SPIDER FISH NET— OCTOPUS LANDS COAL 43 



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 Kvfiarwv avrtpiBjxov yeAao-^ta. 



Three of this big family stand out conspicuous by their 

 diversity. (A) The fairy-Hke Net — perhaps the most interesting 

 because the most incredible — made by Spiders and used by the 

 Papuans. 1 (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 



Fischerei (Berlin, 1903), s. 62, " Das Fischnetz gait also schon in der Vorgeschicht- 

 lichen Zeit, im grauen Altertum fiir uralt. Mit Recht darf der Fischer sich 

 den altesten Gewerben der Menschheit zuzahlen." 



^ 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 satis- 

 factorily. See also Robert W. WilUamson {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, 



