CHAPTER I. HOMER. POSITION OF FISHERMEN 63

II. HOMER. METHODS OF FISHING 74 III. CONTEST BETWEEN HOMER AND HESIOD. HOMER’S DEATH 86 IV. THE DOLPHIN. HERODOTUS. THE ICHTHYOPHAGI. THE TUNNY 90 V. PLATO. ARISTOTLE THE FIRST SCALE READER. SENSES OF FISH 106 VI. CHARACTERISTICS OF FISHERMEN IN GREECE AND ROME. DEITIES OF FISHING 116 VII. THEOCRITUS. THE GREEK EPIGRAMMATISTS 133 VIII. THE TWO PLINYS. MARTIAL. WAS THE ROD JOINTED? 141 IX. THE FIRST MENTION OF A FLY 152 X. THE SCARUS. THE FIRST NOTICE, “FISHING PROHIBITED” 159 XI. PLUTARCH: CHARGE AGAINST HIM OF CONTEMNING FISHING FALSE. CLEOPATRA’S FISHING. OPPIAN. THE TORPEDO FOR GOUT. ATHENÆUS 169 XII. ÆLIAN. THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY 185 XIII. AUSONIUS. SALMO. SALAR AND FARIO. FIRST MENTION OF THE PIKE IN CLASSICAL LITERATURE 194 XIV. INFATUATION FOR FISH. EXTRAVAGANT PRICES. COSTLY ENTERTAINMENTS. VITELLIUS. CLEOPATRA. APICIUS. COOKS. SAUCES 201

XV. FISH IN SACRIFICES. PICKLED FISH. _Vivaria._ OYSTERS. ARCHIMEDES 215 XVI. LEGAL REGULATIONS OF ROME AS REGARDS FISHING 231 XVII. TACKLE. CURIOUS METHODS OF FISHING FOR THE _Sargus_, THE SKATE, THE _Silurus_, AND THE EEL. WHAT WAS THE _Silurus?_ WILD THEORIES AS TO THE PROPAGATION OF EELS 235 XVIII. THE NINE FISH MOST HIGHLY PRIZED 254 XIX. FISH IN MYTHS, SYMBOLS, DIET, AND MEDICINE 270 XX. DIOCLETIAN’S EDICT, 301 A.D. PRICES OF FISH AND OTHER ARTICLES THEN AND NOW 285 XXI. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ROMAN AND MODERN PISCICULTURE 289 XXII. THE RING OF HELEN 295

EGYPTIAN FISHING XXIII. “THE NILE IS EGYPT” 301 XXIV. TACKLE 307 XXV. ABSTENTION FROM FISH 319 XXVI. SACRED FISH 327 XXVII. FISHERIES. ATTEMPTED CORRELATION OF THE PRICE OF FISH THEN AND NOW. SPAWNING 333 XXVIII. FISHING WITH THE HAIR OF THE DEAD 340 XXIX. THE RING OF POLYCRATES 344

ASSYRIAN FISHING XXX. NO ROD, ALTHOUGH CLOSE INTERCOURSE WITH EGYPT 349 XXXI. FISHING METHODS 355 XXXII. THE EARLIEST RECORDED CONTRACT OF FISHING 360 XXXIII. FISH-GODS. DAGON 363 XXXIV. THE LEGENDS OF ADAPA, AND OF THE FLOOD 369 XXXV. FISH. _Vivaria._ THE FIRST INSTANCE OF POACHING 373 XXXVI. FISH IN OFFERINGS, MAGIC AUGURIES 382 XXXVII. THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIĀMAT 391

JEWISH FISHING XXXVIII. ROD NOT EMPLOYED IN SPITE OF CLOSE INTERCOURSE WITH EGYPT. REASONS SUGGESTED FOR ABSENCE 397 XXXIX. FISH WITH AND WITHOUT SCALES. METHODS OF FISHING. _Vivaria_ 414 XL. ICHTHYOLATRY IMPROBABLE. FISH NOT IN SACRIFICES OR AUGURIES 424 XLI. THE FISH OF TOBIAS. DEMONIC POSSESSION 431 XLII. THE FISH OF MOSES. JONAH. SOLOMON’S RING 438

CHINESE FISHING XLIII. “PLUS UN PAYS PRODUIT DES POISSONS, PLUS IL PRODUIT D’HOMMES” 449

INDEX 470

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE THE FISH AVATAR OF VISHNU, WITH SCENES ILLUSTRATING LIFE OF KRISHNA _Frontispiece_ THE OLDEST (SAVE ONE) REPRESENTATION OF ANGLING, _c._ 1400 B.C. _Title page_ POSEIDON, HERACLES, AND HERMES FISHING 11 AZTEC FISHING 22 AZTEC BOATING 23 PALÆOLITHIC ENGRAVINGS: SEALS, DEAD TROUT, AND (?) EELS 26 ALASKAN HOOK WITH A WIZARD’S HEAD 28 BONE GORGES 32 (1) THE _Eurycantha latro_. (2) HOOK MADE FROM ITS LEG JOINTS _facing_ 34 BARBED HARPOONS 37 BROKEN HARPOON FROM KENT’S CAVE 37 FISHING NET SPUN BY SPIDERS _facing_ 42 FISHERMEN ON THE VASE OF PHYLAKOPI ” 63 “IN AT THE DEATH” ” 72 METHODS OF FISHING, FROM ROMAN MOSAIC 75 MR. MINCHIN’S EXPLANATION OF _κέρας_ 83 THE DOLPHIN AND THE BOY OF IASOS 96 CUTTING UP THE TUNNY 100 ARTEMIS WITH A LARGE FISH PAINTED ON HER DRESS 127 “THE HAPPY FISHERMAN” 131 THE FOWLER’S ROD 149 VENUS AND CUPID ANGLING 168 TORPEDO FISH _facing_ 180 (1) FISHERMAN AND SON. (2) SON SALUTING WAYSIDE HERMES 186 THE NAKED FISHERMAN OF THE VATICAN _facing_ 201 TWO MEN FISHING 220 ARETHUSA 221 A GREEK ANGLER _facing_ 235 MYCENÆAN HOOKS 238 ANGLING WITH WINE, FROM A MOSAIC AT MELOS _facing_ 240 FISH ON A POMPEIAN MOSAIC IN THE NAPLES MUSEUM ” 254 HEAD OF TIBERIUS. TEMPLE WITH TWO COLUMNS IN SHAPE OF FISH, FROM A COIN OF ABDERA 273 THE RAPE OF HELEN, FROM A FIFTH CENTURY B.C. _Scyphos_ 294 THE RETURN OF HELEN ” ” ” ” 296 EGYPTIANS CARRYING A LARGE FISH 300 EARLY HARPOONS 308 AN EGYPTIAN REEL _facing_ 309 SPEARING FISH ” 309 SENBI SPEARING FISH 310 THE EARLIEST REPRESENTATION OF ANGLING AND HAND-LINING _facing_ 314 A FISHING SCENE ” 318 THE OXYRHYNCUS TAKING THE PLACE OF THE BIRD SOUL 328 FISHERMAN WADING WITH CREEL ROUND NECK _facing_ 349 MEN FISHING ASTRIDE GOATSKINS ” 355 THE NET OF NINGIRSU (SO-CALLED) ” 358 FISH-GOD 365 GILGAMESH CARRYING FISH 367 THE DEMON OF THE SOUTH-WEST WIND 370 THE FIGHT BETWEEN MARDUK AND TIĀMAT _facing_ 392 TOBIAS, IN _La Madonna del Pesce,_ BY RAPHAEL ” 397 A PRE-INCA FISHING SCENE 399 ATARGATIS, FROM A COIN OF HIERAPOLIS 426 JONAH ENTERING THE WHALE’S MOUTH, FROM A 14TH CENTURY MS. 439 JONAH LEAVING ” ” ” ” ” 442 CHINESE ANGLING _facing_ 449 CHINESE FISHING ” 458

ANCIENT FISHING

INTRODUCTION

PART I

“_And first for the Antiquity of_ Angling, _I shall not say much; but onely this: Some say, it is as ancient as_ Deucalion’s _Floud: and others (which I like better) say that_ Belus _(who was the inventer of godly and vertuous Recreations) was the Inventer of it: and some others say (for former times have had their Disquisitions about it) that_ Seth, _one of the sons of_ Adam, _taught it to his sons, and that by them it was derived to Posterity. Others say, that he left it engraven on those Pillars, which hee erected to preserve the knowledge of_ Mathematicks, Musick, _and the rest of those precious Arts, which by God’s appointment or allowance, and his noble industry were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah’s Floud_.”—ISAAK WALTON, The Compleat Angler.

“_You see the way the Fisherman doth take To catch the Fish; what Engins doth he make? Behold how he ingageth all his wits, Also his Snares, Lines, Angles, Hooks, and Nets. Yet fish there be, that neither Hook, nor Line, Nor Snare, nor Net, nor Engin can make thine; They must be grop’t for, and be tickled too, Or they will not be catch’t, whate’er you do._”

JOHN BUNYAN, The Pilgrim’s Progress. (The Author’s Apology for his book.)

“_Elle extend ses filets, elle invente de nouveaux moyens de succès, elle s’attache un plus grand nombre d’hommes. Elle pénètre dans les profondeurs des abîmes, elle arrache aux angles les plus secrets, elle poursuit jusqu’aux extrémités du globe les objets de sa constante recherche._”—G. E. LACÈPÉDE, Hist. Nat. des poissons.

“_What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed, when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions are not beyond all Conjecture._”—SIR THOMAS BROWNE, Urne-Buriall.

* * * * *

The craft of Fishing possesses an ancestry so ancient, or according to a Polynesian legend so literally abysmal, that for those who have their business on the waters, deep or shallow, it is but seemly, it is certainly of interest, to essay the tracing of its pedigree, and the linking of the generations of its far-flung lineage.

What were, and whence came its first forbears, and of what manner and of what matter were the original parents of its devices are questions which should appeal to the large majority of its followers. The _sansculottes_, however stalwart, who does not in his heart of hearts rejoice in owning, or claiming, some genealogical garments, wherein to hide his nakedness, is rare and abnormal.

The pedigree is like and unlike its celebrated Urquhart brother. Like in the gaps in generations, which in his endeavour directly to deduce his family from Adam even Sir Thomas’s ingenuity failed to bridge, despite the prolongation when necessary of the lives of his ancestors to ten times the allotted span. Unlike in antiquity, since it stretches far, very far beyond “Deucalion’s Floud” and Adam’s Paradise.

Angling, despite wide ramifications, has perhaps stamped its stock more vividly and has bred truer to original type than its elder brother Hunting. The variance of a repeating rifle from what some hold to be their common first sire, a sharpened pole, is larger and more marked than that of our most up-to-date Rod.

The riddle, as in other cases of disputed succession, of identifying the first real head of the family or the earliest begetter of the race is rendered more complex by wide geographical dispersion. It is possibly insoluble.

Nevertheless to this labour of love I now address myself.

The question of priority of the implement used for catching fish has been often moot, sometimes acute, for, in Walton’s words, “former times have had their Disquisitions about it.”

How did the earliest fisherman secure his prey? Was it by means of the Spear, under which term I include harpoons and barbed fishing spears of any kind, the Net, or the Line? None of these has lacked its champions, of whom the Line has attracted the fewest, the Spear the most.

Uncertainty as to the order of precedence was not really remarkable. We lacked even as late as the beginning of the last century both the data as to Egyptian and Assyrian fishing, which the discovery of the key to the hieroglyphs by Champollion and to the cuneiform by Rawlinson has laid bare, and the data as to the fishing of the Troglodytes which scientific examination of the caves of France and Spain has revealed.

The outlook of our forefathers was necessarily limited, indeed monotopical. No big maps of the archæological world widened their vision. Some sectional sketches, and these badly charted, obscured their perspective.

The priority of the Net at one time probably enrolled the majority of adherents. Nor can we wonder, when we realise that in the case of a country so ancient as India we light on no method of fishing other than Netting—and even that till the post-Vedic literature after 200 B.C. most rarely—in Sanskrit or Pāli literature before 400 A.D.[1] Hence came the deduction, not unnatural but illogical, since it stresses too strongly the argument of silence or omission—_i.e._ because no specimen or representation of a thing exists the thing itself never existed—that the Net must have been the first implement.

And even now after many years of exploration in Mesopotamia a champion of the Net or of the Line, if he similarly disregarded logic and all save Assyrian remains, might not unreasonably proclaim their antecedence to the Spear, of which no mention or representation as a method of fishing has yet been unearthed.

In the case of Egypt the advocate either of the Spear or Net has not as strong, certainly not so clear, a case. Although examples of the first have been discovered in prehistoric graves, the Net finds representation earlier than the Spear. Be this how it may, the Spear, Net, Line, Rod flourish synchronously in the XIIth Dynasty _c._ 2000, or according to Petrie’s chronology about 3500 B.C.

In China, unless the sentence of the quite modern _I shih chi shih_, that in the reign of the legendary Emperor who first taught the use of fire, “fishermen used the silk of the cocoons for their lines, a piece of sharpened iron for their hooks, thorn-sticks for their rods, and split grain for their bait,” be potent enough to produce a protagonist for the priority of the Rod, the boldest advocate would shrink from championing either the Spear or Net. The first mention _c._ 900 B.C. (I know of none actually written before this date[2]), shows them, and the Rod, in general and simultaneous operation.

From Crete shines out no guiding light. The _débris_ recovered from centres of the ‘Minoan’ civilisation yields frequent and in the main vivid pictures of fish, _e.g._ those on the Phaistos Disc (which is considered the earliest instance of printing in Europe at any rate) and the flying fish on glazed pottery from Knossos. But unfortunately neither in the Annual Reports of Sir Arthur Evans to the British School at Athens nor (he tells me) in his forthcoming book do _modi piscandi_ obtain notice.

In Greece, a champion of any single method would be sadly to seek. The Spear, the Net, the Line, and the Rod all occur in our earliest authority, Homer, and, curious to note, as a rule in similes. From the fact that the Spear finds mention but once, the Net twice, and the Line (with or without the Rod) thrice, a real enthusiast has deduced an argument for the priority of the last two over the Spear!

This short survey forces the conclusion that we cannot fix definitely which was the method adopted by the earliest historical fishermen.

Before proceeding on our search for further data two points should be emphasised. First, the period covered even by the longest historical or semi-historical record counts but as a fraction of the time since geology and archæology prove Man to have existed on earth.

Grant, if you will, the demand of the most exacting Egyptologists or Sumerologists, to whom a thousand years are as nothing; concede their postulated five or six thousand years; of what account is one lustrum of millenniums when compared with the years—not less than two million according to some geologists[3]—which have elapsed since Man first came on the scene?

Second, all the above nations possessed an advanced civilisation. Neither civilisation nor fishing is a Jovelike creation, springing into existence armed _cap-à-pie_. Both, like our friend Topsy, “growed,” and both demanded long periods for growth and development from their primitive origin.

In fishing these were retarded by the innate conservatism of the followers of the cult. The psychology of the faithful is an odd blend of dogged, perhaps unconscious, adherence to the olden ways and of an almost Athenian curiosity about “any new thing,” which as often as not sees itself discarded in favour of the ancient devices.

