CHAPTER XVII

TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS OF FISHING FOR THE SARGUS BY DRESSING IN A SHE-GOAT’S SKIN—FOR THE SKATE BY DANCING AND MUSIC—FOR THE SILURUS BY A YOKE OF OXEN—FOR THE EEL WITH THE GUTS OF A SHEEP. WHAT WAS THE SILURUS? WILD THEORIES AS TO THE PROPAGATION OF EELS

“Unseen, Eurotas, southward steal, Unknown, Alpheus, westward glide, You never heard the ringing _Reel_, The music of the waterside.” (A. LANG.)

The tackle, implements, and some curious modes of fishing apparently peculiar to, or handed down to us only from, Greek and Roman sources call for consideration and comment.

Nets, we have seen, were of all sorts and kinds in shape, make, and size. Their number and nature as disclosed by Julius Pollux, Plutarch, and Ælian indicate that the art of netting was well nigh perfected. Oppian, after enumerating many varieties and telling how the enormous

“Nets, like a city, to the floods descend And bulwarks, gates, and noble streets extend,”

excuses himself from further amplification:

“A thousand names a fisher might rehearse Of nets, intractable in smoother verse.”[559]

Confirmation comes from Alciphron’s[560] statement that scarce a fathom of the harbour of Ephesus but held a Net: on one occasion the sole haul, after much moiling and toiling, was the putrid carcase of a camel![561]

What and whence the Rod? It was certainly short: only from 6 to 8 feet (Ælian, XV. 1)—a length which is in the main confirmed, if assuming the height of some of the fishermen represented on vases, etc., in the Greek and Roman rooms of the British Museum to be as high as six feet, you then measure the rod. On the other hand, the sitting youth in the Agathemeros relief (_Brit. Mus. Cat. Sculpture_, I. 317, No. 648) measures 24 cm., the Rod 8 cm., the line 15 cm.[562]

As we do not possess any relic of the Homeric rod, the length of the only one mentioned in either the _Iliad_ or the _Odyssey_ must be a matter of conjecture, especially as this is styled περιμήκης, or “very long” one.[563]

The ordinary Rods were made of cane, hence _Harundo_ and _Calamus_, which was imported usually from Abaris in Lower Egypt, or of some light elastic wood. For large and powerful fish, where something stronger was required, Ælian tells us that _Tuncus Marinus_ and _Ferula_ were preferred.

If the Rod were tapered, it was tapered probably by Nature not by art, at least so the Agathemeros relief, all the pictures of Venus and Cupid angling, and of many _Amorini_ from Herculaneum would suggest. The question whether the Rods were jointed has been discussed in my chapter on the _crescens harundo_ of Martial.

The line, ὁρμιά, or _Linea_, made from the strong bristly hairs of animals (_seta_) but most generally of horse-hair,[564] of flax, of _sparton_ out of the _genista_, perhaps of _byssus_, but never of gut, was very finely twisted, as the epithet εὐπλόκαμος shows. It was usually as long as the rod itself, although in the Agathemeros relief we find it nearly double the length. The colours of the line were grey, black, brown—sometimes red or purple. It was made tight to the top of the Rod and not let down to the butt, or running.[565]

Plutarch prescribes that the hairs next to the hook should for deception’s sake be taken from a _white_ horse, and adds advice, as pertinent now as then, that there “should not be too many knots in the line!”[566]

To the line was fastened the hook (_hamus_) which was of one or two sharp barbs.[567] From Herculaneum,[568] Pompeii, and elsewhere have been collected hooks which vary extremely in form, size, and method of adjustment.[569] Although sometimes of bone, they are mostly manufactured from iron or bronze. Cf. Oppian, III. 285: χαλκοῦ μὲν σκληροῑο τετυγμένον ἠὲ σιδήρου.

It strikes us moderns as strange to have the epithet _hard_ applied to bronze and not to iron, till we are informed that the ancient bronze was made of tin and copper, not zinc and copper, as is our softer alloy, and was so hard that, Pliny tells us, it could be worked to represent the finest hair of a woman’s head.

The Pompeian hooks were almost exclusively adapted for sea fishing, and are thus generally large in size, long in shank, and flattened at the top to facilitate attachment to the line.

Plutarch’s statement that some hooks were straight, as distinct from the usual recurved sort, may possibly be indicative of a survival of the palæolithic gorge. Some of the Roman hooks are double-barbed, some are fixed back to back like eel-hooks, and fastened to wire to prevent erosion by the teeth. In the pursuit of large fish such as the _Amia_, hooks of a serpentine curve are recommended, “as these great fish manage to get loose from straight ones!”

To the hook was fastened the bait (_esca_), usually worms, flies, and other insects. For large fish the bait was often cooked, because the scent was believed to offer an additional attraction. By a clever contrivance of small pieces of lead equally balanced and carefully attached the lure was made to have the appearance of natural movement.

The Reel on a fishing Rod was certainly unknown to Ancient Nations. Wilkinson figures something resembling a Reel being employed when spearing _hippopotami_.[570]

The _Amia_ (mentioned by Pliny, IX. 19, alone of all the Latin writers) is according to Oppian[571] a little smaller than the tunny, which reaches large proportions. Later,[572] he recounts how the _Amia_ furnishes sad labour and trouble to the fishermen from his habit, the moment he feels the hook, of instantly rising, of swallowing more line, and then of biting through the middle, “or even the topmost hairs of it.”

