GRAYLING— MOSQUITO FLY 193 



read, then to ^lian would belong the credit of being the first 

 to mention not only the use of the artificial fly, but also the 

 use of the natural fly. 



In XIV. 22, we read of the Thynialus (a kind of grayling), 

 which alone of all fishes gives out after capture no fishy smeU, 

 but rather so fragrant an odour that one would almost swear 

 that in his hand he held a freshly gathered bunch of thyme 

 (" that herb so beloved by bees "), instead of a fish, ^lian 

 then lays down that, while it is easy to catch this fish in nets, 

 it is impossible to do so with a hook baited with anything 

 except the K(ovw\p, i.e. the gnat, or more probably from the 

 vivid description by one who has evidently suffered, the 

 mosquito, " that horrid insect, a foe to man, both day and 

 night, alike with his bite and his buzz." ^ 



Here then, in XIV. 22, we get, if the conjecture musco 

 should be held to deprive Martial of his priority, the first men- 

 tion of angling with a natural fly. 



The difficulty, obvious at once to the practical angler, of 

 how the ancients (or even the moderns with all the elaborate 

 perfections of Redditch) could manufacture a hook little enough 

 to impale a mosquito did not escape Aldrovandi.2 g^^ \\^q 

 Kovu)\p, said to spring from the o-KwArj/cfc, i-^-, larvcs found in 

 the sediment of vinegar, was apparently even smaller than his 

 brother mosquito, the Ifxiri^.^ 



As only with great care, and even then only on very fine 

 wire, can the smallest modern hook. No. 000, be coaxed to impale 

 a big gnat, the problem before the Ancients of impaling with 

 a hook one, and this not even the largest, of the mosquito 

 tribe seems insoluble. But perhaps ^Elian's KMvioxp (as probably 

 also his 'Imrovpog) was far larger than its descendant of the 

 present day, or perhaps our author has substituted by mistake 

 the mosquito for some larger but similar gnat. 



* voi/Tipf lj.fv ^(^0} KOI. /xfd^ rifxfpav Koi vvKTiap avOpcoirots (X^PV '''*' SaKf7p uai ffo^aat. 

 - For size of hooks, see antea, p. 157 and note i. 



* Cf. Arist., N. H., V. 19. The crKwh-r]^ of Aristotle is an immature product 

 of generation which grows and finally becomes a pupa, or (so Aristotle believed) 

 an egg giving birth to the perfect animal. 