Even in this year of our Lord a cousin of mine, who Ulysses-like many rivers has known, much tackle tested, habitually (influenced no doubt by the recipe for the line given by Plutarch and passed on by Dame Juliana Berners) inserts between his line and his gut some eighteen inches of horse hair! But even in him the law of development works, for he does not Pharisaically adhere to the strict letter of the text, and insist that the hair comes only from the tail of a stallion or gelding![4]

Then, again, not less than two thousand odd years were needed for the Rod and the Line of Ælian’s Macedonian angler to take unto themselves a cubit or so more of length than their Egyptian predecessors.[5] The latter may, however, have been rendered shorter than actually used from the regard paid to artistic convention by the craftsman of Beni-Hasan.

But the connection of the line to the rod furnishes the most arresting instance of conservatism or slow development. Progress from the Egyptian method, which made fast the line to the top of the rod,[6] to a “running line” took, so far as discoverable records show, no less a period than that between _c._ 2000 B.C. and our sixteenth or seventeenth century, _i.e._ some 3600, or (according to Petrie) over 5000, years!

The Reel, which, however rude, would appear a much more complicated device than other conceivable methods of a running line, seems yet to be mentioned first. The earliest description occurs in _The Art of Angling_, by T. Barker, 1651, the first propagator of the heresy of the salmon roe, and according to Dr. Turrell “the father of poachers.” The earliest picture figures in his enlarged edition of 1657. The Reel affords another instance of slow growth. Its employment except with salmon or big pike only coincides with the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The development to the more subtle method of play by means of spare line can only be conjectured.

It was obviously invented somewhere between 1496 (_The Boke of St. Albans_, where we are expressly told to “dubbe the lyne and frette it fast in ẏ toppe with a bowe to fasten on your lyne”) and 1651, when Barker mentions the “wind” (which was set in a hole two feet or so from the bottom of the rod) as a device employed by a namesake of his own, and presumably by few beside at that time.

Walton four years later, but anticipating Barker by two as to its employment in _salmon_ fishing, writes of the “wheele” about the middle of the rod or nearer the hand as evidently an uncommon device, “which is to be observed better by seeing one of them than by a large demonstration of words.”

Focussing a perplexed eye on the picture vouchsafed by Barker in his enlarged edition of 1657, we are impressed by the wisdom of Father Izaak. Frankly it is not easy to discern from it what Barker’s “wind” was intended to be or what the method of working. Apparently he had in mind two distinct implements, a “wheele” similar to Walton’s (such perhaps as is figured in the title page of _The Experienced Angler_ by their contemporary Venables) and a crude winder, such as survives to-day in our sea-fishing, but intended as an attachment to a Rod.[7]

This marks a logical and likely step in evolution. It is inconceivable that invention should have soared to a Reel without there having been some intermediate stage between it and the “tight” line. The advantage of extra line for emergencies must have been recognised pretty early, and a wire ring at the top of the Rod, through which the line could run, naturally resulted from such recognition.

The method of disposing of the “spare” line may be presumed from survival of primitive practice. Not many years ago pike fishers in rustic parts of England often dispensed with a reel. They either let their spare with a cork at its end trail behind on the ground, or wound it on a bobbin or a piece of wood, stowed away in a pocket. Nicholas explains Walton’s (chap. v.) “running line, that is to say, when you fish for a trout by hand at the ground” as “a line, so called, because it runs along the ground.”

It seems impossible to fix with certainty the period at which fishing with a running line made its first appearance. No early data exist, nor do the few early pictures of mediæval rods indicate the presence of a wire top ring. I had a lively hope, when I recalled its many plates and figures, of extracting some guidance from the most important French work of early date (1660) dealing with fishing, _Les Ruses Innocentes_, which may be described (_mutatis mutandis_) as the counterpart of _The Boke of St. Albans_.

The first four books are concerned with “divers methods” (of most of which the author, _à la_ Barker, claims the invention) for the making and the using of all kinds of nets for the capture of birds, both of passage and indigenous, and of many kinds of animals.

The fifth confides to us “les plus beaux secrets de la pêche dans les Rivières ou dans les Etangs.” As the secrets are concerned almost entirely with Net fishing, little light reaches us. Both the instructions and illustrations in chap. xxvi., _Invention pour prendre les Brochets à la ligne volante_, show that the line after being attached about the middle of the pole was twisted round and round till made fast at the end of the pole, from which depended some eighteen feet of line.[8]

Setting conjecture aside and faced by the fact that the Egyptian line was certainly made fast at the top and that neither illustrations nor writings (so far as I have been able to discover) indicate any other condition, we are driven by a mass of evidence, negative though it be, to the conclusion that the ancients[9] and the moderns down to some date between 1496 and 1651 fished with “tight” lines.

[Illustration: POSEIDON, HERACLES, AND HERMES FISHING.

Figured from a _lethykos_ (_c._ 550 B.C.) in the Hope Collection (Sale Cat. No. 22). See note 2, p. 10.]

These were either fastened to the Rod whip-fashion, or possibly looped to it. The distinction is only important in so far as a horse-hair loop at the end of the Rod may have developed into a top ring of wire, which must not be confused with rings fixed _along_ the Rod, which R. Howlett, in _The Angler’s Sure Guide_, 1706, seems the first to note.

Why the Greeks or Romans should not have emancipated themselves from the _tight_ line of Egypt and evolved the _running_ line by the mere force of their inventive genius causes much astonishment. This grows acute when we remember that they knew a fish whose properties and predatory endowments furnished an ideal example of the advantages of the _running_ line.

Of the angler fish and its methods of securing food Aristotle, Plutarch, and Ælian are eloquent.[10] From Plutarch we learn that “the cuttle fish useth likewise the same craft as the fishing-frog doth. His manner is to hang down, as if it were an angle line, a certain small string or gut from about his neck, which is of that nature that he can let out in length a great way, when it is loose, and draw it in close together very quickly when he listeth. Now when he perceiveth some small fish near unto him,” he forthwith plies his nature-given tackle.

With the _tight_ line play can only be given to a fish by craft of hand and rod. Anglers know to their sorrow that although much may be thus accomplished, occasions too frequently arise when the most expert handling can avail naught.

In Walton’s time the custom, as indeed it was the only present help, in the event of a big fish being hooked was to throw the Rod into the water and await its retrieval, if the deities of fishing so willed, till such time as the fish by pulling it all over the water had played himself out.

But the existence of some method of releasing line rather earlier than Barker and Walton may perhaps be inferred from the following passage in William Browne’s _Britannia’s Pastorals_ (Fifth Song), published 1613-16:—

“He, knowing it a fish of stubborn sway, Puls up his rod, but soft: (as having skill) Wherewith the hooke fast holds the fishe’s gill. Then all his line he freely yeeldeth him, Whilst furiously all up and downe doth swimme Th’ insnared fish.... By this the pike, cleane wearied, underneath A willow lyes and pants (if fishes breathe): Wherewith the fisher gently puls him to him, And, least his haste might happen to undo him, Lays down his rod, then takes his line in hand, And by degrees getting the fish to land, Walkes to another poole.”

A few years suffice to span the interval between William Browne and Barker, whereas between Theocritus and Barker a great gulf of time yawns unbridged. Thus we have renderings of the former (Idyll XXI.) and of other classical authors by translators (more especially when they happen to be also anglers!) which demonstrate ignorance or ignoring of the fixity of line and the absence of reel.

These, if not palpably anachronous, afford at any rate evidence of incuriosity concerning facts. Their “then I gave him slack” and other similar expressions, true enough of our present line, can be no way applicable to the conditions of ancient Angling, unless the words mean—and then only by strained construing—that their “slack” was given by depression of Rod rather than by lengthening of line.

With the hook also we are confronted with a similar slowness of development. This is so well attested that we need more than even the authority of Butcher and Lang to establish what their slip in translating γναμπτὰ ἂγκιστρα as _bent hooks_ in _Odyssey_ IV., 369, and as _barbed hooks_ in _Odyssey_ XII., 332, would suggest, viz. a synonymous form of a synchronous invention.

Since it is impossible to fix the length of time, if any, which separates the New Stone from the Copper Age, we can make no adequate guess as to how many generations of men and how many centuries of time were needed to transform the bent into the barbed hook. Perhaps Æneolithic experts can.

Extant examples from Egypt of both furnish, however, some chronological data. If the argument from silence, or rather from non-survival in one particular country, be not pressed unduly, these tend to prove that so far from their being twin brethren, the birth of the bent anteceded that of the barbed hook by at any rate the number of years which separated the Ist from the XVIIIth Dynasty, before which the occurrence of a barbed hook is rare.

The first implement of fishing, be it what you please, was no split-cane Rod, nor the “town-like Net” of Oppian, but some simple device created by the insistent necessity of procuring food. With our primitive ancestors, as with the companions of Menelaus, often “was hunger gnawing at their bellies,” a hunger accentuated at one period by the retreat further into the primeval forests or at another by the actual decrease of the animals, which had hitherto furnished the staple of Man’s sustenance.

Fortunately other data more ancient and more authoritative than the Egyptian or Sumerian as to priority of implement help the quest of Archæologists.

Blazing their trail backwards in the half-light of non-historical forests, they hap on many a _cache_ of ancient devices in the settlements of the New Stone Man. Pausing merely to examine these, they cut their way through yet denser and darker timber, until eventually they emerge at an opening wherein once stood the ultimate if scarcely the original storehouse, whence Neolithic Man drew and in the course of long travel bettered his materials—the dwelling place of the Old Stone Man.

To this storehouse we too must press, tarrying only at the _caches_ to note cursorily Neolithic betterment or invention. The dwelling place is one of many mansions, or rather of many rude caverns dotted over Europe.

Of such are Kent’s Cave near Torquay (which from its remains of animals may have been a mansion, or technically a “station,” as early as any), the Kesserloch in Switzerland, the shelters, or _cavernes_, in Southern France, of which La Madelaine in Dordogne, earliest to be discovered, ranks still the most famous, and a score or so of stations in Spain—not limited we now realise to its north-west corner—of which Altamira, not far from Santander, stands out pre-eminent.

With their exploration a remoter vista has opened out in recent years; a wholly new standpoint has been gained from which to review the early history of the human race. A brilliant band of prehistoric archæologists has brought together such a mass of striking materials as to place the evolution of human art and appliances in the Quaternary Period on a level far higher than had been previously ever suspected. The investigations of Lartet, Cartailhac, Piette, Breuil, Obermaier, etc., have revolutionised our knowledge of a phase of human culture which goes so far back beyond the limits of any continuous story that it may well be said to belong to an older world.

These sentences of Sir Arthur Evans[11] gain further emphasis from Professor Boyd-Dawkins: “It is not too much to state that the frescoed caves in Southern France and Northern Spain throw as much light on the life of those times as the Egyptian tombs do on the daily life of Egypt, or the walls of the Minoan palace on the luxury of Crete, before the Achæan conquest.”

The picture of Palæolithic life revealed by these dwelling places attracts from every point of view. But as our last is fish and fishing, to fish and fishing we must stick. I shall therefore limit myself to the caves which furnish specimens or representations of ichthyic interest, with the one exception of “marvellous Altamira,” which, though it unfortunately yields us no portrayals of fishing, from every other aspect compels mention.

So astonishing was the discovery of this cave with its whole galleries of _painted_ designs on the walls and ceilings that it required a quarter of a century and the corroboration of repeated finds on the French side of the Pyrenees for general recognition that these rock paintings were of the Palæolithic age, and that features, which had been hitherto reckoned as exclusively belonging to the New Stone Man, can now be classed as the original property of the Man of the Old Stone Age in the final production of his evolution.

These primeval frescoes in their most developed state (Evans, _ibid._, tells us) show not only a consummate mastery of natural design, but also an extraordinary technical resource. Apart from the charcoal used in certain outlines, the chief colouring matter was red and yellow ochre, mortars and palettes for the preparation of which have come to light. In single animals the tints are varied from black to dark and ruddy brown or brilliant orange, and so by fine gradations to paler _nuances_, obtained by scraping and washing.

The greatest marvel is that such polychrome masterpieces as the bisons standing and couchant or with limbs huddled together were executed on the ceilings of inner vaults and galleries, where the light of day never penetrated. Nowhere does smoke blur their outlines, probably (as Parkyn[12] suggests) because of long oxidisation. The art of artificial illumination had evidently progressed far. We now, indeed, know that stone lamps, decorated in one case with the head of an ibex, already existed.

“_Les extremes se touchent_” was here aptly exemplified, for to a very young child was it reserved to discover the very oldest art gallery in the world. In 1879 Señor de Santuola chanced to be digging in a cave on his property, when he heard his little daughter cry, “Toros, toros!” Realising quickly that this was no warning of an impending charge by bulls, he followed her gaze to the vaulted ceiling, where his eyes there espied “the finest expression of Palæolithic art extant.”

This little Spanish girl was the first for many, many thousands of years to behold a collection of pictures, which demonstrate not only the high point of excellence to which the art of the Troglodytes had attained, but also, from the absence of perspective and of decorative as compared with pictorial composition, indicate how long is probably the interval and how far is the separation between them and the Men of the Neolithic Age.

Not only in the character of their Art, which if more specialised in subjects was superior in representative quality, but also in the substance and in the method of fashioning their fishing and hunting implements, the separation between the Old Stone and the New Stone Man is very marked.

The former for their stone implements almost always used flint. They worked it to shape merely by flaking or chipping. The latter employed also diorite, quartzite, etc., and in addition to flaking fashioned them by grinding and polishing.[13]

It must, I fear, be acknowledged that the _caches_ of the New Stone Age fail to give us the help expected towards settling what was the first implement employed. It is true that they yield hooks, nets, net-sinkers, which may have been merely developments of Troglodyte tackle, but, judging from the absence of any surviving Palæolithic example, were more probably new inventions.

But neither these nor the implements of succeeding Ages furnish us with evidence sufficient to decide the tackle first employed by the earliest fisherman, or even by the Old Stone Man, for, as Cartailhac truly warns us, “Ce n’est pas, comme on l’a dit à tort, le début de l’art que nous découvrons. L’art de l’âge du renne est beaucoup trop ancien.”[14]

And here it may well be objected, if the New Stone Age does not disclose any priority of implement, why further pursue what thus must be the insoluble? Why, indeed, especially if it be true that their tackle with some additional devices merely shows up as a development and improvement of that of their predecessors, to whom in point of time they surely stand nearer than any other known race?

The objection is pertinent. But, startling as the statement may seem, there now exist, or have within the last century existed, races, who _in the actual material, and in the mode of fashioning, of their weapons_ are, in the opinion of experts, nearer akin to and resemble more closely Palæolithic than did Neolithic man.

Speaking of the Eskimos, Cartailhac simply summarises the evidence of many authorities, when he writes “the likenesses in the above points are so striking that one sees in them the true descendants of the Troglodytes of Perigord.”

Professor Boyd-Dawkins goes farther. He finds the Eskimos so intimately connected with the Cave Men in their manners and customs, in their art, especially in their method of representing animals, and in their implements and weapons, that “the only possible explanation is that they belong to the same race: that they are representatives of the Troglodytes, protected within the Arctic circle from those causes by which their forbears had been driven from Europe and Asia. They stand at the present day wholly apart from other living races, and are cut off from all by the philologer and the craniologist.”[15]

Food supply probably effected the migration of the Eskimos, or rather of their ancestors from Europe.[16] At the close of the last ice age, as the ice cap retreated Northwards, the reindeer followed the ice, and the Eskimo followed the reindeer.

