Chapter III: Part I (2)

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.

SINGLE BARBED HARPOON (Bruniquel).

DOUBLE BARBED REINDEER HARPOON (La Madelaine).]

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.

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._