DESCENT OF FISHING DEVICES 39 



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 essajdng a scheme of reconstruction of my own. 



First came fishing with the hand, la piche a la main, which, 

 according to Abel Hovelacque, " est le mode le plus elementaire 

 ct certainement le moins productif." 1 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. 2 



As la peche a 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 iElian as even in his day an 

 ancient device, further evolution of this method practically 

 ended. 3 



Second came the hunting Spear, used originally on fish 

 lying in pools, small of size but of depth sufficient to prevent 



^ Les Debuts de I'humaniU, etc. (Paris, 1881), p. 69. E. Krause, op. cit., 

 p. 153, agrees. 



* " 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. 



2 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, pub- 

 lished at Naples in 1689 : 



" Paulatim digitis piscator moUiter alvum 

 Defricat, et sensim palpando repit in ipsas 

 Cffiruleas branchas, subituque apprendit : et ilia 

 Blanditiis decepta viro fit praeda Britanno." 



