which usually keeps or breeds on the land, and
is very large and bony, and big, especially the she-frog of that kind:
yet these will sometimes come into the water, but it is not often: and
the land-frogs are some of them observed by him, to breed by laying
eggs; and others to breed of the slime and dust of the earth, and that
in winter they turn to slime again, and that the next summer that very
slime returns to be a living creature, this is the opinion of Pliny. And
Cardanus undertakes to give a reason for the raining of frogs: but if it
were in my power, it should rain none but water-frogs; for those I think
are not venomous, especially the right water-frog, which, about February
or March, breeds in ditches, by slime, and blackish eggs in that slime:
about which time of breeding, the he and she frogs are observed to use
divers summersaults, and to croak and make a noise, which the land-frog,
or paddock-frog, never does.
Now of these water-frogs, if you intend to fish with a frog for a Pike,
you are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for that the Pike ever
likes best. And thus use your frog, that he may continue long alive:
Put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from the middle of
April till August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues
so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained, none but He
whose name is Wonderful knows how: I say, put your hook, I mean the
arming-wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills; and then with a
fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one
stitch, to the arming-wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg, above
the upper joint, to the armed-wire; and, in so doing, use him as though
you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he
may live the longer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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