But successful cunning to avoid capture was no monopoly of the _Amia_. Ovid, Oppian, Pliny, Plutarch, Ælian, recount numerous devices which certain fish employ to nullify net or hook. I subjoin three of the chief tricks used to defeat the _hamus_.

The _Mugil_, whose greed is only saved by its guile, despite his foreknowledge of danger has madly grabbed the bait, but keeps thrashing it with his tail, till at last he shakes it free of the hook. “At mugil cauda pendentem everberat escam Excussamque legit.”[573]

The _Anthias_ on the first prick of the hook turns over on to his back and quickly severs the line with his dorsal fin, or spike, “of the shape and keenness of a knife.”[574]

The _Scolopendra_, according to Aristotle, “after swallowing the hook, turns itself inside out until it ejects it, and then it again turns itself outside in,” and (in Pliny’s words) vomits up everything inside him till he has ejected the hook, and “deinde resorbet!”[575]

Lines with floating corks and lead attached close to the hooks, partly to facilitate the throwing of the line, and partly, combined with a sliding cork, to regulate the position of the bait, were in regular use. Ground fishing, when the lure is leaded and thrown with or without rod, was well known and widely exercised.

Pastes and scents were also employed, either like myrrh dissolved in wine to intoxicate (see the accompanying drawing, which is, I believe, unique),[576] or, like the cyclamen, or sowbread, to poison the fish.[577] From Oppian’s description of the workings of the poison, IV. 658 ff., we take the lines:

“Soon as the deadly Cyclamen invades The ill-starred fishes in their deep-sunk glades, ... the slowly working bane Creeps o’er each sense and poisons every vein, Then pours concentred mischief on the brain, Some drugged, like men o’ercome with recent wine, Reel to and fro, and stagger thro’ the brine; Some in quick circlets whirl: some ’gainst the rocks Dash, and are stunned by repercussive shocks; Some with quenched orbs, or filmy eyeballs thick, Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick, In coma steeped their fins more feebly ply, Some in titanic spasms gasp and die. Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns, The jocund crew collect, and count their gains.”

In the simile—inevitable in Oppian—which ends the passage our author may indicate, though he does not name, the Germanic tribes (for over Rome in his day as over Europe in ours hung the barbarian menace) when he condemned the abhorred habit practised by the enemy of poisoning the springs and wells:

... “the brave defendants sink In thirsty pangs, or perish if they drink.”

In the number of methods, in the variety of devices, the fishermen of Oppian and Ælian are not behind their modern successors; it is indeed the reverse of

“John P. Robinson he Guessed they did not know everything down in Judee.”[578]

We moderns are, in fact, merely the heirs to a piscatorial estate, which by scientific improvement or intensive culture we have rendered more serviceable and better adapted to the requirements of fish more harried, and consequently more highly educated.

The old devices, the old recipes were never entirely lost.[579] They continued to be handed down through the Middle Ages, and may be found in most of the collections of household recipes, such as those of Baptista Porta, Conrad Heresbach, and others. They naturally in the course of some thousand years got rather split up, or fell into abeyance; it was not, in fact, till the seventeenth century that fairly full collections of them began to reappear.

But except just to mention “tickling,” an ancient device in both Oppian and Ælian, we have room here only for four methods, all very quaint, either unknown or uncommon among twentieth-century fishers.

The _first_, that by which the goat-herd annexes the _Sargus_, according to Oppian.[580]

In hot weather it was, and still is, in Sicily the wont of the goat-herds to drive their flocks to some cool shallow of the sea. “Once upon a time” one of them noticed that the _sargi_ came round the goats in vast shoals. The reason for this—whether grasped in a moment by one great brain, or evolved by two or three generations of speculating herdsmen—was discovered to be the attraction of the male _sargus_ by the smell of the female goat.

So the reasoning goat-herd slays his nanny, puts himself inside her skin, and to perfect, I presume, the resemblance of the deception, “adjusts on his brows the horns!” Then he gently glides into the shallow, “scatters the food full shower” among the _sargi_ hot on their amorous mission and, well! for the number that were slain by “The Sturdy Rod his latent Hand extends” I refer you to the fourth book of the _Halieutica_!

Ichthyologists declare that the male _sargus_ is very uxorious, and has at least one hundred wives always in close-herded attendance on him. As the words “unhappy lovers” indicate that the _sargi_ were present not a few, these multiplied by one hundred must have yielded quite a decent creel.[581]

The _second_ method owes its success to the love for music and for watching the dance, which Aristotle and Ælian assert to be characteristic of several fishes, but especially of the skate. The recipe of this method, far pleasanter, certainly less odoriferous than that of the last, demands 1 Boat, 1 Violin, 1 big Net, 2 Men, one of whom fiddles, while the other dances as he unwinds the net. Attracted to the spot, and, like Wagner-devotees, so entirely absorbed by the melody as to be unconscious of all else, the skates fall easy and numerous victims to the slowly drawn net.

