A BAIT OF "FIFTY WHOLE OXEN!" 457 



coincide. As the former lived not two centuries later than the 

 Father of History, the tip had possibly just reached China 

 from Egypt — " from Africa comes ever something new " — 

 viz. the chine of a porker for a crocodile. 



The story runs that Tzu-ssu, a grandson of Confucius, 

 witnessed the landing from the Yellow River of a fish " as big 

 as a cart," The fishermen had baited first with bream, but 

 as the monster, like the law, de minimis non curavit, they 

 substituted half a sucking pig with instantaneous success. 



But the bait handed down to us by Chuang Tzu (fourth 

 century B.C.), if it faintly recall, completely eclipses " the 

 lungs of a wild bull," which iElian recommended for the 

 capture of the Silurus, in that it was no less an one than 

 " fifty whole oxen ! " 1 



As a producer and as a user of Nets, China ranked and 

 ranks perhaps higher than any country. The number and 

 variety of Nets in Julius Pollux can well be matched, while the 

 Oppianic opulence of 



" A thousand names a fisher might rehearse 

 Of Nets, intractable in smoother verse," 



meets its peer, if not its superior in Scarth, Gray, or Dabry de 

 Thiersant,2 who devotes thirty-five pages to what Plutarch 

 terms these " engines of encirclement." 



If the Net proper, the barrage, and the fish fence sprang 

 from the same parent, ^ then in China the fish fences of bamboo, 

 erected for catching and spawning purposes, should be in- 

 cluded in the term Net.* 



If this be the case, the Chinese stand out as experts both in 

 the diversity and the ingenuity of their devices. Passages 

 from old Chinese authors justify this appreciation. s They are 

 too numerous for quotation here, but three or four seem worthy 

 of notice. 



1 Antea, p. 243. 



2 La Pisciculture et la Peche en Chine (Paris, 1872) was written, not by a 

 globe-trotter, but by an expert sent out by the French Government to report 

 fully on Fishing in China. 



' See antea, p. 43. 



* Legge speaks of the Nets being made of veiy fine bamboo. 



* Werner, op. cit., 280 tf. 