Of the aborigines of Tasmania Professor E. B. Tylor testifies: “If there have remained anywhere up to modern times men, whose condition has changed little since the early Stone Age, the Tasmanians seem such a people. Many tribes of the late Stone Age have lasted on into modern times, but it appears that the Tasmanians by the workmanship of their stone implements represent rather the condition of Palæolithic man.”[17]

Sollas goes even farther: “The Tasmanians, however, though recent were at the same time a Palæolithic or even, it has been suggested, an Eolithic race: they thus afford us an opportunity of interpreting the past by the present—a saving procedure in a subject where fantasy is only too likely to play a leading part.”[18] But their usual technique is against Eolithicism.

If these authoritative statements be accurate, can we not hazard a shrewd conjecture from examination of the implements and of the methods prevalent amongst the backward or uncivilised tribes closely resembling our Cave Dwellers, as to which was probably the first implement or method employed for catching fish? Can we, in fact, from the data available from the Eskimos, Tasmanians, and other similar races so reconstruct our men of Dordogne and elsewhere as to adjudge approximately whether first in their hands at any rate was the Spear, the Hook, or the Net?

Such a quest seems one of the incidental motives of G. de Mortillet in _Les Origines de la Chasse et de la Pêche_, 1890, which modifies in several particulars his earlier _Les Origines de la Pêche et de la Navigation_, 1867. We find from his pages and those of Rau’s _Prehistoric Fishing_ (1884), and of Parkyn’s _Prehistoric Art_ (1916), that a comparative examination of the above races, as it ramifies, discloses not only a close resemblance to Palæolithic Man in the material, nature, and fashioning of their tackle, but also in their art and method of expressing their art.

Such similarity of art, evident in the Eskimos, stands revealed by the Bushmen of Africa (especially in the caves formerly used for habitations by the tribes of the Madobo range) in no less obvious or striking degree. “The nearest parallels to the finer class of rock carvings in the Dordogne are in fact to be found among the more ancient specimens of similar work in South Africa, while the rock paintings of Spain find their best analogies among the Bushmen.”[19]

The Africans, it is true, perfected their engravings on the surface of the rocks more frequently by “pecking.” But both they and Palæolithic man make free and successful use of colours, of which the African possesses six as against the three or four of his European brethren. Each race depicts fish and animals so life-like as to be easily identifiable.

What evidence as to priority do the Eskimo methods of to-day yield us? Cartailhac but echoes Rau, Salomon Reinach, and Hoffmann[20] in his assertion that the prehistoric Reindeer Age compares practically with the actual age of the Eskimos. Their fishing spears in material, shape, and barb resemble the Palæolithic.

Their carvings and engravings of fishing and whaling scenes on bone and ivory show clear kinship to the Dordognese.

Hoffmann’s able study of the Eskimos not only brings out these similarities, but also specially notes the closeness with which they observe and the exactitude with which they render anatomical peculiarities of fish and animals. As portrayers of the human form, on the other hand, they must be reckoned far from expert. The caves of France and those of Spain in general, although the _paintings_ of the human form at Calapata and other places are far more finished and far more frequent than the French drawings, disclose curiously the same power and the same deficiency as characteristic of Troglodyte art.[21]

No race probably in the world depends so greatly on fishing for a livelihood as the Eskimos. From them, if from any, we should derive most light and leading. With them the Spear and the Hook form the chief, and till recently probably the only, tackle. Nets, on account of the ice, play little part. To any claim for precedence of the former over the latter, a champion of the Net demurs on the ground of climatic conditions, which he not unreasonably urges prevent any proper analogy in this respect being drawn between them and our Cave Men.

Touching the similarity of the Tasmanian to the Troglodyte, Ling Roth amplifies, especially as regards the material, etc. of the Spear, the evidence contained in Tylor’s already quoted sentence. This in conjunction with Captain Cook’s earlier statement that the Tasmanians, while experts with the Spear, were ignorant of the use of a Hook, and, according to Wentworth, of a Net, would have gone far in helping our quest and in establishing the precedence of the Spear.

Unfortunately the evidence of Lloyd and others that these aborigines speared fish as a pastime, coupled with the fact that while they consumed _crustaceæ_ they abstained (probably from reasons of tabu or totem) from eating scaled fish, sharply differentiates their _Kultur_ from that of our prehistoric fishermen “at whose bellies hunger was gnawing.”[22]

From Mexico, and especially from the representations in Yucatan, I had hoped for new factors helping to solve our problem. First, because these had so far escaped the meticulous examination of the Madelainian, and second, because they were the product of an ancient people, the Mayas, who ranked fish as an important item of their diet, and pursued fishing with the Spear and the Net.[23]

With the Aztecs, who in the thirteenth century inherited the Maya culture, now dated as regards their architecture back to the first three centuries A.D.,[24] the hook arrives, or rather appears. Aztec skill in fishing stands well attested. Their artificial fishponds or _vivaria_, and the importance which they attached to fish as a food extract favourable comment from Cortez.[25]

In spite of the pictographs, known as the Mendoza Codex,[26] being executed several centuries after the date I have roughly allotted myself, _viz._ 500 A.D., I cannot resist inserting two of these on account of their fourfold interest.

[Illustration: AZTEC FISHING.

From the _Mendoza Codex_, vol. i. pl. 61, fig. 4.]

They show first, that Mexican lads received early in their teens education in fishing. Second, that the Aztecs were familiar with scoop nets. Third—and this surely will go to the heart of our Food Controller—that food was rationed. From the circles or dots we learn that the age of one youth depicted was thirteen, and from the two connected ovals marked with small dashes that his allowance of food consisted of two cakes or _tortillas_ a meal. Fourth, by the symbol before his mouth, that the father is speaking. The symbol very roughly reminds us of the Assyrian system of signs which determine the nature or subject of a word, as the two hundred odd fish mentioned in Asur-bani-pal’s library at Nineveh signify.

[Illustration: AZTEC BOATING.

From the _Mendoza Codex_, vol. i. pl. 61, fig. 3.]

But Mexico as a staff in our quest of priority breaks in our hands. The Museo Nacional a few years ago contained nothing of prehistoric fishing interest except perhaps a notched stone sinker. Greater disappointment still, the wealth of ancient Maya information from the monuments of Merida yields us sometimes fish, but never fishing scenes.[27]

From ancient Peru I had hoped help, but neither the four massive tomes of _Ancient Peruvian Art_ by A. Baessler, nor _The Fish in Peruvian Art_ by Charles W. Mead vouchsafe it.

To the absence among the ancient Peruvians of any written language Mead attributes the very early arrival of conventionalism in art. In consequence of conventionalism, fish at the period reached are merely rendered as various designs, notably that of the “interlocked fishes,” _i.e._ a pattern of parts of two fish turned in opposite directions, a curious example of which may be found in Mead, Plate I. fig. 9. The mythological monster, part fish part man, in Plate II. fig. 13, compares and contrasts with similar Assyrian representations.

The tomes of _The Necropolis of Ancon_ fail also to aid us. Among the hundreds of objects of Inca civilization depicted, nothing piscatorial, except some copper fishing hooks and a few spears, comes to view.[28] Joyce, however, gives a fishing scene depicted on a pot from the Truxillo district of the coast, which the author dates pre-Inca, or anywhere between 200 B.C. and A.D.[29]

From his book emerge two interesting points of comparative mythology. The first—which compares with Assyrian and other similar legends[30]—the tradition that culture was first brought to Ecuador by men of great stature coming from the sea, who lived by fishing with nets; the second—which compares with the Egyptian practice—the custom among certain primitive coast tribes of placing provisions, among which were fish, in the graves of the dead.[31]

Other races of the world present many points of similarity to the French cave men. The Bushmen of Africa, and the Bushmen of Australia, _inter alios_, exemplify this. Banfield, in dealing with the drawings or so-called frescoes of men, animals, and fish on Dunk Island, vouches for the latter as “of talent, original and academic. Here is the sheer beginning, the spontaneous germ of art, the labourings of a savage soul controlled by wilful æsthetic emotions.”[32]

This review of the fishing weapons and methods of the races cited—especially of the Eskimos and the Tasmanians, the races closest to the Troglodytes—provides data which make for a plausible conjecture, but none, owing to differing conditions caused by climate or custom, which enable a definite decision as to priority of implement.

Let us return from this survey of races to the _cavernes_ and examine their contents.[33] Their _débris_ (at times ten feet deep and seventy long) manifests that these _stations_ served as habitations for several generations of men.

From nearly all the French stations neighbouring the sea or rivers, bones of fish, especially of salmon, have been recovered. These have been identified, but not without some dissent, as belonging to the Tunny, _Labrax lupus_, Eel, Carp, Barbel, Trout, and _Esox lucius_.

The presence of the last, our pike, in this (and again in Neolithic) _débris_ excites our interest as evidence that the Troglodytes knew and made use of a fish whose absence, despite its wide geographical distribution, from all Greek and Latin literature until we reach the time of Ausonius, Cuvier, or more strictly Valenciennes, notes with extreme surprise.[34]

While in La Madelaine and elsewhere fish occur abundantly in the _débris_, at some _cavernes_ in the Vézère Valley, notably Le Moustier, they cannot be traced. Their absence coupled with the presence of animal bones has led some archæologists to the conclusion that Le Moustier and other stations were earlier inhabited than La Madelaine, at a time, in fact, when according to Paul Broca, “Man hunted the smaller animals as well as large game, but had not yet learned how to reach the fish.”

In addition to osseous deposits, numerous ichthyic carvings and engravings on materials and weapons present themselves. It is curious, however, to note that (at any rate up to 1915) of all the caves and grottoes two only, Pindal on the wall, and Niaux (the latest discovered French cave where black is the solitary colour employed) on the floor, furnish us with representations of fish on _wall or floor_.

[Illustration: TWO SEALS, DEAD TROUT, AND (?) EELS.

From _Le bâton de bois de renne de Montgaudier_ Museum.]

These Old Stone Men not only observed closely, but portrayed the results of their observations with remarkable faithfulness. The reliefs of bisons mounted in clay and the effigies of women carved in ivory, the paintings of bisons instinct with life and movement, the figures of two seals (engraved on a _bâton_ from Montgaudier) with a dead trout,[35] of another seal engraved on a drilled bear’s tooth (from Duruthy), and of an otter with a fish incised on a reindeer antler from Laugerie-Basse,[36] evoke the lively admiration of de Mortillet and Parkyn.

Such is their graphic truthfulness and attention to detail that, according to the former writer, the trout which the seals have killed floats, as dead fish do, belly up, and is not only perfectly characterised in general form, but is rendered with the spots on the top of the back dotted quite accurately.[37] Not less admirable is the bas-relief of a fish in reindeer horn from Mas d’Azil, or of another pierced by a spear.[38]

The frequent engravings of animals and of fish prompt S. Reinach and others to the interesting surmise that since all or most portray creatures desired for food by hunters and fishermen, they were executed not for amusement, “mais sont les talismans de chasseurs qui craignent de manquer de gibier. L’objet des artistes a été d’exercer une attraction magique sur les animaux de la même espèce. Les indigènes de l’Australie Centrale peignent aussi sur les roches ou le sol des figures des animaux dans le but avoué d’en favoriser par la même raison, qui dans certaines campagnes fait qu’on évite de prononcer le nom du loup.”[39]

After pointing out that the representations of the Reindeer epoch “offrent un caractère analogue,” he continues, “À cette phase très ancienne d’evolution humaine la religion (au sens moderne de ce mot) n’existe pas encore, mais la magie joue un rôle considerable et s’associe à toutes les formes de l’activité.”[40]

Magic, especially imitative magic, according to Frazer and others, plays a great part in the measures taken by the rude hunter or fisherman to secure an abundant supply of food. On the principle that like produces like, many things are done by him or for him by his friends in deliberate imitation of the result sought.

Confirmatory evidence from races, past and present the world over, stands ready to call. The Point Barrow Eskimos, when following the whale, always carry a whale-shaped amulet of stone or wood. The North African fisherman of the present day, in obedience to an ancient Moslem work on Magic, fashions a tin image of the fish which he desires, inscribes it with four mystic letters, and fastens it to his line.

[Illustration: AN ALASKAN HOOK WITH A WIZARD’S HEAD.

From E. Krause’s _Vorgeschichtliche Fischereigeräte_, fig. 345.]

If at the due season fish fail to appear, the Nootka wizard constructs of wood[41] a fish swimming, and launches it in the direction whence the schools generally arrive. This simulacrum, plus incantations, compels the laggards in no time.[42]

In Cambodia, if a netsman be unsuccessful, he strips naked and withdraws a short distance: then strolling up to the net, as if he saw it not, he lets himself be caught in the meshes, whereupon he calls out, “What is this? I fear I am caught.” Such procedure is believed to attract the fish efficaciously and to ensure a good haul.[43]

Scotland not a century ago witnessed pantomimes of similar character, according to the Rev. J. Macdonald, minister of Reay. Fishermen, when dogged by ill luck, threw one of their number overboard and then hauled him out of the water, exactly as if he were a fish. This Jonah-like ruse apparently induced appetite, for “soon after trout, or sillock, would begin to nibble.”

The comparative ethnologist detects in all these cases an attempt to establish direct relations between the hunter or the fisher and his quarry. Primitive man in search for food frequently seeks to establish an impalpable but in his eyes very serviceable connection between himself and the object of his quest by working a likeness of his desired prey.

Such a likeness, according to the doctrine that a _simulacrum_ is actively _en rapport_ with that which it represents, bestows on its possessor power over the original—“l’auteur ou le possesseur d’une image peut influencer ce qu’elle représente.”[44] The cases are simply the commonplaces of homœpathic or imitative magic.[45]

We find that just as the savage attempts to appease the ghosts of men he has slain, so he essays to propitiate the spirits of the animals and fish he has killed: for this purpose elaborate ceremonies of propitiation are widely observed.[46] Of similar character and intent are the taboos observed by fishermen before the season opens, and the purifications performed on returning with their booty.

Magic, exercised not so much to propitiate as to avoid offending some power—in the following instance the element of water—originated the rule (existent among the Eskimos fifty years ago) that forbade during the salmon season any water being boiled in a house, because “this is bad for the fishing.” Frazer suggests that the Commandment in Exodus xxxiv. 26, “Not to seethe a kid in its mother’s milk,” embodies a like illustration.[47]

From carvings, whether executed for purposes of amusement or of magic, and from specimens found in the _débris_ of the stations, we derive our knowledge of the earliest implements and methods employed in Perigord and elsewhere for taking fish.

A study of these warrants, to my mind, the conclusion that only two weapons can be traceably attributed to Palæolithic Man. First and pre-eminent the Spear (or Harpoon with its various congeners) with possibly adjustable flint-heads, and second, but to a far less extent, the Gorge, or as it has been better termed, “the bait-holder.”

Of a Troglodyte Net no representation exists, no specimen survives. The absence of an actual specimen can perhaps be explained by the perishable nature of the fibres or wythes used for its construction.