This method seems “the limit.” It certainly trenched on even Badham’s credulity. He states that he would not have cited this statement of Ælian’s, unless it had been “singularly countenanced and confirmed by no less a person than the great French ichthyologist, Rondolet,” whose mere name in this musical context must presumably carry conviction, for (as is not unusual with Badham) no reference is given.[582]

The _third_ method, employed by the Mysians for capturing the _Silurus_ in big rivers like the Danube and the Volga, is set forth by Ælian (XIV. 25) in words which describe with such charming _naïveté_ the perfection of the Silurian palate, eye, and possibly nose, enabling it to discriminate instantly between “the lungs of a wild” and other “bull,”[583] that we may venture upon quoting the whole passage:

“An Istrian fisherman drives a pair of oxen near the river-bank, not, however, for the purpose of ploughing.... If a pair of horses are at hand, the fisherman makes use of horses; and with the yoke on his shoulders, down he goes and takes his station at a spot which he thinks will make a convenient seat for himself, and be a good place for sport. He fastens one end of the fishing-rope, which is stout and capable of standing a good tug, to the middle of the yoke, and supplies the oxen, or the horses, as the case may be, with sufficient food, and the animals take their fill.

“To the other end of the rope he fastens a strong and terribly sharp hook, baited with the lungs of a wild bull; this he throws into the water as a lure—a very sweet lure—to the Istrian _silurus_, having previously fastened a piece of lead of sufficient size to the rope above the place where the hook is bound on, to serve as a support for the pull.[584]

“When the fish perceives the bait of bull’s-flesh, he immediately rushes at the prey, and, meeting with that he so dearly loves, opens wide his great jaws and greedily swallows the dreadful bait; then the glutton, at first turning himself round with pleasure, soon finds that he has been pierced unawares with the aforesaid hook, and being eager to escape from the calamity shakes the rope with the greatest violence.

“The fisherman observes this, and is filled with delight; he jumps from his seat, and, now in the character of a fisherman, now in that of a ploughman, like an actor who changes his mask in a play, he urges on his oxen or horses, and a mighty contest takes place between the monster and the yoked animals; for the creature, foster-child of the Ister, draws downward with all his might, while the yoked animals pull the rope in an opposite direction. The fish can make no headway. Beaten by the united efforts of the team, he gives in, and is hauled on to the bank.”

_Siluri_, according to common report, have been caught weighing over 400 lbs. and of more than twelve feet in length.

There is good ground for us moderns patting ourselves on the back, when we realise that owing to the many improvements effected in our tackle, and not least in the Rod, an angler off Catalina has often landed a heavier fish than a yoke of oxen on the banks of the Ister, _e.g._ Mr. A. N. Howard (in 1916) caught the record Black Sea Bass in Californian waters, weighing 493 lbs.

Even this big fellow is quite a dwarf beside the Tuna of 710 lbs. taken in Canadian waters by Mr. Laurence Mitchell,[585] which still holds, I believe, the record of the world as the very largest fish ever taken on a rod.

I myself have seen a sword fish of over 300 lbs. killed on a rod off Santa Catalina. When in 1909 out for Tarpon in Kingston Harbour, Jamaica, I had the good luck to secure after a fight of two and a half hours, and after being towed almost down to Port Royal and back, a distance of some five miles, a shark weighing 116 lbs., with a rod only 8 foot long, with a light salmon line, with a No. 4 hook, and with a bit of piano wire, _faute de mieux_, attached to prevent erosion.[586]

From the time of the earliest authors the identification of the _Silurus_ has been a vexed question.

Aristotle writing of the _Glanis_, a large fresh-water fish (his only account of actual fishing, it may be remembered, is a fight with a _Glanis_),[587] attributes to it characteristics and habits, which Pliny _totidem sententiis_, if not _verbis_, transfers to the _Silurus_, although he thrice mentions the _Glanis_. Ælian, in addition to XIV. 25, declares in XII. 14, that the _Glanis_ a species of, and very like, the _Silurus_, while Athenæus treats them as separate fish.

As late as the time of Scaliger, the problem gave rise to discussion which led to no elucidation of what fish exactly corresponds to the classical _Silurus_. Perhaps the sentence of Albertus Magnus,[588] “a river fish which was called by the Greeks _Glanis_, but by us _Silurus_,” seemed, although only a conjectural compromise, as near as we could get to the identity.

Agassiz, however, reluctant to accept Cuvier’s identification of the _Glanis_ with the _Silurus glanis_, came to the conclusion (after examining six specimens of a Siluroid new to Ichthyologists, which he obtained from the Acheloüs in Western Greece) that from agreement in the form of the anal fin, the position of the gall bladder, the connected spawn, etc., they were the same as Aristotle’s _Glanis_. To this Siluroid Agassiz gave the name _Glanis aristotelis_: it is, perhaps, better known as _Parasilurus aristotelis_.[589]

If the _Silurus_ be the _Scheid_ of Germany, his strength, habits, and ferocity, as set forth in our authors are indeed very credible. From Aristotle we learn that this “river fish” is easy to hook (as we should suspect from its rapacity, which has been tersely summarised in “pisces pisci præda at huic omnes”), but from its huge powers and hard teeth very hard to hold.

The passage in Pliny, IX. 75, which he extracts from Aristotle[590]—“Silurus mas solus omnium edita custodit ova, sæpe et quinquagenis diebus, ne absumantur ab aliis”—has by a wrong rendering accorded to the male _Silurus_ the proud distinction of being the only male fish that guards its eggs. This is absurd, for other instances, _e.g. Chromis simonis_, exist.

