NETS—" THE MILLION-WORKER " 459 



wonder and of our space. " Fishermen (we are told) used to 

 put the hair of small monkeys on the four corners of their 

 nets, by which means they succeeded in taking large numbers. 

 It is said that the fish seeing the hair were attracted towards 

 it, as a man to embroidery ! " ^ 



The infrequent mention of what was probably the oldest 

 fishing implement of Palaeolithic man, the Spear, admits of 

 no satisfactory explanation. For some reason the Chinese 

 seem to have employed the Spear-harpoon but rarely. 



Pictures of fishing in T'u shu Encyclopcsdia (extracted from 

 a work of the sixteenth century a.d.) confirm this view. If 

 numbers be any test, the Spear found least favour — it is repre- 

 sented but once — while the Rod appears four, and the Net 

 seventeen times. 



Lu Kuei-meng, the Izaak Walton of China, in his book of 

 the ninth century a.d., does, it is true, include spearing {ch'ai 

 yii) with a four-pronged weapon among other fishing methods, 

 such as shooting with bow and arrow {she ch'ien) and driving 

 into shallow water with the aid of a wooden rattle {ming lang) 

 for stockade work. A curious variation of the spear-harpoon 

 {hsien) was an iron instrument having at the end of a bamboo 

 a cock's spur, which was used for iguanas. 2 



The Chinese were evidently familiar with our Otter, i.e. a 

 line carrying hooks at short intervals, and fastened at either 

 end. The Yo Yang feng t'u chi, a work of the Han Dynasty 

 (about the time of the Christian era) expressly states that this 

 method, with the line made fast across a river between two 

 boats at anchor, accounted for many big fish. 



But enough evidence has, I believe, been adduced to 

 prove that the Sinitic piscator had Uttle to learn of his craft. 



He apparently lacked Oppian's pantomimic but scarcely 

 aromatic method of clothing himself in the skin of a she-goat, 

 probably because he lacked its victim, the salacious Sargus. 

 If he knew not Elian's pneumatic device of capturing the eel 

 by the aid of a sheep's bowels, he was no ignoramus of the 

 habits of the MurcenidcB, for he watched carefully and waited 



^ Ibid., p. 251. 



2 Ch '« hs-.ueh chi. Ibid., p. 281. 



2 H 