The undeniable survival of pieces of Nets among the lake dwellers seems somewhat to negative the explanation.[48] But these may have survived because of the presence, while those of the Palæolithic Age may have perished because of the absence of some preservative power in the substance in which they were embedded.

The absence from the latter and the presence in the former _débris_ of Net sinkers, etc., strongly, if not conclusively, corroborate Broca’s conclusion that the Cave men of the Vézère Valley and elsewhere were strangers to the Net.

We possess, in my opinion, no evidence of Hooks (as distinct from Gorges) or of anything resembling Hooks _proper_—_viz._ hooks made out of one piece, recurved, and with sharpened ends—being used by the Old Stone Man.

De Mortillet, it is true, writing in 1867,[49] states that “hooks belonging to the reindeer epoch have been found in the Caves of Dordogne. Along with those of the simple form (the gorges) others were met with of much more perfect shape.” In his later work (_op. cit._) of 1890 he contents himself with claiming the existence of a hook, but of very primitive type, “a small piece of bone tapered at either end”—in fact, nothing more than the Gorge.[50]

S. Reinach, again, instances “three fish-hooks,” but whittles them away till they become “two sharp points more in the nature of a gorge.”[51] Osborne, commenting on the numerous pigmy flints discovered in the Tardenoisian _débris_, writes that “it would appear that a large number of these were adapted for insertion in small harpoons, or that those of the grooved form might even have been used as fish-hooks.”[52] With the opinion of Christy (co-explorer with Lartet of La Madelaine) that those pointed bone rods or gorges “may have formed part of fish-hooks, having been tied to other bones or sticks obliquely,”[53] the evidence in favour of the Hook practically finishes.

The case, I venture to maintain, breaks down. And this, too, in spite of the view expressed and the evidence adduced by so eminent an authority as Abbé H. Breuil, and in spite of the _gravure de Fontarnaud figurant un poisson mordant_ (?)—the query is Breuil’s—_à l’hameçon_. The _gravure_ fails to convince, chiefly because _les hameçons_ figured do not recurve in the proper sense. They seem to be more in the nature of _gorges_ curved back and much improved in the course of generations.[54]

The evolution of the primitive gorge, in particular those with ends slightly curved, into a double fish-hook was, I suggest, probably an easy process, more especially with the discovery of the adaptability of bronze. But these gorges can never be properly termed hooks.

[Illustration: BONE GORGE OR BAITHOLDERS.

1. From La Madelaine. 2. From La Madelaine, grooved for attaching the line. 3 and 4. From Santa Cruz, California. The slight curving of 3 may be possibly the first step towards the more rounded gorge, and eventually the bent hook.]

The function of the hook is to establish a hold by penetration, that of a gorge by resistance—once down, _vestigia nulla retrorsum_. A shape with some but not too great curvature[55] would increase such resistance, one with more would possibly give the additional safeguard of penetration.

Meditation on this duplication of functions might lead an enquiring mind to conclude that penetration alone might suffice for what was required. Thus farther curve might be added for this ostensible purpose, with the result that in time the hook supersedes the gorge, to which it is superior in several respects, not least in ease and speed of extraction from a fish when landed.

Small bone rods tapering towards both ends, and sometimes grooved in the middle probably for attachment of a line, form the gorges of the Caves. Their descendants or kinsmen found all the world over vary in shape and material. But whether fashioned of bone, or flake of flint, or of turtle-shell, with cocoa nut used as trimmers, whether straight or curved at the ends, the purpose and operation of one and all is the same—to be swallowed (buried in bait) by the fish _end first_. The tightening of the line soon alters this position into one crosswise in the stomach or gullet. Even at the present time in some parts of England the needle, buried in a worm when “sniggling” for eels, works successfully in similar fashion.

It is not possible here to discuss fully the various materials and shapes of the first Hook proper. This (according to my view) Neolithic, certainly post-Palæolithic,[56] creation developed doubtless from the over-education of fish, a complaint possibly as rife then as in our own day.

No writer, despite zealous endeavours, has succeeded in determining which material—stone (rarely found), bone, shell, or thorn[57]—was first employed for the purpose. On that which lay readiest would probably be essayed the prentice hand of each particular race. To dwellers near the shore the large supply and easy adaptability of shells would of a surety appeal. These could be fashioned so as to be used alone, or lashed with fibre to a piece of wood or bone so as to form the bend, while the wood or bone constituted the shank of the hook.[58]

Prehistoric Man often with a limited local supply was driven to adopt and adapt any material which could be forced into his purpose of a hook. To this cause has been ascribed one of the most extraordinary hooks on record. This relic, now in the Berlin Museum, of the lacustrine dwellers is formed out of the upper mandible of an eagle, notched down to the base.

But the most interesting _natural_ fish-hook known to me (found in Goodenough Island, New Guinea) is the thick upper joint of the hind leg of an insect, _Eurycantha latro_, furnished, however, only by the male, who is endowed with the long, stout recurved spur, suitable for fishing. The leg joints and therefore the hooks got from them (about 1⅝ inches long) are supplied ready made by Nature: they merely require to be fastened to a tapered snood of twisted vegetable matter for immediate employment.[59]

Where flints, shells, and horn were absent or, if present, were not turned to account, an abundance of thorns with bend and point ready made and with proved capacities of piercing and holding would attract the notice and serve the purpose of the New Stone Man. Such later on was the case in Babylon and Israel (in both of which countries the primary sense of the word equalling hook seems, according to some authorities, to have been thorn[60]), and is the case even now with our fishermen in Essex and the Mohave Indians in Arizona.[61]

[Illustration: THE _Eurycantha latro_.

HOOK READY MADE FROM THE SPUR OF _Eurycantha latro_.

See n. 1, p. 34.]

The suggestion that the choice of material was generally prompted by abundance or proximity of supply seems reasonable. But it must not be pushed as far as the assumption (of which a glance at the evidence as to material adduced by Joyce detects the absurdity) that, because gold was very abundant in Columbia and because gold fish-hooks have been unearthed in Cauca and elsewhere, the primitive angler of that country employed gold as the chief constituent of his hook![62]

Nor, again, is it possible for me to dwell on the evolution or in some countries the possible _pari passu_ development of the single into the double hook (mentioned in England first in _The Experienc’d Angler_ of Venables, 1676), nor yet to trace the various stages by which the simple bone or tusk hook of Wangen or Moosseedorf blossomed out into the barbed metal hook of the Copper Age.[63]

The Spear-Harpoon and some points of reindeer horn alone remain for consideration. Opinion is divided as to the nature and use of these points. Some pronounce them mere arrow heads.[64]

Against this view leans the fact that, while they have been recovered mainly from the French caves, no real proof as yet exists of Palæolithic Man north of the Pyrenees being acquainted with the bow. Paintings discovered in 1910 at Alpera in the south-east of Spain show, however, men carrying and drawing bows, and arrows with barbed points and feathered shafts, but no quivers. Northern Man, if he did not paint, may well have employed, arrows, for hunting scenes, in which they should figure, as at Minatada and Alpera, are wanting in France.

Other writers maintain that these points were the armatures of hunting spears, others, arguing from their easy detachment, that they were the heads of fish-spears or harpoons. But this contrivance seems far too complicated for our primitive _piscator_. No writer proves conclusively what was the exact purpose of these points, or whether, in fact, the fish-spears or harpoons had detachable heads. E. Krause suggests that as the earliest fish-spears were of wood, they readily lost or broke their points when striking rocks, etc.; hence came bone and then flint points.[65]

The Spear-Harpoon stands out as the one fishing weapon whose existence is undeniable, whose employment is predominant. It is too world-wide and too well-known to need lengthy description.

Reindeer-horn supplied in general the material of the earlier heads, stag-horn of the later.[66] The heads tapered (like Eskimo and other harpoon heads) to a point and were barbed (as the two accompanying illustrations indicate) on both sides. They have sometimes toward the lower end little eminences or knobs, and sometimes barbs provided with incisions or grooves, which some surmise held poison.

[Illustration: BROKEN HARPOON. From Kent’s Cave.

SINGLE BARBED HARPOON (Bruniquel).

DOUBLE BARBED REINDEER HARPOON (La Madelaine).]

[Illustration: DOUBLE BARBED HARPOON. _Neolithic._

From Sutz, Switzerland. Observe the hole for attaching the line.]

The Harpoon makes its appearance in the middle or (according to Osborne) early Magdalenian deposits. Its crudest form shows a short, straight piece of bone, deeply grooved on one face, the ridges and notches along one edge being the only indications of what later developed into the recurved barbed points of the typical Harpoon. These barbs or points, retroverted in such a manner as to hold their place in the flesh of the fish, do not suddenly appear like an inventive mutation, but very slowly evolve as their usefulness is demonstrated by practice.

The shaft is very rarely perforated at the base for the attachment of a line[67]; it is cylindrical (later flat) in form adapted to the capture of large fish in streams. The harpoons may possibly have been projected by means of the so-called _propulseurs_ or dart throwers, which resemble the Eskimo and Australian implements of to-day.

Amidst the clash of opinion as to the exact use and method of use of these weapons, my conclusion, admittedly incapable of absolute proof, holds that the Palæolithic fisher owes to the hunter the inception of the chief weapon of his equipment, the Spear-Harpoon.

Paul Broca’s dictum[68] that Man hunted before he fished seems, perhaps, despite Dall’s excavation of Eskimo _débris_,[69] to be borne out by Troglodyte records both positive and negative. The Gorge or bait-holder was employed by the hunter (according to some) even earlier than by the fisher. Gorges have been from time immemorial and still are in vogue in the Untersee for the capture of marine birds, as is the case to-day with the Eskimos of Norton Sound.

From the chronicles of Rau, H. Philips, and others can be built a Table of Generations, or the story of how the Hunting Spear begat the Fishing Spear, which begat the Harpoon unilaterally barbed, which in turn begat the Harpoon bilaterally barbed, until about the tenth or twentieth generation—one is appalled at the amount of Succession Duty which such degrees of descent would now involve!—something begat the Rod.

From this genealogical table I venture to dissent. I claim that the hunting Spear, Protean in possibilities, was either itself the Rod, or was, if “matre pulchra filia pulchrior” do not apply, at least the direct parent of the primitive Rod. In the bigger hunting of our own sorrowful day the same principle manifests itself, for the British soldier in France often angled with his line attached to his bayoneted rifle.

Many writers have attempted, some like de Mortillet with typical French logic, some with none, to set down the sequential development of fishing. As the Censor has not as yet banned free expression of piscatorial opinions, I conclude this chapter with essaying a scheme of reconstruction of my own.

_First_ came fishing with the hand, _la pêche à la main_, which, according to Abel Hovelacque, “_est le mode le plus élémentaire et certainement le moins productif_.”[70] This method we may surmise was first exercised on fish left half stranded in small pools by the action of tides or floods, or on fish spawning in the shallow redds.[71]

As _la pêche à la main_ was the first to arrive, so was it the first to cease from the functions of parentage or of fission, for with “tickling,” described by Ælian as even in his day an ancient device, further evolution of this method practically ended.[72]

_Second_ came the hunting Spear, used originally on fish lying in pools, small of size but of depth sufficient to prevent hand fishing, and then, later, on fish elsewhere in a river. On the latter, especially in the case of the salmon—in Pliny’s day still abundant in Aquitania, which comprised the Loire and many Palæolithic _cavernes_—the weapon, even if as bident or trident it had added unto itself a prong or two, would frequently be found ineffective, owing to lack of prehensility. Hence came about a modification, perhaps due either to the happy chance of a spear on which a point or thorn had inadvertently been left, or to the inventive faculty of some Troglodyte Hardy.

We later reach a Spear Harpoon with barbs on one side only, whence “line upon line,” or rather barb upon barb, we attain unto the later type, which had a barbed head so socketed as to come free from the shaft (when the quarry has been struck) but made fast to the head by a line for retrieving the fish. In due, if differing, gradation we ultimately attain either unto the existing device of the aboriginal Tsuŷ Hwan of Formosa, an arrow shaped like a trident shot from but attached to a bow, or unto _le dernier cri_, our whaling Harpoon shot from a gun.[73]

_Third_ comes fishing with a line of some sort. This was devised doubtless by some hungry but perforce merely meditative Magdalenian observing how dropped morsels were seized by fish in a pool, whose depth or environment set at naught both his hand and his spear.

The problem how to reach and how to land them was eventually solved by the method—happily christened by Sheringham, “Entanglement by Appetite”—of fastening a gorge through or a thorn holding some kind of bait to an animal sinew, a wythe, or a hardened thong of one of the whip-like _algæ_. This wythe or what not in the procession of the ages was (according to Pepys) to betaper itself into the first English catgut line of 1667, and (according to _The Compleat Fisherman_, London, 1724) into the first silkworm line, and eventually into telerana and similar tenuities of our day.

“Entanglement by Appetite,” of which a primitive form exists among the Fuegians,[74] did literally “line upon line,” almost wythe upon wythe multiply its seed, if not quite like the sand of the sea, yet freely. Proofs of this fecundity exist in the varying and world-wide forms of its issue. A strong family likeness enables us roughly to divide these descendants into two classes.

The first (A) where (to quote our leading law case) “the human element” is absent, as in night lining, or in “trimmering,” or in its distant and nowadays probably illegal connection, the method of live-baiting for pike with the aid of a goose or a duck, as set forth by T. Barker with his customary gusto.[75]

The second (B) where “the human element” is present, as in hand-lining and in its very latest descendant, invented for “big game fishing” off Santa Catalina, viz. a line attached to a kite, which device secures the required “skittering” along the surface and from wave to wave of the flying fish-bait.[76] Even this very up-to-date device is no new invention. In the Malayan Archipelago and many Melanesian islands a kite has long been employed, sometimes as in the Solomon group, with a hookless bait of a spider’s web, which, as wool with eels, gets itself firmly entangled in the small teeth of the Gar fish.[77]

Next arose, as snags and obnoxious branches in primitive days abounded, and water bailiffs did not, the further crux, not quite unknown even to-day, how to get the bait over the intervening obstacles which the mere hand line was incapable of clearing, or how to obtain the length necessary to place the bait properly before the fish.[78]

The difficulty was in time overcome by attaching the tackle, wythe, gorge, and bait to the hunting Spear. It is at this stage I claim that the hunting Spear with wythe, gorge, and bait so attached became, in fact for all purposes was, the original pole, or at any rate was the immediate sire by a more springy sapling of what in the procession of the ages was to attain unto the “tremendous,” if at times unmastered, “majesty” of our modern Rod.

[Illustration: FISHING NET SPUN BY SPIDERS IN NEW GUINEA.

See n. 1, p. 43.]

_Last of all_, I suggest, though the evidence is conflicting, comes fishing by Net. If Tylor,[79] Calderwood,[80] and others are correct in their conjectures that our primitive _piscator_, when endeavouring to catch by hand fish half stranded or spawning in small pools, blocked any little exit by plaited twigs—wattling, according to C. F. Keary, was one of the earliest prehistoric industries—or stones, that they erected in fact the world’s first barrage, then must this ascendant or Scotch cousin of the Net take precedence of the Spear and every other artificial device.

Of the Net’s kith and kin are there not some scores specified in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux, or depicted in M. Dabry de Thiersant’s _Pisciculture en Chine_? The Net was to beget a _progeniem_ to the Angler at any rate _vitiosiorem_, and (to drag in another tag) almost like κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα.

