THE TROUTS OF AMERICA. 



CHAPTER I 



ANGLING, ITS ANTIQUITY AND LITERATURE — DIS- 

 TRIBUTION OF TROUTS AND CHARRS — CLASSIFICA- 

 TION— NATIVE TROUTS AND FOREIGN SPECIES 

 INTRODUCED TO AMERICAN WATERS 



The literature of ichthyology and angling is 

 as old, doubdess older, than the classics. When 

 Socrates was teaching philosophy in the aca- 

 demic groves of ancient Athens, and Diogenes 

 was still in prime cynical vigor, Herodotus, the 

 pioneer in ichthyic research, in the fifth century 

 before the Christian era, was engaged in stream 

 observation and in the study of zoology, direct 

 and comparative. Oppian, in the second century, 

 gave to the Roman world, in his " Halieutica," 

 the first treatise on fishing, and earlier still, the 

 old Greeks practised the art of angling, for 

 Homer tells us: — 



" Of beetling rocks that overhang the flood, 

 Where silent anglers cast insidious food, 

 With fraudful care await the finny prize. 

 And sudden lift it quivering to the skies," 

 o 193 



