LACK OF SPORTING INSTINCT 409 



was the knowledge of the existence and value of the Rod 

 not acquired ? ^ 



Those and other queries may have found a ready reply 

 in the reputed but lost Book of Solomon on Fishes. 2 It may 

 possibly have contained some clue, such as a command or 

 custom, totemistic or other, common to the old Semitic stock, or 

 some trait of temperament which caused Anghng to be regarded 

 as too slow or too unremunerative a pastime. 



Without its guidance one is almost driven to the con- 

 clusion that the ancient Israelites (like the early Greeks and 

 Romans) were pot-hunters, bent on the spoil rather than on 

 the sport of their catch, but (unlike them) continued this 

 characteristic throughout their history, and remained to the 

 end uninfected by the joy or passion of Angling. Their desire 

 was fish — abundant and cheap, or better stiU gratis : hence 

 when " fed up " with Manna (Numbers xi. 5) they fell a-lusting 

 — " Who shall give us flesh to eat ? We remember the fish 

 we did eat in Egypt for nought." 



This apparent lack of the sporting instinct contrasts 

 strangely with the fact that modern Jews rank among our 

 foremost anglers, and that to a Jew we owe the greatest book 

 written within the last generation, if not the practical estabUsh- 

 ment on a scientific basis of the dry-fly, that most finished 

 form of AngUng, 



Dr. Kennet, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, while 

 holding no brief either way, has, at my request, most kindly 

 suggested some reasons which may conceivably account for the 

 BibUcal absence of Angling. To my mind none of these affords 

 adequate proof of its existence. 



A. The physical characteristics of the country preclude 

 many references to fishing in the Old Testament. However keen 

 their desire, the majority of the population were in the position 

 of Simple Simon, when he " went a-fishing for to catch a whale." 



^ If the Egyptian Rod was unknown, " the Egyptian fish (probably 

 salted) that came in baskets " were regularly imported. Mishna Makhshirin, 



VI. 3- 



* See I Kings iv. 33, " And he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of 

 creeping things, and of fishes." Some authorities hold that this mention of 

 Solomon's natural history researches is quite late, and meant to be a set off 

 against Aristotle's. 