Three of this big family stand out conspicuous by their diversity. (A) The fairy-like Net—perhaps the most interesting because the most incredible—made by _Spiders_ and used by the Papuans.[81] (B) The “Vimineous Weel” of Oppian. (C) The huge steel trawls, which lately encompassed those ravening sharks of the sea, the German submarines.

How the following device should be classed, I am not sure; it is neither Spear, nor Hook, nor Net. But it deserves to be put on record as an ingenious and successful species of fishing, employed by the Cretans during the War.

According to Mr. J. D. Lawson, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge (to whom I am indebted for the account), the natives, eager to recover the coal that ships while coaling dropped into the sea, set out to _fish_ for it. Since the coal could not swallow the bait, they resolved that the bait should grip the coal. Having by means of a rude spy-glass located the position of the mineral, they lowered from a boat a cord to which an octopus—the larger the better—was secured. As the fish detested the sensation of suspension, the moment he touched bottom he clutched with all his tentacles any solid object within reach, and while being drawn up clung to it with might and main.

By this method of inverted fishing—whether a survival of “Minoan Culture” or an adaptation from the East, where for many centuries the octopus has been similarly used for catching fish—much coal and much else was retrieved from the sea.

NOTE.—Since the above was written Th. Mainage has published at Paris _Les Religions de la préhistoire_. “Rites de Chasse” (ch. viii.) includes a section on magic (pp. 326-342) and on religion (pp. 342-9), both dealing with fishing, etc., ancient and modern. The sermon preached among the Hurons to the fish recalls that of St. Anthony of Padua. Mainage, on p. 344, fig. 188, gives an incised design from Laugerie-Basse, which according to him represents “Pêcheurs armés de filets (?).” The design is as little convincing as the author by his query seems convinced.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See _postea_, 48 ff.

[2] The recent discovery of the inscribed bone fragments in Honan apparently adds some six hundred years to the history, as apart from the legends of China, for _c._ 1500 B.C. instead of _c._ 900 B.C. seems now our starting point. See _infra_, p. 450.

[3] Cf. Dr. J. T. Jehu’s _Lectures before the Royal Society_, 1919. It is noteworthy that whatever be the geological date of Man, the oldest true fish, as we understand the term, seems the Shark family, which, although extremely archaic, has but little altered. Next in seniority comes probably the _Ceradotus_; if now “merely a living fossil” and found only in Queensland, its form, hardly modified, corresponds with remains found all over the world as early as from the Trias.

[4] The urination of a mare was thought to weaken her hairs. Plutarch, _De Sol._, 24.

[5] Cf. however, _postea_, 315.

[6] Oric Bates, _Ancient Egyptian Fishing, Harvard African Studies_, I., 1917, p. 248. With a “running line,” Leintz in U.S.A. cast April, 1921, 437 ft. 7 in.

[7] Dr. Turrell, the author of that researchful book, _Ancient Angling Authors_, London, 1910, while of opinion that the “wheele” was in the course of time evolved from the “wind” of the troller, differentiates between their uses in fishing. Barker “put in a wind to turn with a barrell, to gather up his line and loose at his pleasure: this was his manner of trouling.” Walton’s words are, “a line of wire through which the line may run to as great a length as is needful when (the fish is) hook’d and for that end some use a wheele,” etc. The use of the “wind” as described by Barker in his first edition was simply to gather up the slack line in working the bait, “this was the manner of his trouling”; while that of Walton’s “wheele” was to let the line go, in playing the rushes of salmon, of which his experience seems mainly vicarious.

Sea-anglers of the present day prefer in many cases man-handling the line to using the reel: thus the Spanish fisherman on striking a tunny throws the whole Rod back into the boat, the crew of which seize the line (which is of great thickness) and haul the fish in by sheer brute force. (See _The Rod on the Rivieras_ (1911), p. 232.)

[8] With good reason the author styles his work, “Ouvrage très curieux, utile, et récréatif pour toutes personnes qui font leur séjour à la campagne.”

[9] No example of a running line has ever been produced from either ancient literature or ancient art, but on the other hand numerous illustrations of the tight line on vases, frescoes, mosaics, etc., are extant. To the examples collected by G. Lafaye in Daremberg and Saglio, _Dict. des antiquités_, iv. 489, ff. _s.v._ ‘piscatio,’ can be added: (_a_) Ivory relief from Sparta, seventh century B.C., published by R. M. Dawkins in the _Annual Report of the Brit. School at Athens_, 1906-7, xiii. 100, ff., pl. 4. (_b_) Black figured _lekythos_ from Hope Collection (Sale Cat. No. 22), published by E. M. W. Tillyard in _Essays and Studies presented to W. Ridgeway_, Cambridge, 1913, edited by E. C. Quiggin, p. 186, ff. with plate. (_c_) Græco-Roman gem in A. Furtwängler, _Beschreibung der geschnittenen Steine im Antiquarium_ (zu Berlin), Berlin, 1896, p. 257, No. 6898, pl. 51. Cf. the same author, _Die Antiken Gemmen_, Leipzig-Berlin, 1900, i. pl. 28, 25, and pl. 36, 5; ii. 140 and 174. A. H. Smith, _Cat. of Engraved Gems in the Brit. Museum_, London, 1888, p. 191, Nos. 1797-99, and p. 206, No. 2043. (_d_) Coins of Carteia in Spain, well represented by A. Heiss, _Description générale des Monnaies antiques de l’Espagne_, Paris, 1870, p. 331 f., pl. 49, 19-21. (_e_) Mosaic in Melos, see R. C. Bosanquet in the _Jour. of Hell. Studies_, 1898, xviii. 71 ff., pl. 1. (_f_) Silver _krater_ from Hildesheim shows Cupids with fishing rods and tridents catching all sorts of sea-beasties. E. Pernice and F. Winter, _Der Hildesheimer Silberfund_, Berlin, 1901, pls. 32, 33. Cf. S. Reinach, _Répertoire de Reliefs grecs et romains_, Paris, 1909, i. 165 f. (_g_) H. B. Walters, _Cat. of Greek and Roman Lamps in the Brit. Museum_, London, 1914, p. 79 f., No. 527, Pl. 16, p. 99 f.; No. 656, pl. 22, p. 96, No. 635. The accompanying illustration is reproduced by kind permission of Mr. E. M. W. Tillyard and of the University Press, Cambridge.

[10] Aristotle, _N.H._ ix. 37. Plutarch, _De Sol. Anim._ 27, translated by Holland. Ælian, _N.H._ ix. 24. See Pliny, _N.H._ ix. 42.

[11] _Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science_ (Newcastle, 1916), pp. 6-9. Cf. M. Burkitt, _Prehistory_, Cambridge, 1921, chs. iv-xx.

[12] E. A. Parkyn, _Prehistoric Art_, London, 1915.

[13] The Neolithic stage, some hold, is characterised by the presence of polished stone implements and in particular the stone _axe_, which, judging from its perforation, so as to be more effectually fastened to a wooden handle, was probably used rather for wood than conflict. T. Peisker, _Cambridge Mediæval History_, 1911, vol. i., has much of interest on the domestication of this period.

[14] _Les Peintures préhistoriques de la Caverne d’Altamira, Annales du Musée Guimet_, Paris, 1904, tome xv. p. 131.

[15] Émile de Cartailhac et H. Breuil, _La Caverne d’Altamira_, Paris, 1906, p. 145. Professor Boyd-Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, London, 1880, p. 233. But their technique in flaking, etc., suggests a later date.

[16] The route was probably by Russia, Siberia, and across the land now cut by the Behring Straits.

[17] In H. Ling Roth’s _The Aborigines of Tasmania_, London, 1890 (see Preface by Tylor on page vi.), “It is thus apparent that the Tasmanians were at a somewhat less advanced stage in the art of stone implement making than the Palæolithic men of Europe.”

[18] Cf. W. J. Sollas, _Ancient Hunters_, London, 1911, p. 70.

[19] Evans, _op. cit._, p. 9. See also an interesting essay by Professor E. T. Hamy, _L’Anthropologie_, tome xix. p. 385 ff., on _La Figure humaine chez le sauvage et chez l’enfant_.

[20] C. Rau, _op. cit._, Washington, 1884. Salomon Reinach, _Antiquités Nationales_, vol. i., 1889. W. I. Hoffmann, _The Graphic Art of the Eskimo_, Report to Smithsonian Museum, 1895, p. 751.

[21] At Cogul the sacral dance is performed by women clad from the waist downwards in well-cut gowns, which at Alpera are supplemented by flying sashes, and at Cueva de la Vieja reach to the bosom. Verily, we are already a long way from Eve! Cf. Evans, _op. cit._, p. 8.

[22] Cook’s _Third Voyage_, Bk. I. ch. vi. W. C. Wentworth, _A Statistical, etc., Description of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land_, London, 1819, p. 115: “They have no knowledge whatever of the art of fishing”; the only fishing was done by women diving for shellfish. G. T. Lloyd, _Thirty-three Years in Tasmania and Victoria_, London, 1862, pp. 50-52. Ling Roth, _op. cit._, p. 75.

[23] No Maya hook has as yet been brought to light, although this was employed by practically all the races aboriginal or other from Alaska to Peru.

[24] Cf. T. A. Joyce, _Mexican Archæology_, London, 1914.

[25] Montezuma’s table was provided with fish from the Gulf of Mexico brought to the capital within twenty-four hours of capture by means of relays of runners. Some five gods of fishing, of whom the chief seems to have been Opochtli, were worshipped: to him was ascribed the invention of the net and the _minacachalli_ or trident. Cf. de Sahagun, _Histoire générale des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne_, traduite et annotée par D. Jourdanet et Rémi Simeon, p. 36, Paris, 1880. De Sahagun, a Franciscan, came to Mexico in 1529 and died there in 1590. See also, C. Rau, _op. cit._, p. 214, and T. Joyce, _op. cit._, pp. 165, 221. A not uncommon practice was co-operative fishing, by which, after a portion had been set aside for the feudal lord, the rest of the catch was divided in fixed shares; see Joyce, p. 300.

[26] These pictographs were made by native artists shortly after the conquest of Mexico, and were sent by the Viceroy Mendoza, with interpretations in Aztec and Spanish, to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. A copy of this Codex in the Bodleian was reproduced by Lord Kingsborough in his first volume of _Antiquities of Mexico_ (1831).

[27] From a letter from the representative in Mexico of the Smithsonian Institute, who adds: “My belief is that the Mayas used the Spear, the Net, and the Bow and Arrow. That is all I can give you at present: should anything else turn up, I will let you know.” In _A Study of Maya Art_, an elaborate work by Herbert J. Spinder (_Peabody Museum Memoirs_, Harvard University, 1913), I have failed to find any fishing scenes or any ancient fishing implements depicted.

[28] Baessler translated by A. H. Keane (Asher & Co.), London, 1902-3. Mead’s monograph is in the Putnam Anniversary Volume, New York, 1909. _The Necropolis of Ancon_, by Reiss and Stübel, translated by A. H. Keane, Berlin, 1880-87.

[29] T. A. Joyce, _South American Archæology_, London, 1912, p. 126.

[30] See _infra_, p. 371.

[31] _Indian Notes and Monographs_, published by the Heye Foundation, New York, 1919, p. 56, show in the tombs of Cayuga fish-hooks, harpoons, and fish-bones, “most of which objects are unique or unusual as grave finds.”

[32] E. J. Banfield, _Confessions of a Beachcomber_, London, 1913.

[33] For descriptions of Palæolithic life, see Worthington G. Smith, _Man the Primal Savage_, London, 1894, and J. J. Atkinson, _Primal Law_, London, 1903. For the community assumed by the former, Atkinson substitutes a family group.

[34] Cuvier and Valenciennes, _Hist. Nat. des Poissons_, vol. xviii. pp. 279-80, Paris, 1846. Since in this volume the geographical distribution of the pike, as known at the time, is set forth without any mention of Greece, it is rather difficult to understand the surprise of Valenciennes, who wrote the volume in question; Cuvier died in 1832.

[35] É. Cartailhac, _La France Préhistorique_, Paris, 1889, p. 82, fig. 41.

[36] É. Cartailhac, _Matériaux pour l’histoire de l’homme_, xiii. p. 395. The Magdalenian workmanship on bone was extraordinarily fine. Their bone needles (according to de Mortillet) are much superior to those of the later, even of historical times, down to the Renaissance. The Romans never possessed needles comparable with them.

[37] G. de Mortillet, _Origines de la Chasse et de la Pêche_ (Paris, 1890), p. 222. Our learned author nods. If the seals had _killed_ the trout, it would not have floated “belly up,” but instantly down their bellies.

[38] S. Reinach, _Répertoire de l’Art Quaternaire_ (Paris, 1913), p. 156, which is a complete summary of the various finds in excavations, etc. See p. 88 for a seal, and p. 114 for a fine representation from Laugerie Basse of two fish meeting.

[39] Fishermen in Malay, _while they are at sea_, studiously avoid mentioning the names of birds or beasts: all animals are called “cheweh,” a meaningless word, which is believed not to be understood by the creatures (J. G. Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, second edition, 1900, vol. i. p. 460). So, too, fishermen from some villages on the N.E. coast of Scotland never pronounce, _while at sea_, under penalty of poor catches, certain words such as “minister,” “salmon,” “trout,” “swine,” etc. The first, poor fellow! “que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?” is invariably referred to as “the man with the black ‘guyte’” (_Ibid._, p. 453).

[40] _Acad. des Sciences_, Paris, séance du 22 juin, 1903.

[41] The pictured hook is of special interest. The head, considered by Krause that of a wizard, was intended to endow the hook with an extra power of magic.

[42] F. Boaz, _6th Report on N.W. Tribes of Canada_, p. 45.

[43] E. Aymonier, _Cochinchene Françoise_, No. 16, p. 157, as quoted by Frazer. _Ibid._

[44] S. Reinach, _L’Anthropologie_ (1903), p. 257.

[45] Such is the solution which Bates (_Ancient Egyptian Fishing_, 1917, p. 205) offers of the presence in the pre-dynastic Egyptian graves of the numerous slate palettes bearing the profile of a fish or beast.

[46] Frazer, _Golden Bough_. _Taboo_, Part ii. (London, 1911), p. 191 ff.

[47] W. H. Dall, “Social Life among the Aborigines,” _The American Naturalist_ (1878), vol. xii. J. G. Frazer, _Folk Lore in the Old Testament_ (London, 1918), vol. iii. p. 123.

[48] See Dr. F. Keller’s _The Lake Dwellers in Switzerland_ (translated, London, 1878, by John Edward Lee), vol. ii. pl. 136, fig. 2. This net of cord with meshes not quite three-eighths of an inch in width was almost certainly made, it was certainly well suited, for fishing. Another example with meshes two inches wide, probably formed part of a hunting net. R. Munro, _The Lake Dwellings of Europe_ (London, 1890), p. 504, mentions fishing-nets from Robenhausen and Vinetz—both belonging to the late Neolithic Age. O. Schrader, _Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde_ (Strassburg, 1901), p. 242, records “remains of nets” in the Stone Age settlements of Denmark and Sweden, which he classes as fishing nets.

[49] _Les Origines de la Pêche et de la Navigation_, Paris.

