154 FIRST MENTION OF A FLY 



moreover, Oppian, II. 649, ^f^jSovrat S' rj x^<t>/>ov a\bg fiviov, 



K.T.X. <l>i;fc/'ov is, while muscus is not and never has been, algce 

 or true seaweed ; muscus is ' moss.' ^ 



Nor do these Olympian editors, who sit beside their proof- 

 sheets, and whose notes are ever hurled far below them in the 

 valley, condescend to explain to us poor gropers after light how 

 moss to a sea-fish like the Scarus can be of value as food. 



Most fishermen will tell you that freshwater fish do eat 

 moss ; that they themselves have seen them in the act of 

 eating such moss on the Thames ; that roach in especial are 

 particularly fond of this moss, which is used in summer months 

 as a bait with great success ; this moss they call by various 

 names, ' silk weed,' ' flannel weed,' ' blanket weed,' and 

 ' crow-silk.' Now all these so-called mosses are not mosses at 

 all, but belong to the family Confervce, which are freshwater 

 green algce : so even in rivers we find that moss is not used as 

 bait. 2 



That not only the Scari but other fish, e.g. the Melanuri, feed 

 on seaweed and that they are taken by baits composed of 

 seaweed, many writers besides Athenaeus and Pliny duly record. 

 Theocritus {Id., XXI. 10) speaks of " baits of seaweed." 

 Oppian, 3 describing the manner of catching the salpcB by baiting 

 a place with stones covered with seaweed, states that when 

 the fish have gathered round this in numbers, " then prepares he 

 (the fisher) the snare of the weel." .^lian ^ asserts that among 

 the marine plants, on which he says fish feed, are (3pva . . . 



1 The Oxford Did. gives, " Alga, a seaweed: in plural, one of the great 

 divisions of the Cryptogamic plants including seaweeds, and kindred fresh- 

 water plants, and a few aerial species," and " Moss, any of the small herbaceous 

 Cryptogamous plants constituting the class Musci, some of which form the 

 characteristic vegetation of bogs, while others grow in crowded masses covering 

 the surface of the ground, stones, trees, etc." As " applied to seaweed rare " , 

 I might venture to add either poetical, as in Tennyson's Mermaid, " in hueless 

 moss under the sea," or loose and unscientific. 



2 Compare J. Britten and R. Holland, Did. of English Plant Names 

 (London, 1884), III. 576. Wright in his Dialect Dictionary, " Crow-silk, Con- 

 fervae, and other Algag, especially C. rivularis." 



^ Oppian, III. 421. T^juos i-KivrCvn KvpTov S6\oy. These were traps of 

 wickerwork, resembling our lobster pots or weels, in which the fish were 

 caught as they flocked to suck at the seaweed, with which the stones (placed 

 inside the traps to sink them) were covered. Cf. jElian, XII. 43, who states 

 that for this sort of fishing fishermen made use of (pvKovs 0a\aa(riov, 



* N. H., XIII., 3. Cf. also ibid., I, c. 



