AUTHORS ON SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 25 



versed in the use of all kinds of medicated and scented 



pastes, both as baits and ground-baits for fish, and also 



with a variety of intoxicants and narcotics, by which fish 



could be rendered senseless and capturable. The cyclamen, 



or " sow-bread," was known to the ancients, as it is to the 



Neapolitans and others at the present time, as having a 



special property of drugging fish ; and the poet tells us 



that— 



" Soon as the deadly cyclamen invades 

 The ill-starr'd fishes in their deep-sunk glades, 

 Emerging quick the prescient creatures flee 

 Their rocky fastnesses, and make for sea, 

 Nor respite know ; the slowly-working bane 

 Creeps o'er each sense and poisons every vein, 

 Then pours concentred mischief on the brain. 

 Some drugg'd, like men o'ercome with recent wine, 

 Reel to and fro, and stagger through the brine ; 

 Some in quick circlets whirl ; some 'gainst the rocks 

 Dash, and are stunn'd by repercussive shocks ; 

 Some with quench'd orbs or filmy eyeballs thick 

 Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick ; 

 In coma steep'd, their fins some feebly ply ; 

 Some in tetanic spasms gasp and die .... 

 Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns. 

 The jocund crew collect and count their gains." 



But almost irresistible as the temptation is to quote 

 further from this most interesting author, even in his 

 English garb, we must pass on. Arrian, a Greek historian, 

 who lived in the second century, and rose to the highest 

 dignities in Rome, furnishes us with some interesting 

 details of an almost exclusively ichthyophagous com- 

 munity in India, and their wonderful skill, both in the 

 manufacture and use of nets made from the inner 

 bark of palm-trees. Towards the close of the second 

 century we have Julius Pollux, a Greek writer who, in one 

 of the books of his Ononiasticon, tells us a good deal about 

 fish and fishin^. 