[50] An excellent monograph, with hundreds of illustrations, by E. Krause (“Vorgeschichtliche Fischereigeräte und Neuere Vergleichsstüche”) contained in the magazine, _Zeitschrift für Fischerei_, xi. Band ¾ Heft (Berlin, 1904), p. 208, states that hooks of the Stone Age are numerous, but unfortunately he does not discriminate between the Old and New Stone Ages. Palæolithic finds mention but once in his 176 pages.

[51] _Types de la Madelaine_, p. 222, fig. 78.

[52] H. J. Osborne, _The Men of the Stone Age_ (1915), p. 465.

[53] _Reliquiæ Aquitanicæ_ (London, 1875), ii. p. 58. Christy’s solitary buttress for his opinion is a reference to “a Nootka Sound fishing implement,” which is identical (according to Rau, fig. 9) with a hook described in Mr. J. G. Swan’s _The Indians of Cape Flattery_, as used by the Makahs solely (and successfully) for the halibut, because “its mouth is vertical, instead of horizontal, like most fish.” The absence of halibut from _débris_ or representations scarcely strengthens Christy’s opinion.

[54] _L’Anthropologie_, tome xix. pp. 184-190, especially p. 187, where the author attempts _une reconstitution hypothétique de la façon, dont cette interprétation admise, on pourrait conçevoir la fixation de ces “hameçons.”_ The inverted commas do not suggest confidence.

[55] If both the ends of the gorge were as much bent up as a hook, the tendency would be for the gorge, when its points got fast, to be rotated by the pull on the line and to assume, owing to greater curvature, a bent-back position, which would allow of its easy withdrawal and defeat the object—the capture of the fish. Some Santa Cruz gorges are of an angular type, but with the points turned somewhat down. The double hook of bronze or copper, _e.g._ of Ancient Peru, seems to support my suggestion of gorge evolution, although, fair to add, it was suspended from the centre.

[56] Sanchouniathon, as translated by Philo of Byblus, _ap._ Euseb., _Praep. Ev._ i. 10, 9, in what purports to be a Phœnician account, would bring the invention right down to the Iron Age. “Many generations later Agreus and Halieus sprang from the stock of Hypsouranios. They were the discoverers of hunting and fishing, hunters and fishers being called after them. From these in turn sprang two brothers, inventors of iron and iron-working. One of these brothers, Chrysor, practised spells and charms and oracles. He is Hephaistos, and he it is who invented hook and bait and line and boat, being the first of all men to set sail. Wherefore also they worshipped him as a god after his death, and named him Zeus Meilíchios.”

[57] E. Krause, _op. cit._, 208, holds that the most primitive hook was made of wood: bind a thorn or sprig crossways and your hook is to hand.

[58] H. T. Sheringham holds that both early and recent specimens of Fijian hooks bear out this view (_Ency. Brit._, ed. xi., _s.v._ “Angling”). “The progressive order of hooks used by the Indians or their predecessors in title in North America was, after the simple device of attaching the bait to the end of a fibrous line, (1) a gorge, a spike of wood or bone, sharpened at both ends and fastened at its middle to a line; (2) a spike set obliquely in the end of a pliant shaft; (3) a plain hook; (4) a barbed hook; (5) a barbed hook combined with sinker and lure. This series does not exactly represent stages of invention: the evolution may have been affected by the habits of the different species of fish or their increasing wariness. The above progressive order applies, I believe, on the whole all over the world, if due allowance be made for varying conditions” (_Smithsonian Handbook of American Indians_ (Washington), p. 460).

[59] See _Man_, Feb., 1915, “Note on the new kind of Fish-hook,” by Henry Balfour. The illustration is reproduced by the kind permission of Mr. H. Balfour and the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Another notable hook is one of wood about four inches long with a claw (said to be that of a bird) attached, which Vancouver collected on his voyage in N.W. American waters (see Ethnographical Coll. at Brit. Mus.). The whalebone in this must not be mistaken for anything else but a snood. For the ingenious derivation of certain hooks in some South Sea Islands from their similarity to the bones of common fish, _e.g._ Cod and Haddock, see T. McKenny Hughes, in _Archæol. Jour._, vol. 58, No. 230, pp. 199-213. See also J. G. Wood, _Nature’s Teaching_ (London, 1877), pp. 115-6, on the point.

[60] See _infra_, p. 357.

[61] My own Mohave Rod is of _’ihora_, the red willow of that district, barked and straightened by an ingenious Indian method. The line is of the prepared bast of _’ido_, another species of willow, and the hook of barrel cactus thorn. Hooks made out of _Echinocactus wislizeni_ are better adapted for fish which do not nibble at the bait, but bolt it hook and all; for this reason the Indians fasten the bait _below_ the hook (E. Palmer, “Fish-hooks of the Mohave Indians,” _American Naturalist_, vol. xii. p. 403). On the north-west coast the Indians a generation ago invariably used spruce-wood for their halibut hooks (Rau, p. 139). Some Maori hooks are of human bone and _pawa_, with _kiwi_ feathers.

[62] I do not think that these gold hooks were a unit of currency, as the _lari_ of the Persian Gulf were, according to W. Ridgeway, _The Origin of Metallic Currency_, etc. (Cambridge), 1892, p. 276.

This gold hook must not be confounded with the _silver hook_ not infrequently employed in the remoter districts of Great Britain by certain anglers, who in their anxiety to avoid being greeted with Martial’s “ecce redit sporta piscator _inani_,” cross with silver the palm of more fortunate brethren, and

“Take with high erected comb The fish, or else the story, home And cook it.”

[63] See R. Munro’s _Lake Dwellings of Europe_, pp. 127, 499, 509. Flinders Petrie, _Tools and Weapons_ (London, 1917), p. 37 f., has a section on fish-hooks with good illustrations, pl. 44, figs. 61-87, pl. 43, figs. 59, 60, 88-102. “Considering how much the Lake-dwellers relied upon fishing, the moderate number of hooks found points to their depending more on nets. The few copied here, 88-94, are merely rounded, without any peculiar form.”

[64] Many of the Solutréan tanged blades and _pointes à cran_ are small enough to suggest their use as arrowheads, and Rutot has described tanged and barbed “arrowheads” from Palæolithic deposits in Belgium.

[65] _Op. cit._, p. 160. But why? Flint points break quicker than wood.

[66] See Julie Schlemm, _Wörterbuch zur Vorgeschichte_ (Berlin, 1908), pp. 555-7. The immediate successors of the single spear were probably the bident and trident. Owing to the refraction of light and other reasons a spear is difficult of accurate direction, but the broader surface of the trident helps to lessen the factor of error.

[67] H. J. Osborne (_op. cit._, p. 385 ff.) states that, with the exception of one half-finished hole in a Harpoon from La Madelaine, the side hole for the attachment of the thong to the Harpoon does not appear in the French Magdalenian Harpoon, although in those from Cantabria it is nearly always present. The Azilian weapon usually bears a hole.

[68] _The Troglodytes of the Vézère Valley_, Smithsonian Report, 1872, p. 95.

[69] In _Contributions to North American Ethnology_, 1877, i. p. 43, Dall states that the _débris_ of the heaps show tolerably uniform division into three stages, characterised by the food which formed the staple of subsistence and by the weapons for obtaining as well as the utensils for preparing the food. The stages are: 1st, The Littoral period, represented by the _Echinus_ layer; 2nd, The Fishing period, represented by the Fish-bone layer; 3rd, The Hunting period, represented by the Mammalian layer. This antecedence of fishing before hunting, if Dall be correct, was, I imagine, caused probably by local or climatic conditions in the Arctic Circle; it is not the general rule elsewhere.

[70] _Les Débuts de l’humanité_, etc. (Paris, 1881), p. 69. E. Krause, _op. cit._, p. 153, agrees.

[71] “Apes know how to get oysters thrown up on the shore, but man has been endowed with the knowledge how to get them in and out of the sea.” The sentiment, if not the style, of this sentence—to prove the superior design and creation of man over the animal creation—seems not quite unworthy of Izaak Walton’s pages.

[72] His pleasant description of “tickling” and his “viro Britanno” must be my excuse for introducing a writer in Latin so late after my limit of 500 A.D. as Parthenius, better known as Giannettasi, the author of _Halieutica_, published at Naples in 1689:

“Paulatim digitis piscator molliter alvum Defricat, et sensim palpando repit in ipsas Cæruleas branchas, subituque apprendit: et illa Blanditiis decepta viro fit præda Britanno.”

[73] For a similar use of bow and harpoon arrow by the Bororo tribes in the Amazon valley, see W. A. Cork, _Through the Wilderness of Brazil_, p. 380. Our gaff, a descendant, possibly, of the unilaterally one-barbed spear, seems possessed of perpetual youth. The first description of its use in Angling in England occurs, according to Mr. Marston (_Walton and the Earlier Fishing Writers_ (1898), p. 97), in T. Barker’s _Art of Angling_ (1651), but according to Dr. Turrell, _op. cit._, pp. 85 and 91, only in Barker’s 2nd of 1657, “a good large landing hook.” From the definition, however, by Blount, _Glossage_, in 1657, “_Gaffe_, an iron wherewith seamen pull great Fishes into their ships,” its previous existence and employment at sea can be deduced.

[74] There is no hook; only a piece of whalebone or a stem of seaweed, with a feather stuck at the end, attached to which is a running knot, which holds the bait. As soon as the fish has swallowed feather and bait, the women, for the men disdain fishing, draw it to the surface and quickly seize it. Cf. Darwin, _Jour. of Researches, etc., during the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle_ (London, 1860), ch. x, p. 213.

[75] “The principall sport to take a Pike is to take a Goose or Gander or Duck, take one of the Pike Lines as I have showed you before; tye the line under the left wing and over the right wing, and about the bodie as a man weareth his belt; turne the Goose off into a Pond where Pikes are; there is no doubt of sport with much pleasure betwixt the Goose and the Pike. It is the greatest pleasure that a noble Gentleman in Shropshire doth give his friends for entertainment. There is no question among all this fishing but we shall take a brace of good Pikes.”

[76] For a full description of this method, see _Sport on Land and Water_, by F. G. Griswold, privately printed (New York, 1916), and _The Game Fishes of the World_, by C. F. Holder (London, 1913). To the kite, which is of the ordinary 28-inch type, is allowed 700 feet of old fishing line from off a reel; the fisherman’s line is tied to the kite about 20 feet from the bait with a piece of cotton twine. When a Tuna fish takes the bait the cotton line breaks, and the kite is either reeled in or falls into the sea. The Santa Catalina fishing, with its records of enormous Tuna, of Sword fish (the largest 463 lbs.), sometimes fighting for 14 hours, sounding 48 times, and leading the launch for a distance of 29 miles, and of Giant Bass weighing 493 lbs., fills a British angler with envious despair, a despair which is heightened when one reads that the regulation tackle prescribed by the Tuna Club is, or was not long ago, a sixteen ounce Rod and a line not over No. 24! In Mr. Zane Grey’s enthralling volume (_Tales of Fishes_ (London, 1919), p. 39) we read of a swordfish, that “when he sounded, he had pulled thirteen hundred feet off my reel, although we were chasing him (in a motor boat) full speed all the time”!

[77] See the excellent monograph on “Kite-Fishing,” by Henry Balfour, in _Essays and Studies, presented to Wm. Ridgeway_ (Cambridge, 1913), p. 23, where he regards the invention as ancient and probably proto-Malayan. This hook was usually made of wood and the claw of a bird. Cf. _Man_, 1912, Art. 4, and case 42 in Ethnographical Collection at the British Museum.

[78] De Mortillet, pp. 245, 249: “_De tous les engins la ligne est le plus simple, et celui qui a du être le premier employé._” He sums up his surview of the world from China to Peru, by “_La pêche à la ligne est la pêche la plus repandue parmi les nations sauvages._”

[79] _Op. cit._, “The Net is known to almost all men as far as history can tell.” But Darwin, in _The Cruise of the Beagle_, found the Fuegians without Nets or traps of any kind. Their only methods of fishing were with Spears, and a baited hair line without any hook.

[80] _The Life of the Salmon_, p. xv, London, 1907: “At once the most primitive and most deadly method of catching fish, which inhabit rivers, is the erection of built barriers and enclosures.” Plutarch (De Sol. Anim. 26) has no doubt of the priority of the Line over the Net: “Fishermen when perceiving that most of the fishes scorned the line and hook as stale devices or such as can be discovered, betook themselves to fine force and shut them up with great casting nets, like as the Persians serve their enemies in their wars”—σαγηνεύειν—(Cf. Herodotus, vi. 31) “to sweep the whole population off the face of a country” (Hollands’ Trs.). W. v. Schulenburg, _Märkische_ _Fischerei_ (Berlin, 1903), s. 62, “Das Fischnetz galt also schon in der Vorgeschichtlichen Zeit, im grauen Altertum für uralt. Mit Recht darf der Fischer sich den ältesten Gewerben der Menschheit zuzählen.”

[81] Cf. A. E. Pratt, _Two Years among the New Guinea Cannibals_ (London, 1906), p. 266, and 3 photographs. The webs spun by the spiders in the forests are six feet in diameter, with meshes varying from one inch at the outside to about one-eighth at the centre. The diligence of the creatures has been pressed into weaving fishing-nets for the use of man by setting up, where the webs are thickest, long bamboos bent over in a loop at the end. On this most convenient frame the spider in a short time produces a web which resists water as readily as does a duck’s back, and holds fish up to a pound satisfactorily. See also Robert W. Williamson (_The Maflu Mountain People of British New Guinea_ (London, 1912), p. 193) who differs materially from Pratt as to the formation of the net. The illustration is reproduced by the kind permission of _The Illustrated London News Co._

INTRODUCTION

PART II

“Except to politicians, a decent definition is a help and a delight.”

Acting on this American dictum I start with two definitions, one of Fishing and Angling, the other of Angling. The first we owe to that past master of the art, Plato. Whether it come within the category of “delight or help,” or whether he can endorse the verdict of Theætetus as to its “satisfactory conclusion,” each reader must decide.

Plato, using the method of elimination and incidentally more than three pages of print, eventually arrives at the following definition of Fishing and Angling:[82] “Then, now you and I have come to an understanding, not only about the name of the Angler’s art, but about the definition of the thing itself. One half of all Art was acquisitive: one half of the acquisitive Art was conquest or taking by force: half of this again was hunting, and half of hunting was hunting animals: of this again the under half was fishing, and half of fishing was striking: a part of striking was fishing with a barb, and one half of this again (being the kind which strikes with a hook and draws the fish from below upwards) is the Art we have been seeking, and which from the nature of the operation is denoted Angling or drawing up.”

_Theætetus:_ “The result has been quite satisfactorily brought out.”

In search of a more helpful definition I turn to the English Dictionaries. The _N.E.D._ (_New English Dictionary_, Oxford) gives Fishing—“to catch, or try to catch fish”—wide enough for all our purpose and for most of our performances! In their definitions of Angling, Angle, etc., the majority of dictionaries disagree, but unite in deriving Angle from the Aryan root, ANK = to bend, and establishing the fishing term as the cousin of the awkward angles of Euclid and of our youth. The _N.E.D._ in its definitions of ‘Angle’ (sb.), of ‘Angle’ (vb.), of ‘Angler,’ or of ‘Angling,’ does not even agree with itself.