Where fish, however, pay any regard whatever to their _ova_, it is usually, but not always, on the father that the duty falls. “Omnium” in Pliny is to be read not with “solus” but with “edita ova.” This reading advances the quite different claim that the Silurus is the only male that includes in its watch and ward not merely its own but promiscuously also the eggs of other fish. Perhaps the same start of surprise awaits him, on the pentecostal and last day of his vigil, as that of the hen when she first beholds a mixed brood of chickens and ducklings emerging from under her breast.

Pliny reveals some fabulous uses of the _Silurus_. In XXXII. 28, fresh caught _Siluri_ are an excellent tonic for the voice. In 46, by the smoke and scent of a burnt _Silurus_, especially one hailing from Africa (!), the pangs of childbirth are said to be greatly eased. In 40, for curing “ignes sacros” or the malady of St. Anthony’s fire, the application of the bellies of living frogs, or of ashes from a _Silurus_, were two of the nostrums recommended.

The _fourth_ and last method, for the capture of Eels, given by Ælian,[591] although almost certainly cribbed from Oppian,[592] but with a local habitation and a name carefully thrown in to suggest originality, reads much as follows:

The eeler from a high bank of the “river Eretaenus, where the eels are the largest and by far the fattest of all eels,” lets down at a turn of the stream some cubits’ length of the intestines of a sheep. An eel, seizing a bit of it at the nether end, tries to drag the whole away, on which the fisher applies the other end (which is fixed to a long tubular reed serving the place of a fishing rod) to his mouth, and blows into the sheep’s gut. This presently swells; the fish receiving the air in his mouth swells too, and unable to extricate his teeth is lugged out, adhering to the inflated intestines.[593]

“Gin these be joys of artful eeling, oh! gie me Essex Flats,” with their “sniggling for eels with a needle,” or “banding“ for fish with whitethorn hooks!

In addition to this pneumatic method of Ælian others were employed for taking eels. Stirring up the mud, in which they were wont to lurk was a common device; hence the proverb ἐγχέλεις θηρᾶσθαι, to fish in muddy waters. Thus Aristophanes[594] makes the sausage seller, whom the Whigs of Athens had hired to outbawl the demagogue Cleon, shout, “Yes, it is with you as with the eel-catchers; when the lake is still, they do not take anything, but if they stir up the mud, they do; so it is with you, when you disturb the State.”[595]

Even at the risk of being likened to Mr. Bouncer of Oxford fame, who in every answer of his Divinity paper dragged in his sole and cuff-attached bit of Old Testament knowledge with “and here it may not seem inappropriate to subjoin a list of the Kings of Israel and Judah,” I venture some comments on the Eel.

The frequent allusions in our authors to the Eel, (A) as a sacred fish, (B) as the delight of the epicure, and (C) as a propagator of its species in a variety of surprisingly erroneous ways, must be my excuse.

(A) _It was held as a god_, or at least as a sacred creature, by the Egyptians,[596] as sacred to Artemis in the spring of Arethusa,[597] and semi-sacred by the Bœotians.[598]

Antiphanes[599] ridicules the Egyptians for the sacred honour paid to the fish, wrongly termed by the Greeks the Eel. Contrasting the value of the gods with the high prices paid for the fish at Athens he gibes; “they say that the Egyptians are clever in that they rank the Eel equal to a god, but in reality it is held in esteem and value far higher than gods, for _them_ we can propitiate with a prayer or two, while to get even a smell of an Eel at Athens we have to spend twelve _drachmæ_ or more!” Anaxandrides’[600] makes a Greek say to an Egyptian:

“You count the Eel a mighty deity, And we a mighty dainty!”

Juvenal in Satire XV. (written probably after his return from semi-exile in Egypt) lashes with ridicule the compatriots of his butt Crispinus. The enumeration of their animal and vegetable gods is a fine specimen of dignified humour. By _piscem_ in line 7, may be indicated the _Oxyrhynchus_, the _Lepidotus_, or the _Phagrus_, the so-called Eel—three sacred fishes of the Nile.

“Illic æluros, hic piscem fluminis, illic Oppida tota canem venerantur, nemo Dianam.”

(B) _As a delicacy_, the Eel by the Greeks was rated very high. But the reverse held good at Rome. Unlike its cousin the _Muræna_ it gets little commendation by the Latin comedians—Terence’s in _Adelphi_, 377-381, is the solitary exception I can recall—and by the gourmets. Apicius deemed it worthy of but one recipe.[601]

“Vos anguillæ manet longæ cognata colubræ” (Juvenal, V. 103) is often quoted as stamping the low position of the Eel at Rome, but in reality, as the whole context bears out, this particular “cousin of the snake” was condemned not because of its kinship, but because it was _Cloaca_-bred and drain-fed.[602]

The passage in Menander’s,[603] _Drunkenness_ which makes one of the characters declaim that, were he a god, he would never allow a loin of beef to load his altars, unless an Eel were also sacrificed, testifies to the preference for the Eel to meat. Numerous are the pæans of praise rendered by Greek writers to the superlative excellence of the fish.

