10 INTRODUCTION 



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, d 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 peche 

 dans les Rivieres 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 Brockets d 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.i 



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 2 and the moderns down to some date 

 between 1496 and 165 1 fished with " tight " lines. 



1 With good reason the author styles his work, " Ouvrage tres curieux, 

 utile, et recreatif pour toutes personnes qui font leur sejour k la campagne." 



2 No example of a running Mne 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, Diet, des antiquiUs, 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., pi. 4. (6) Black figured lekythos from Hope 

 Collection (Sale Cat. No. 22), published by E. M. W. Tillyard in Essays and 

 Studies presented to W. Ridgeivay, Cambridge, 1913, edited by E. C. Quiggin, 

 p. 186, ff. with plate, (c) Graeco-Roman gem in A. Furtwangler, Beschreibung 

 der geschnittenen Steine im Antiquarium (zu Berlin), Berlin, 1896, p. 257, 

 No. 6898, pi. 51. Cf. the same author, Die Antiken Gemmen, Leipzig- 

 Berlin, 1900, i. pi. 28, 25, and pi. 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 gJnh'ale des Monnaies antiques de I'Espagne, Paris, 1870, 

 p. 331 f., pi. 49, 19-21. (e) Mosaic in Melos, see R. C. Bosanquet in the 

 Jour, of Hell. Studies, 1898, xviii. 71 ff., pi. i. (/) Silver krater iiova. Hilde- 

 sheim shows Cupids with fishing rods and tridents catching all sorts of 