Thus we find:

(A) “Angle (sb.), a fish hook: often in later use extended to the line, or tackle, to which it is fastened, and the Rod to which this is attached. See Book of St. Alban’s (title of ed. 2), _Treatyse perteynynge_ to _Hawkynge, Huntynge, and Fysshynge with an Angle_.”

(B) “Angle (vb.), to use an angle: to fish with a hook _and bait_.”

(C) “Angler, one who fishes with a hook and _line_.”

(D) “Angling, the action or art of fishing with a _rod_.”[83]

If A, B, C, which all differ, are accurate, D can hardly be so. Further from A, B, C, we can deduce no correct definition of D.

Under D the _N.E.D._ imports as a necessary component part of angling the presence of a rod, but I venture to think on insufficient grounds. In the first quotation cited in support, “Fysshynge, callyd Anglynge with a rodde,” the word “rodde,” if D hold good, must be redundant or unnecessary. “Rodde” I hold to be an added word of limitation, or description, as in “Fysshynge with an _Angle_.”

But since the dictionaries do hardly help—to some, indeed, they smack of “the heinous crime of word-splitting”—and since the importance (apart from etymological reasons) of possessing an accurate and adequate definition presses, let us prostrate ourselves before another oracle, the Law. But here too success scarcely crowns our quest. The leading case, _Barnard_ v. _Roberts and Williams_, yields, Delphic-like, little light or leading.[84]

The facts, briefly stated, were: Roberts and Williams laid in a private river two fishing lines; one end of the lines attached to two pieces of wood driven into the ground made fast the lines, the other end held hooks baited with worms, and a stone to keep the lines under water. “The lines were left by the men, who subsequently were found taking two fish off the hooks, and resetting the lines, of which the keepers deprived them. The charge (under s. 24 of the Larceny Act of 1861) ran of unlawfully, etc., taking fish otherwise than by angling. The Justices of Bangor refused to commit, on the ground that they were angling, and thus under the Act were protected from damages or penalty for such angling.”

On appeal both sides cited Izaak Walton and other authors; both quoted the _N.E.D._—the appellant its definition of ‘Angling,’ _i.e._ fishing with a rod, and the respondent that of ‘Angle’ (vb.), _i.e._ to fish with hook and bait.

The three Judges, judge-like, disagreed in their reasons but agreed in allowing the appeal, and disagreeing in their conceptions of angling agreed in abstaining from any definition.

“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed is king.” Mr. Justice Phillimore was the least non-positive. He even committed himself to the following: “He did not think that a rod must necessarily be part of an angler’s outfit, but only a hook and line. He thought _the human element_ must be present, and that it was not sufficient when the tackle was set once and for all, and then left.”

It is obvious from the above that, while the dictionaries are but blind guides, the Law (if on this occasion not exactly “a hass”) fails to elucidate what exactly constitutes Angling.

Dr. Henry van Dyke, the author of _Little Rivers_ and other fascinating books connected with fishing, suggests to me “Angling, the art of fishing by hand with a hook and line, with or without a rod.” I much prefer this to that of _N.E.D._, because of its greater accuracy and of its inclusion of that really skilful method, hand-lining. But for general convenience I adopt as the definition of Angling “_The action, or art, of fishing with a Rod._”

_My Fishing from the Earliest Times_ treats of the Old Stone Men, Egyptians, Assyrians, Chinese, Jews, Greeks, and Romans. The amount of space allotted to the last two, compared with that occupied by some of the other nations, may suggest the immortal even if apocryphal chapter of “_Snakes in Ireland_.” “There are none.”

To any such criticisms I make answer that for nearly all our knowledge as to the methods and tackle of fishing and varieties of fish we are indebted to the Greeks and Romans, and in a smaller degree to the Egyptians and Chinese.

Reasons of date, data, and dearth of paper prevent my using in this book the material which I had collected on Indian, Persian, and Japanese Fishing.

As regards India, while fishing by net falls well within my adopted date (500 A.D.), that by hook and line—not necessarily Angling—gains entrance by a short head, or a mere century.

Fish (_matsya_, apparently derived from the root _mad_ and signifying _the inebriated_) is down to _c._ 1000 B.C. only mentioned once[85] in the _Rigveda_, X. 68, 8. In the next period—that of the later Vedas and Brāhmanas—fish, but not methods of capture, find frequent mention.

The Net (_jāla_) is first referred to in the _Atharvaveda_ (not later than 800 B.C.) but not in connection with fishing, while in the _Yajurveda_ (_c._ 800 B.C.) names for fishermen and a hook—_baḍiša_—occur. The 139th _Jātaka_ (_c._ 400 A.D.) contains the first allusion to fishing with a _line_ and hook.

References in Sanskrit poetry to the iron hook and bait probably imply, though they fail to mention, the Rod. Passages in the epic _Mahābhārata_, V. 1106 (_c._ 200 A.D.), in Kāmandaki’s aphoristic poetry (_c._ 300-400 A.D.), in the _Pancatantra_, I. 208, “when women see a man caught in the bonds of love, they draw him like a fish that has followed the bait,” all suggest Angling.[86]

Fish legends, similes, stories—not always redounding to ichthyic wisdom—meet us fairly frequently. Manu[87] is saved from the Flood by a fish. Buddha[88] answers questions as to abstention from fish. Wondrous fish occur: _e.g._ the _Kar_, “which knows to the scratch of a needle’s point by how much the water in the Ocean shall increase, by how much it is diminishing.”[89]

Stories, such as the recovery by a fish of Šakuntalā’s ring and the consequent marriage of King Dushyanta; of Indra, the fearless slayer of the serpent, whose death for defiling the bed of Ahalyâ was compassed by fish;[90] of Adrikâ’s transformation into a fish and her conception in that form of a child by King Uparicaras;[91] of _The Stupid and Two Clever Fishes_;[92] of _The Frog and The Two Fish_,[93] all these make pleasant if varied reading. But when we come to _methods_ of fishing, all variety vanishes. We are confronted with a damnable monotony, a _toujours perdrix_. It is almost Net, or Nothing.

This holds true of the piscine tales even in the _Arabian Nights_, _e.g._ _The Fisherman and the Jinn_, and _The Fisherman and the ’Efreet_. The latter, however, possesses an unique interest: the fisherman here, unlike his Greek and Roman poverty-stricken brethren, became by means of his miraculous fish, “the wealthiest of the people of his age, and his daughters continued to be the wives of princes”!

Evidence that fishing in India was of old and is now (the fishing caste, I am told, ranks low) not highly regarded can be deduced (_inter alia_) from its total omission in the Fourteen Sciences and the Sixty-four Arts, which the _Vātsyặyana Kāma Sūtra_ (not later than the third century A.D.) promulgates for the education of children from five to sixteen. Among the requisite Sciences gymnastics, dancing, the playing of musical glasses, sword-stick, cock quail and ram fighting, teaching parrots and starlings to sing, all these find commendation, but fishing none!

As with India, so with Persia ancient and modern, _toujours le filet_! Very many of the earliest prose works in modern Persian came through the Pahlavi from the Sanskrit. Thus the three or four stories—occasionally but wrongly regarded as of Persian origin—about fish and fishing which are contained in the _Anwār-i-Suhaili_[94] can be traced to _The Fables of Bidpai_, or _The Pancatantra_,[95] translated from the Arabic version into Persian about 550 A.D.

In modern Persian (_c._ 1000 A.D.) poetry, lines allusive to fishing dot themselves sparsely:[96] even in them the Net bulks biggest. Hafiz (fourteenth century), however, gives us

“I have fallen into a Sea of Troubles, (presumably tears), So that my Beloved may catch me with a Hook” (a curl of hair).

A passage in Arabic furnished hope of finding Angling oases in the desert, but when in

“A fish whose jaw the gaff of Death had pierced,”

I found the word (_saffūd_) rendered _gaff_ given by Richardson’s _Persian-Arabic Dictionary_ as “a roasting spit, a poker for the fire,” my hope fled, for I quickly realised here an instance of anachronistic translation, or the employment of fishing terms appropriate to modern but inapplicable to ancient methods.[97]

I have come to the sad conclusion that the Persians ancient and modern care not in general for fishing or angling, although the Gulf, from which the ancient Sumerians garnered such splendid “harvest of the sea,” washes their shores, and from their mountains descend “fishful” streams. I have reached my conclusion for the following reasons:—

(A) There is no word in the language which properly expresses _fish_-hook. Arabic words, which strictly mean _grappling_ hooks, have been adopted or adapted. In modern Arabic itself these words are not used for a _fish-hook_: bâlûgh, a foreign term, prevails.

(B) In Persian, Arabic, and Turkish[98] the expression _to fish_, literally translated, equals _to hunt fish_, and generally describes a man who makes his living by _netting_, and selling fish.

(C) There is no word for fishing-rod in Wollaston’s great English-Persian Dictionary.

(D) Proverbs are usually the offspring and embodiment of the life and occupations of a nation. In both ancient and modern Persian there is, as far as I know, but one proverb—and that rather contemptful—allusive to fish or fishing. It runs, “Thou shall not make a fish thine enemy,” which probably signifies that no foe, however unlikely to injure, can be despised.

(E) In the experiences related to me by the Rev. Dr. St. Clair Tisdall, and by the late Sir Frank Lascelles, Netting ousts Angling.

The former:[99] “’Though I have lived in Persia for many years and have travelled through it from Sea to Sea, from the Persian Gulf to the Caspian, I have never seen a fish-hook in a Persian’s hands. In the districts I know best, the Net is the only weapon.”

The second, when our Minister at Teheran, on his first holiday went a-fishing. Having caught on a likely stream before supper three or four half-pound trout (I think), he anticipated next day pleasant sport. With the very early morning came not Remorse, but the local Sheikh to do his reverence and to make the customary present. “As I have heard that His Great Excellency worked hard for a few fish last night, my tribesmen have netted the river for the length of a parasang, and I bring you plenty of fish.” Tableau! Hasty flight of Sir Frank to another river, with like results!

Reasons both of date and data prevent my including the Japanese, perhaps the most alert and adaptive sea-fishers in the world. As their history before 500 A.D. must apparently be classed as legendary, this nation eludes my chronological Net. Data on ancient fishing, if existing, are either unknown[100] or as being derived from China find place _postea_.[101]

I set the time limit of my book at roughly 500 A.D., so as to include the last classical or quasi-classical piscatory poems _viz._ those of Ausonius—notably _ad Mosellam_—in the fourth and of Sidonius in the fifth century.

This date seems, indeed, a pre-ordained halting-place for three reasons. First, the tackle of our day (though improved almost beyond recognition in rod, winch, artificial bait, etc.) is merely the lineal descendant of the Macedonian described by Ælian in the third century A.D. Second, between Ælian and Dame Juliana’s _Boke_ no record, with two possible exceptions, of fishing with a fly exists. Third, and more important, we possess no real continuous link between the Angling literature of Rome down to the fifth century and that which sprang up after the invention of printing some thousand years later.

In the intervening centuries, it is true, books and manuscripts were written (mainly by monks) which treated more or less of fishing, but of Angling only incidentally.[102] They illustrate the customs of fishermen, the natural history of fish, the making and maintaining of _vivaria_ or fish-ponds, rather than instruct or inform on practical Fishing.

The most notable would, could we trace it, be “an old MS. treatise on fishing, found among the remains of the valuable library belonging to the Abbey of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. A paper on this was read, a few years before 1855, at a society of antiquaries at Arras. From its style, the MS. was supposed to have been written about 1000 A.D., and to have been divided into twenty-two chapters. The author’s main object was to prove that fishers had been singularly favoured by Divine approbation; but appended to the MS. was a full list of all _river_ fish, the baits used for taking them, and the suitable seasons for angling for each sort of fish.”

For the existence of this work, vanished now for over sixty years, we have only the authority of Robert Blakey.[103] But this, if it do pass muster with Dr. Turrell, fails to satisfy Westwood and Satchell, who describe his book on Angling as “a slipshod and negligent work, devoid of all utility, a farrago of quotations incorrectly given, and of so-called original passages, the vagueness and uncertainty of which rob them of all weight and value. Mr. Blakey’s volume, it is but fair to add, is redeemed from utter worthlessness by the excellent bibliographical catalogue appended to it by the _publisher_!”[104]

The _Geoponika_, whether written or redacted by Cassianus Bassus or Cassius Dionysius, or merely translated from a treatise by an ancient Carthaginian author, treats generally of agriculture. The twentieth book, however, deals with fish-ponds, fishing, and baits: unlike the Roman writers on _vivaria_, who tell us nothing as to the capture of the fish in them, the writer gives us instructive tips on baits.

One infallible recipe in chap. xviii. for collecting the fish—on the lines of Baiting the Swim—from its superstitious _naïveté_ compels quotation: “Get three limpets, and having taken out the fish therein, inscribe on the shell the words, Ἰαώ Σαβαώθ, or ‘Jehovah, Lord of Hosts’; you will immediately see the fish come to the same place in a surprising manner.”[105] The two Greek words formed the so-called Gnostic formula and occur frequently on amulets, etc. The _Geoponika_ adds immediately, “this name the Ichthyophagi use.”

About the fourteenth century a poem entitled _De Vetula_, attributed to R. de Fournival, got translated or imitated by Jean Lefevre. The fishing portion (68 lines) awakes our interest, as it shows that “more than six hundred years ago, and probably two hundred years before the date of _The Boke of St. Albans_, most of the modern modes of fishing were practised; for instance, the worm, the fly, the torch and spear, the night line, the eel-basket and fork,” etc.

This quotation from Westwood and Satchell might cause a casual reader to suppose that (α) from _De Vetula_, written only some two centuries before _The Boke of St. Albans_, we gain our first information “of these modes of fishing,” and (β) that these were “modern,” whereas Oppian had described them all, some thirteen hundred years before _The Boke of St. Albans_ saw light.

With the exception of de Fournival and the elusive MS. of Dom Pichon,[106] which (written about 1420 but only rediscovered about 1853) probably stamps this monk as the first to practise artificial hatching, the Continent produced practically nothing till the appearance at Antwerp in 1492 of the first printed original book on Fishing, which as regards printing precedes _The Boke of St. Albans_.

This little Flemish work by an unknown author contains twenty-six chapters of a few lines, gives recipes for artificial baits, unguents, and pastes, and in the last two pages notes the periods when certain fish eat best. As its title sets out, it teaches “how one may catch birds and fish with one’s hands, and also otherwise.”[107]

The earliest description of fishing in the English language meets us in _The Colloquy of Aelfric_, A.D. 995, which Skeat first brought to notice and first “Englished” in _The Oldest English Treatise on Fishing_.[108] This takes the form of a short dialogue introduced into the _Colloquy_ written by Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of teaching his pupils Latin, and therefore written in Anglo-Saxon with a Latin translation beneath. “It is arranged as a conversation between the master and his pupil; the latter in turns figuring as huntsman, fisherman, falconer.”

The length of the _Colloquy_, even of the fishing portion, prevents inclusion here, but the pupil’s objection to fishing in the sea, “because rowing is troublesome to me,” and to going a-whaling, “because I had rather catch a fish I can kill than one that can, with one stroke, kill both me and my comrades,” strikes me as well taken and pertinent.

