28 LITERATURE OF SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 



into his fables ; and a long stride brings us to Cassianus 

 Bassus, who flourished in the beginning of the tenth century. 

 The twentieth book of his Geoponica is almost entirely 

 devoted to fishing and baits. 



It is not pretended that the above-mentioned authors 

 exhaust the list of Greek, Roman, and other writers on 

 fish and fishing during the first ten centuries ; but the 

 extracts given are sufficient to show that the subject from 

 very early times gradually gave rise to a literature more or 

 less its own. Authors who treated of the vivaria, or fish- 

 stews of the Romans, might be quoted, notably Varro (who 

 wrote De Re Rustica in his eightieth year), Columella, 

 Palladius, and several others also, in whose works a good 

 deal of halieutic and ichthyological information is to be 

 found scattered up and down. 



Numberless early works on fish and fishing have been 

 wholly or partially lost to us, among which may be 

 mentioned those of piscatory poets, such as Numeneus of 

 Heraclea, Ccecius of Argos, Poseidonius of Corinth, 

 Pancrates the Arcadian, and Leonidas of Tarentum. Of 

 these only a few fragments have been preserved ; and the 

 following translation {Blackwood" s Magazine, vol. xxxviii.) 

 of an " Epitaph of an Angler," by the last-named, is worth 

 quoting : — 



" Parmis, the son of Callignotus — he 

 Who troU'd for fish the margin of the sea, 

 Chief of his craft, whose keen, perceptive search, 

 The kichl^, scarus, bait-devouring perch, 

 And such as love the hollow clefts, and those 

 That in the caverns of the deep repose, 

 Could not escape — is dead. 



Parmis had lured 

 A julis from its rocky haunts, secured 

 Between his teeth the slippery pert, when, lo ! 

 It jerk'd into the gullet of its foe, 