The Eel is dight “the King of fish”[604]; he, or rather she, was “the white-skinned Nymph”[605]; was “chief of the fifty Virgins of Lake Copaïs”[606]; was a very “Goddess,”

“Then there came Those natives of the Lakes, the eels, Bœotian goddesses, all clothed in beet,”[607]

(with which, or majoram, on beech leaves, Aristophanes[608] tells us they were often served); and, the very last word in laudation, was “the Helen of the Feast.”[609]

Whether this was applied because the fish was the personification of all delicate dainties, as Helen was the fairest of all the fair, or because every guest strove like Paris to supplant his neighbour and keep her all to himself, the reader must choose. Athenæus certainly leans to the latter view.[610]

Philetærus[611] would seem to have no doubt in identifying what is the sting of death and what is the victory of the grave,

“For when you’re dead, you cannot then eat eels.”

To the sense of smell as well as that of taste the _Murænidæ_ appealed strongly, to judge by the eulogy that their bodies when being cooked exhaled an odour fragrant enough to restore the sense of smell in the nose of a dead man! while, if boiled in fine brine, they “changed the human nature into the divine!”[612]

The luxurious and lazy Sybarites, who felt they had broken their bones if they but saw another digging, and suffered not a cock in the whole country, lest he should mar their slumber, were so passionately addicted to Eels that all persons catching or selling them were exempt from taxes and tribute.[613]

(C) _The propagation of Eels_: This has given birth to more theories—all of them till some twenty years ago quite erroneous—than any other ichthyic question. From Aristotle downwards nearly every zoologist, nearly every writer on fish, has advanced his view as to how and whence eels are bred.[614]

Only a few of them, and they all divergent, can find space here. Aristotle held that Eels had never been found with milt or roe, that when opened they did not seem to possess generative organs, and that apparently they came from the so-called entrails of the earth, seemingly referring to certain worms formed spontaneously in mud and the like.[615]

Oppian (I. 513 ff.)—

“Strange the formation of the eely race That know no sex, yet love the close embrace. Their folded lengths they round each other twine, Twist amorous knots, and slimy bodies joyn; Till the close strife brings off a frothy juice, The seed that must the wiggling kind produce. Regardless they their future offspring leave, But porous sands the spumy drops receive. That genial bed impregnates all the heap, And little eelets soon begin to creep.”

Pliny, after making the assertion (taken, as usual, from Aristotle) that among fish the females are larger, and often the more numerous, goes on, an echo once more of “His Master’s Voice,” to deny to the Eel sex, either masculine or feminine: according to him, Eels when they had lived their day, rubbed themselves against the rocks, and their scrapings came to life: “they have no other mode of procreation.”[616]

Von Helmont attributed the birth of Eels to the dews of May mornings! other authors deduced their parentage from the hairs of horses! others again from the gills of fish! while the great Izaak Walton insisted on spontaneous generation![617]

To solve the insoluble, recourse was, as usual, had to the gods: thus Jupiter and a white-armed goddess yclept Anguilla[618] (the Latin for Eel) were accounted parents of the countless “cousins to the snake.”

Theory was piled upon theory, false conclusions were drawn from falser data. Even as late as 1862 appeared an author, not one whit less certain of the truth of his discovery based “on a series of observations extending over sixty years,” or one whit less active in asserting it, than any of his numerous predecessors.

In _The Origin of the Silver Eel_, Mr. D. Cairncross propounded the following assertion: “The progenitor of the silver Eel is a small beetle: of this I feel fully satisfied in my own mind, from a rigid and extensive comparison of its structure and habits with those of other insects.”[619] “The beetle in the act of parturition” is represented on the frontispiece!

The fact that this beetle is evidently a dead one would not, as the _Bibliotheca Piscatoria_ rather wickedly puts it, even if known to the writer, cause him to alter his opinion one jot!

It was only in 1896—strange, indeed, that a problem which so many keen intellects had attacked should remain unelucidated for over two thousand years!—that the mode of reproduction and development of the Eel was first surmised, and then for the most part ascertained by Professor Grassi and Dr. Galandruccio. But not till 1904 were most of the surmises of the Italian investigators placed beyond question, and the mode of reproduction, etc., established beyond doubt by Johann Schmidt of Copenhagen.

The now accepted view (stated shortly) is as follows: fresh-water Eels approach maturity when about six years old, and then change their colour from browny-yellow to silver, whence “Silver Eels.” In this bridal attire and with eyes enlarged, they find their way from the rivers to the sea, and far out into deep waters of the ocean. The pace at which they travel on their way to the sea cannot be computed exactly, but two marked Eels have been caught whose record was nineteen kilometres in two days. Meek[620] states that neither the exact locality nor the approximate depth of the spawning is as yet known, but that there can be no doubt that the spawning region lies deep and far out in the Atlantic beyond the Continental shelf.

_The Times_, Sept. 25, 1920, announces that Dr. J. Schmidt has just discovered the spawning place of fresh-water Eels to be not far S. of Bermuda, or about 27 deg. N. and 60 deg. W., much farther W. than he anticipated. Of the many marvels of the ichthyic world this is, perhaps, the greatest. It taxes, it transcends, our powers adequately to conceive the hereditary instinct or gauge the enduring strength which impels fish—as yet sexually undeveloped—of only moderate size to traverse 3000 or 4000 miles of an ocean full of foes, and to seek, especially to find, the only area which contains the requisite depth, temperature, and currents favouring the procreation and the return home of their minute but parentless progeny.