A poem by Piers of Fulham, written about 1420 (the original MS. of which can be seen at Trinity College, Cambridge) claims next our notice. The author, judging from Hartshorne’s rendering, fully justifies the description of him as a somewhat pessimistic angler. He seems to have anticipated De Quincey’s “fishing is an unceasing expectation and a perpetual disappointment.” He fully appreciated its difficulties and disappointments, but clearly possessed some sportsmanlike instincts, as the following, among other, verses show[109]:—

“And ete the olde fishe, and leve the yonge, Though they moore towgh be uppon the tonge.”

A Latin book _Dialogus creaturarum optime moralizatus_ was published in 1480; a translation about 1520 styles it _The Dialogues of Creatures Moralysed_. This very rare work, which I have found fully dealt with from an Angler’s point of view only by Dr. Turrell, furnishes the earliest known illustration of an angler fishing with a float.

Next in date, and last to be noticed here, comes the famous _Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle_, printed at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 as part of the second edition of _The Boke of St. Albans_. Whether, as has been commonly supposed, Dame Juliana Berners wrote it, or whether any such lady ever existed, are points of controversy, but that _The Treatyse_ was not an immaculate conception, without parents or ancestors, can be reasonably proved by its reference to earlier writers on fishing, and to its “these ben the xii flies ye shall use” being introduced as a precept of practice rather than a revelation of invention.

If few the forbears of what some term “not only the first angling manual in England, but also the first practical work written in any language,” its vitality and its prolific progeny admit of no doubt. According to Mr. A. Lang (who accounts for the startling fact by the increased number of people able to read owing to the spread of education) no less than ten editions of _The Boke_ were issued within four years of publication, while Dr. Turrell limits himself to fourteen undated editions between 1500 and 1596.

Whatever the number of the editions, the need for and the vitality of _The Treatyse_ is demonstrated by the fact that for over a hundred years no new work on Angling was printed in England, and between it and _The Compleat Angler_—a space of over one hundred and fifty years—there occur but four books on the subject.[110] To its prolific progeny, the _Bibliotheca Piscatoria_ bears witness[111] in its catalogue of some fifteen hundred authors and of countless books, MSS. etc.

We owe, it is said, this voluminous literature to the geographical position of England, which lends itself very favourably to the pursuit of all kinds of fishing. Can we, also, flatteringly add the other factor of Lacépède’s dictum, “Il y a cette différence entre la chasse et la pêche, que cette dernière convient aux peuples les plus civilisés?”

But the pursuit of fishing did not prevail in early England or Scotland. A passage in Bede (probably used by Henry of Huntingdon), which has, I think, escaped the many-eyed net of our fishing authors, testifies to its absence in the former.

St. Wilfrid (born 634) on his return from Friesland, where fishing yielded the staple of food, met with such success in his mission to the South Saxons that he not only converted them, “with all the priests of the Idols,” but also—“which was a great relief unto them”—taught them the craft of fishing, of which, save eeling, they wotted naught. Collecting under the Saint’s order eel-nets where they could, the first adventurers _meritis sui patris Divina largitate adjuti_[112] enmeshed three hundred fishes, which they equally divided between the poor, the net-owners, and themselves.

The Celtæ, with some exceptions such as the scomber-catching Celtiberi, eschewed fish, probably from religious prejudices, which owing to their adoration of the springs, rivers, and waters prevented the eating of their denizens.

Whatever the cause, Dion Cassius expressly comments on the abstinence of the Caledonians, although their seas and rivers abounded with food.[113] In time the example of the clergy and the ordinance of fast days gradually overcame—save in the case of Eels, which still remain to the Highlander an abomination—their obstinate antipathy. Across St. George’s Channel the Irish two centuries ago “had little skill in catching fish.”[114]

But when the Western Highlanders did go a-fishing, their prayers and promises—prompted by the same principle of gratitude being a sense of favours to come—echo the prayers and promises, _Dis mutatis_, of the _Anthologia Palatina_.

The seas differ, but the gods precated are the same. If in the following verses you substitute for “Christ, King of the Elements” Poseidon, King of the Waters, for “brave Peter” ruseful Hermes, and for “Mary fair” Aphrodite, you have the tutelary deities of fishing. The spirit of the prayer and promise of the firstling remain unchanged.

For century after century the fishermen of the Isles have handed down orally to generation after generation the Gaelic prayer with which they set out to sea.[115]

“I will cast down my hook: The first fish which I bring up In the name of Christ, King of the Elements, The poor man shall have for his need: And the King of the Fishers, the brave Peter, He will after it give me his blessing. Columba, tender in every distress, And Mary fair, the endowed of grace, Encompass ye us to the fishing bank of ocean, And still ye to us the crest of the waves!”

The rarity—I have not met its mention—and curious nature of a volume published at Frankfort in 1611, even if more than a century after _The Boke of St. Albans_, compels some reference.

_Conjecturæ Halieuticæ_ by Raphael Eglinus consists of a long dissertation based on the strange markings of three fishes (pictured on its title-page), two caught in Scandinavia on the same day, November 21, 1587, and the third in Pomerania on May 21, 1596. These markings, supposedly chronological, provide their author with a basis for various prophecies and warnings of the evils to come in Central Europe, especially in Germany.

As neither text nor type peculiarly tempt to perusal, I have not found it easy to disentangle the disasters or allot to each country its individual woe. Deductions from Daniel, the patriarch Joseph, and of course the Apocalypse enable Eglinus to establish definitely to his own satisfaction the future advent, in one or other of the Central Kingdoms, of Antichrist.

Nor, again, is it easy to gather whether a time-limit is set for his appearance, or whether the prophecies apply to twentieth-century events. Alas! also, the data do not enable me with certainty from the very promising entries from Germany, Austria, and Bulgaria to single out the precise potentate who best fills the bill, or closest answers to the author’s Antichrist.[116]

Space debars from one fascinating branch of my subject—the superstitions of Fishing. Their far-flung web enclosed the ancient _piscator_ more firmly than his brother _venator_, or, indeed, any class save only the “medicine men” of Rome.

Nor could their successors disentangle themselves, as witness the recipe given above by Bassus for inscribing on the limpets’ shell the Gnostic formula, and Mr. Westwood’s words, “There is, in fact, more quaint and many-coloured superstition in a single page of Old Izaak than in all the forty-five chapters of the twentieth Book of the Geoponika. Silent are they touching mummies’ dust and dead men’s feet—silent on the fifty other weird and ghastly imaginations of the later anglers.”[117]

And even the modern angler, if he thoroughly examine himself, must confess that some shred of gossamer still adheres. Does he not at times forgo, even if he boast himself incredulous of consequence, some act, such as stepping across a rod, lest it bring bad luck? If particular individuals rise superior, the ordinary fisherman in our present day still avows and still clings to superstitions or omens. Let him in the South of Ireland be asked whither he goes, meet a woman, or see one magpie, and all luck vanishes.[118] A dead hare (_manken_) regarded as a devil or witch a century ago brought _piscator_ nigh unto swooning.[119]

Women seem usually fatal to good catches; as one instance out of many we read in Hollinshed’s _Scottish Chronicle_, that “if a woman wade through the one fresh river in the Lewis, there shall no salmon be seen there for a twelvemonth after.”

Superstitions of every sort and almost incredible dictate to the ancient and to the modern fisherman what are the good and what the bad days for plying his craft, or setting his sail. Their cousin, imitative magic, plays no small part in deciding his bait.

But enough here of fishing superstitions. Are they not writ large in Pliny, Oppian, Plutarch, in the _Folk Lore Records_, and larger, geographically, in that masterpiece, _The Golden Bough_?

The most incredulous, if there were one chance in a hundred of the operation ensuring adeptness in our craft, would willingly sacrifice in conformity with Australian superstition the first joint of his little finger.[120] Nor, again, if only the most moderate success resulted, would any of us utter a belated plaint at his mother imitating her Fijian sister and throwing, when first a-fishing after childbirth, his navel-string into the sea, and thus “ensuring our growing into good fisherfolk.”[121]

FOOTNOTES:

[82] Jowett’s _Translation_, vol. iv. p. 343. The whole passage, which is too long for quotation, is fairly typical of Platonic methods.

[83] The _italics_ are mine.

[84] 23 Law Times, 439.

[85] In H. Grassmann’s _Wörterbuch zum Rig-Veda_, twice. One cannot indict a whole sex for inebriety on the strength of a single passage, but fish, despite _matsya_ being masculine in Sanskrit, are always feminine according to the _Avesta_ (vol. v. p. 61, of _Sacred Books of the East, Pahlavi Texts_): “Water, Earth, Plants, and Fish are female, and never otherwise.”

[86] For help and guidance as to India I am greatly in debt to my old Oxford friend, Dr. A. Macdonell, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, and to his two books, _History of Sanskrit Literature_, p. 143, and Macdonell and Keith, _Vedic Index of Names and Subjects_ (London, 1912), vol. ii. p. 173.

[87] _The Story of the Flood in the Catapatha Brāhmana._

[88] _Sacred Books of the East_, xx. 252. Cf. x. 41.

[89] _Ibid._, xvi. 7. Cf. xxiii. 239, and v. 65.

[90] De Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f.

[91] De Gubernatis, _Zoological Mythology_ (London, 1872), vol. ii. 331, f.

[92] _The Pancatantra_, I., Story 17.

[93] _A Group of Hindoo Stories_, by an Aryan (really F. F. Arbuthnot) (London, 1881), p. 35.

[94] Book I., Story 12 and 15. Book XI., Story 4. Here the fisherman, when asked by the king the sex of a fish, saves the situation and collars 2000 dinar by ejaculating the blessed word, not Mesopotamia, but “Hermaphrodite,” which he had once overheard two students casually employ.

[95] Sir William Jones holds that this collection of Fables “comprises all the wisdom of Eastern nations, and was surpassed in esteem and popularity by few works of Oriental literature.”

[96] No Quatrain of Omar Khayam sings of the craft.

[97] See _Idyll_ XX. of Theocritus, _postea_ 135, note 1, for another example.

[98] Modern Turkish contains (according to Dr. Tisdall) two genuine old _Turkish_ words for fish-hook, (1) _Ôltah_, (2) _Zôngah_. This is of great interest, for it goes far to show that the Turks, even before leaving Central Asia, were familiar with Angling.

[99] To him, a high authority on Persia, not only from the many years spent there but also from his great linguistic accomplishments, I am greatly in debt for much of the foregoing.

[100] Mr. Harold Parlett, our Consul at Dairen and an authority on Japan, writes, “I know of no books in Japanese dealing with the _history_ of fishing, and I think it improbable that any exist, unless in MS. It is a subject, which as far as I know, has not yet been studied. I should advise you to dismiss ancient Japanese methods in as few words as possible.” I follow his advice.

[101] On consulting a great Sinologist, he rapped out, “The only thing I know or want to know of Japan is that every art, every craft, it possesses came from China.”

[102] W. J. Turrell, _Ancient Angling Authors_ (London, 1910), p. xi. _Ancient_, in this most researchful work, might, I venture to suggest, be qualified by _British_, for six pages (in the Preface) suffice for all fishing before the tenth century.

[103] _Angling Literature_ (London, 1856), p. 33.

[104] There is in existence a Byzantine MS. entitled Ψαρολόγος (lit. “Fishbook,” _i.e._ anecdotes of fish), which K. Krumbacher, _Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur_, 3rd ed. (München, 1897), p. 884, states should be published.

[105] The result of the work done during the last twenty years by German writers, such as W. Christ, _Geschichte des griechischen Litteratur_, ed. 3 (München, 1898), p. 664 f.; E. Oder, in Pauly-Winowa _Real Enc._ (Stuttgart, 1910), VII., 1221-1225; and F. Lübker, _Reallexikon des klassischen Altertums_ (Leipzig, 1914), p. 409, seems to show that our _Geoponika_ is a reduction, _c._ 950 A.D., by an unknown hand of an older compilation made in the sixth century by Cassianus Bassus. Behind him in turn are older works of the fourth century, _viz._ the συναγωγὴ γεωργικῶν of Vindanius Anatolius in twelve books, and the γεωργικά of the younger Didymos of Alexandreia in fifteen books. Ultimately we get back to Cassius Dionysius of Utica, who translated the Carthaginian Mazo’s work on agriculture (88 B.C.).

[106] See _infra_, p. 291.

[107] The date of 1492 is suggested by Mr. Alfred Denison, who translated and issued privately twenty-five copies of _Dit Boecxken leert hoe men mach voghelen vanghen metten handen. Ende oeck andersins_. From the press of Mathys Van der Goes. The marriage of Madame Van der Goes to Godfridus Bach, whose printer’s mark also appears in the book, seems to point to 1492. See, however, M. F. A. G. Campbell, _Annales de la Typographie Neerlandaise au xv^e siècle_ (La Haye, 1874), p. 80, and _Bibl. Pisc._, pp. 35, 36.

[108] _The Angler’s Note-Book_, 1st series (1880), p. 76.

[109] Cf. Turrell, _op. cit._, 4. In “and with angle hookys” in Piers, Mr. Marston, _op. cit._, 2, sees “probably the earliest known reference to angling in English.”

[110] Cf. M. G. Watkins, _Introduction to the Treatyse, etc._ (London, 1880), p. xi.

[111] It enumerates 3158 distinct editions of 2148 different fishing works published before 1883. The _Supplement_ issued by Mr. R. B. Marston in 1901 gives 1200 more. Mr. Eric Parker’s delightsome and pocket-companionable _An Angler’s Garland_, London, 1920, gives many happy extracts from the fifteen hundred, and present-day writers.

[112] In Bede, “Et divina se innante gratia.”

[113] 76, 12. τῶν γὰρ ἰχθύων, ἀπείρων και ἁπλέτων ὒντων, οὐ γεύονται.

[114] James Logan, _The Scottish Gael_ (Inverness, 1876), vol. ii. p. 130 f.

[115] Alexander Carmichael, _Carmina Gælica_ (Edinburgh, 1900), vol. i. p. 325.

[116] S. Bochart, _Hierozoicon_ (Leipzig, 1796), p. 868, telling of a fish whose right ear bore the words, _There is no God, but God_, and left, _Apostle of God_, and neck, _Mahomet_, concludes with a parody of Virgil, _Buc._, iii. 104.

“Die quibus in terris inscripti nomina Divum Nascantur pisces, et eris mihi magnus Apollo!”

A _magnus Apollo_ to graduate the claims of the different potentates would indeed be a boon. The capture of a fish some two years ago near Zanzibar with Arabic inscriptions—legible only by the faithful—caused immense excitement, as possibly foretelling the speedy end of the world.

[117] _Angler’s Note-Book_, ii. p. 116.

[118] _Angler’s Note-Book_, i. 44.

[119] Dougal Graham, _Ancient and Modern Hist. of Buckhaven_ (Glasgow, 1883), vol. ii. p. 235.

[120] John F. Mann, “Notes on the Aborigines of Australia,” _Proc. Geograph. Soc. of Australia_, i. p. 204.

[121] J. G. Frazer, _op. cit._, iii. 206-7.

GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING

“_Noster in arte labor positus, spes omnis in illa._”

[Illustration: FISHERMEN ON THE VASE OF PHYLAKOPI.

Probably the earliest Greek representation connected with fishing, _c._ 1500 B.C.

See n. 2, p. 63]

GREEK AND ROMAN FISHING.[122]