The conclusion is now clear that the Eels of Europe at any rate have a spawning area in common; the two Italian doctors were wrong in supposing that Eels spawned in the Mediterranean. In such ocean depths certainly below, probably far below, the one hundred fathoms[621] line the generative organs of the Eels develope, and in due though protracted time the females spawn.[622]

Their eggs float for a time; the young, when hatched out, pass through a metamorphosis and are known in one stage as _Leptocephalus brevirostris_. This larval form, which is flat and transparent and has a very small head, drifts with the ocean currents towards the coasts of Europe, where it passes through a series of metamorphoses into the Elver or young Eel, which in March and April swims up English rivers. The fecundity of the Eel, were it not for the system of check and countercheck devised by Nature, would in time become a danger; for the ovary of a female thirty-two inches in length has been estimated to contain no fewer than 10,700,000 eggs![623]

But however legitimate or illegitimate their methods may seem, all praise should be rendered to our ancient anglers. Especially so, when we call to mind that, as they possessed not running lines, reels, gut, nor probably _landing_ nets, the playing of large fish must have required more delicate manipulation and the landing presented far greater difficulties than to us, armed as we are with all these and many other appliances.

FOOTNOTES:

[559] _Trans._, by Diaper and Jones (London, 1722—see _supra_, p. 177), which I usually employ. Cf. III. 84: μυρία δ’ αἰόλα τοῖα δολορραφέων λίνα κόλπων. Fishing nets from Pompeii, even now almost entire, are to be found in Italian Museums. The best times for hauling up the nets were (according to Arist., _N. H._, VIII. 19) “just about sunrise and sunset. Fishermen speak of these as ‘nick-of-time’ (ὡραῖοι) hauls. The fact is that at these times fishes are particularly weak-sighted” (D’Arcy Thompson, _Trs._). Pliny, IX. 23, practically copies Aristotle.

[560] Alciphr., _Epist._, 1. 17.

[561] A terra-cotta relief of the type known as “Median,” _c._ 460 B.C., in _Brit. Mus. Cat. of Terra-cottas_, No. B. 372, Pl. 20, shows a fisherman holding two fishes, or a fish and a purse, and as if in the act of pulling in a net. This a very early exemplar of Greek Netting.

[562] Cf. the rod of Heracles on a black-figured vase published by C. Lenormant and J. de Witte, _Élite des Monuments Céramographiques_, Vol. III., Plate 14. The Rod is 8 cm. and the Line is 6 cm.

[563] _Od._, 12, 251. Cf. the same phrase in _Od._, 10, 293, for Circe’s magic wand.

[564] Plutarch, _de Sol._, 24, commends those of a stallion as longest and strongest, of a gelding next, and of a mare least, because of the weakness of the hairs due to her urination.

[565] Ælian, _N. H._, XII. 43. See Introduction.

[566] Plutarch, _de Sol._, 24.

[567] It is of great interest to note that according to Langdon (see Jewish Chapter), probably in Sumerian, and certainly in Hebrew, the word equalling hook, in its primary sense equals thorn, which strongly suggests, if it do not absolutely prove, that the ancients employed, as do even now the catchers of flat fish in Essex, and the Indians in Arizona, a thorn as their primitive hook. In Latin _hamus_ signifies hook and thorn. Cf. Ovid (_Nux._, 113-116).

[568] Waldstein and Shoobridge, _Herculaneum_ (London, 1908), p. 95, “The only industry which has left much trace is fishing; hooks, cords, floats, and nets were found in much abundance.”

[569] See _antea_, p. 157, and note 1. According to Petrie, _Tools and Weapons_ (London, 1917), p. 37 f.: “The European fish-hooks do not appear before the _fonderia_ age: in Greece and Roman Italy hooks are common.” G. Lafaye, in Daremberg and Saglio, _op. cit._, III. 8. _s.v._ “hamus,” gives figure 3696, a simple bronze hook, figure 3697, a small double hook in the Museum at Naples, figure 3698, a quadruple hook (four bronze barbs attached to the angles of a square plate of lead), and figure 3699, a bronze _hamus catenatus_. H. B. Walters—_Catalogue of the Bronzes, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan in British Museum_ (London, 1899), Nos. 38 and 39—describes, but does not figure, two hooks of the Mycenæan period from Rhodes, 2 inches and 27/8 inches long, which are dated about 1450 B.C. Petrie, _loc. cit._, states that the “usual pattern of the Greek-Romans is, as figured in No. 100, while 101 and 102 are the limits of size.”

[570] _Op. cit._, Pl. 378.

[571] Bk. II. 556.

[572] Bk. III. 138-148.

[573] Ovid, _Hal._, 38 f.; cf. Oppian, III. 482 ff.

[574] Pliny, _N. H._, XXXII. 5; Ovid, _Hal._, 44 ff.; Plutarch, _De Sol. Anim._, 25. This trick is also characteristic of the _Armado_ of the Parana river, but its enormous strength enables it also either to jerk the paddle of the fisher away, or to capsize the boat. Cf. S. Wright, _The Romance of the World’s Fisheries_ (London, 1908), p. 208.

[575] Pliny, IX. 67, taken _totidem verbis_ from Aristotle, _N. H._, II. 17, and IX. 51.

[576] The fisherman on the Mosaic from the Hall of the Mystæ in Melos (R. C. Bosanquet, in the _Jour. of Hellenic Studies_ (1898), xviii. 60 ff., Pl. 1) appears to have been using a glass bottle half-filled with wine as a lure. The inscription ΜΟΝΟΝ ΜΗ ΥΔΩΡ is generally taken to be late Greek for “Everything here except water” (which will be supplied by the next rainfall). But the words might be legitimately rendered: “Only let no water be used”—a natural exclamation from the devotees of the wine-god! Prof. Bosanquet, despite his fine sense of humour, has missed the _double entendre_.

[577] For the poisoning of the Tunny, cf. Aristot., _N. H._, VIII. Cakes made of cyclamen and clay were let down near the lurking places of the fish, according to Oppian.

[578] With one method of fishing the ancients (in common with nearly all the moderns) were unfamiliar. The _locus_ is off Catalina Island, etc.: the _modus_ is by kites with line and bait attached, to which last, moving over and on the surface of the water, the Tuna seems irresistibly attracted. See _antea_, p. 41, note 3.

[579] Cf. Apostolides, _op. cit._, p. 31.

[580] Bk. IV. 308 ff. Cf. Ælian, I. 23.

[581] Cf. Oppian, IV. 375 ff. I. Walton, citing the _Sargus_ as an example of “the lustful fish,” quotes Dubartas, “because none can express it better than he does,” whose last two lines, as examples of this perfect expression, I cannot resist,

“Goes courting She-Goats on the grassie shore Horning their husbands, that had horns before.”

[582] But in confirmation of “this statement of Ælian,” Badham, had he taken the trouble, could have found several others by that and other authors. Thus Ælian, XVII. 18, of the Sea-roach. _Ibid._, VI. 31, of the Crab, which on hearing the flute and singing would not only quit the sea, but follow the retreating singer to dry land, and capture! Ælian, VI. 32, of the _Thrissa_ states that it was caught by singing to it, and by the noise of shell clappers which induced the fish to dance itself into the Nets and boats. Cf. also Athenæus, VII. 137, where the _Trichias_ is so delighted with singing and dancing, that when it hears music it leaps out of the sea and is enticed on land! Cf. also Herodotus, I. 141, for the story of Cyrus likening the Ionians to dancing fish. Not only were there fish that delighted in music and singing, like the dolphin (Pliny, IX. 8, musicæ arti, mulcetur symphoniæ cantu, sed præcipue hydrauli sono), but according to Philostephanus there were others, that themselves made music, like the _Poeciliæ_, who “sang like thrushes” (cf. Pliny, XI. 112). Of singing fish Pausanias, VIII. 21. 2, says, “among the fish in the Aroanius are the so-called spotted fish: they say that they sing like a thrush. I saw them after they were caught, but I did not hear them utter a sound, though I tarried by the river till sunset, when they were said to sing most.”

[583] The head of the ox was Thor’s bait when fishing for the monstrous Midhgardh serpent. See D. P. Chantepie de la Saussaye, _The Religion of the Teutons_ (Boston, 1902), p. 242. C. A. Parker, _The Ancient Crosses of Gosforth, Cumberland_ (London, 1896), p. 74 ff., describes and figures a relief representing Thor’s fishing. In this we see the line (below the boat) with an ox’s head, surrounding which are several enormous fishes.

[584] For ἔρμα, “support,” perhaps we should read ἔρυμα, “protection,” _i.e._ against erosion.

[585] See _Forest and Stream_, Nov. 7, 1914.

[586] The shark finds great favour among the negroes; “you can swallow him in de dark,” is a commendation based on the absence of small tricky bones, such as the shad’s. But to the best black _gourmets_, the fish only attains its highest perfection in soup, after being buried for two weeks! The cook of the friend with whom I was staying in Jamaica only consented to cutting up my shark, on condition that if a gold watch was found in its belly, that was to be her perquisite—a condition postulated, I eventually discovered, because on a similar occasion one hundred years before, her grandmother _did_ discover a gold watch. Alas for her! two ship-bolts of iron were her only treasure-trove.

[587] _N. H._, VI. 13.

[588] _De Anim._, VIII. 3, p. 262.

[589] Theodore Gill, “The Remarkable Story of a Greek Fish,” _Washington Univ. Bull._, Jan. 1907, pp 5-15.

[590] _N. H._, VI. 13.

[591] XIV. 8.

[592] _Hal._, IV. 450 ff.

[593] “Bobbing for eels,” with a bunch of worms on worsted is of like principle, but lacks the pneumatic touch. The eels seem to get their teeth caught in the worsted, and are pulled out before they can let go. See _antea_, p. 42, for the _garfish_ of the Solomon Islands being caught from a kite by a _hookless_ spider’s web.

[594] _Equites_, 864 ff.

[595] Fishing by “stirring up the mud,” is known in India. The agents employed for the trampling in the pools are elephants ranged in close order: the beasts enter thoroughly into the sport. Cf. G. P. Sanderson, _Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts in India_.

[596] Herodotus, II. 72, who states that it was sacred to the Nile.

[597] Ælian, VIII. 4; Plutarch, _Mor._, 976A. See Chapter XVI. _ante_.

[598] Athenæus, VII. 50.

[599] Antiphan., _Lykon frag._ 1, 1 ff., _ap._ Athen., 755.

[600] Anaxandr., Πόλεις, _frag._ 1, 5 f.; _ap._ Athen., 7, 55.

[601] Contrast with the Greeks and Romans the abstention from the _Murænidæ_ by the Egyptians, Jews, Mussulmans, and Highlanders; in the case of the last, however, the abstention was due to no religious injunction but to physical loathing.

Fuller on the derivation of the Isle of Ely is too quaint to omit: “When the priests of this part of the country would still retain their wives in spite of what Pope and monks could do to the contrary, their wives and children were miraculously turned into eels, whence it had the name of Ely. I consider it a lie.” That Ely is derived from the abundance of Eels taken there has the ancient authority of _Liber Eliensis_ (II. 53). J. B. Johnston, _The Place-Names of England and Wales_ (London, 1915), p. 250, takes _Ely_ to mean the “eel-island.” He adds, however, that Skeat regarded _Elge_, Bede’s spelling of the name, as “eel-region,” the second element in the compound, _ge_, being a very rare and early Old English word for “district” (cf. German, _Gau_). Isaac Taylor, _Names and Histories_ (London, 1896), _s.v._ Ely, states that rents were there paid in Eels.

[602] Care must be taken to distinguish between the Eel, ἔγχελυς, of the Greeks, _Anguilla_ of the Romans, and the so-called Lamprey, μύραινα, or _Muræna_. Although both belong to the large family of _Murænidæ_, the _Muræna_ is usually a much smaller fish, seldom over 2½ feet long. In shape and general appearance it closely resembles the Eel, but can be differentiated by its teeth and certain spots over the body. It becomes very corpulent, so much so that in late life it is unable to keep its back under water: it is easier to flay, and whiter of flesh than its relative. Apart from its mating with the viper, and its tendency (_teste_ Columella) to go mad, its chief characteristics are greed and fierceness of attack. The second book of Oppian has two really spirited pictures of its fight with, and conquest of, the Cuttle fish, and of its rush at, but eventual defeat by, the Lobster. At Athens the Eel, at Rome the Muræna, was the favourite.

[603] Menand., Μέθη, _frag._ I. 11 ff., _ap._ Athen., 8, 67.

[604] Archestratos, _ap._ Athen., 7, 53.

[605] Eubul., _Echo._, _frag._ 1, 1 f., _ap._ Athen. 7, 56.

[606] Aristoph., _Ach._, 883. See F. M. Blaydes’s note on 880 ff.

[607] Eubul., _Ion_, _frag._ 2, 3 f., _ap._ Athen., 7, 56.

[608] Aristoph., _Ach._, 894. _Pax_, 1014.

[609] Bk. 7, 53.

[610] Bk. VII. 53.

[611] Philetær., _Oinopion, frag._ 1, 4 _ap._ Athen., 7, 12.

[612] Badham, _op. cit._, 392.

[613] Athenæus, XII. 15 and 20. If the fish found favour helluously, medically condemnation attended it. Hippocrates warns against its use; Seneca, _Nat. Qu._, III. 19, 3, terms it “gravis cibus.” If to the gastronomic virtues of the _Murænidæ_ both Greeks and Latins were more than kind, to other characteristics they were far indeed from blind—_e.g._ their slipperiness, etc., was proverbial. See Lucian, _Anach._, I, and Plautus, _Pseud._, II. 4, 57. Further, did the fish but hap in a dream, then good-bye to all hopes and desires, which slipped away, as surely as Alice’s “slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” See Artemidorus, _Oneirocritica_, II. 14. The phallic character of the fish prevalent in ancient times continues in modern Italy, _e.g._ the proverbs (1) about holding an Eel by his tail, and (2) that when it has taken the hook, it must go where it is drawn. De Gubernatis, _op. cit._, II. 341.

[614] For the many classical theories on Eel procreation see Schneider, _op. cit._, pp. 36 ff.

[615] Aristotle, _H. A._, IV. 11.

[616] Pliny, IX. 23 and 74, and X. 87. In IX. 38 he asserts that Eels alone of all fish do not float when dead. Aristotle, who (_N. H._, VIII. 2) is, as usual, his authority, confines himself to noting this characteristic as not possessed “by the majority of fish,” and accounts for it by the smallness of stomach, lack of water in it, and want of fat; he states, however, that when fat they do float.

[617] Accuracy as to procreation was not Father Izaak’s strong point, as his theory that pike were bred from pickerel weed shows. It was on this point that Richard Franck, author of _Northern Memoirs_ (written in 1658, but unpublished till 1694), with the invincible contempt of the fly-fisher for the bait-fisher, so jumped on Walton, that “he huffed away.” See Sir H. Maxwell, _op. cit._, IV. 123.

[618] Robinson, _op. cit._, 73. This seems a bit of bogus mythology. Perhaps Natalis Comes may be responsible.

[619] It is curious to find that a similar belief was held in Sardinia: according to Jacoby, the water beetle (_Dytiscus roeselii_) is there believed to be the progenitor of the Eel, and is accordingly called the “Mother of the Eels” (Turrell, _op. cit._, p. 37).

[620] _Migrations of Fishes_, London, 1916.

[621] J. Schmidt found the youngest known stages of _Leptocephalus_, the larval stage of eels, to the west of the Azores, where the water is over 2000 fathoms deep: they were one-third of an inch in length and so were probably not long hatched.

[622] It is believed that no Eels return to the rivers, and that they die not long after procreation. “They commence the long journey, which ends in maturity, reproduction, and death.” _Presidential Address_, British Association, Cardiff, 1920.

[623] There is in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington an excellent collection of specimens, illustrative of the development of the Eel.