CHAPTER XXIV. 

 "FYSSHE AND FYSSHEYXGE'' (CONCLUDED). 



[Before the Minnesota Academy of Sciences, 1881.] 



To enumerate the habits of the long list of so-called game fishes and describe 

 their habitat and the different modes of capturing them would occupy a large volume. 

 Such a book I published not long ago. after two years of laborious preparation. It 

 is called the "Sportsman's Gazetteer," and embraces upward of 900 pages of print. 



I have already spoken of the antiquity of angling. Professor J. J. Manley, of 

 London, has collected sundry Biblical references to its early history. Job says : 

 "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord which thou 

 lettest down? Canst thou put a hook in his nose, or bore his jaw through with 

 a thorn?" 



From this brief passage it would appear that only hand lines or drop lines were 

 in use in Job's period. I assume that rods were then not known. The hooks were 

 made of wood, and quite probably of literal thorns. Even in the present day the 

 Indians of Arizona and California .use for hooks the thorns of a species of cactus, 

 which are very tough and bent to proper shape by natural growth. The points are 

 very sharp, and I should much prefer them to many of the inferior modern hooks, 

 which are poor quality and badly tempered. All aboriginal hooks are made of wood 

 or bone and are without barbs. The Japanese use barbless hooks, and it is worthy 

 of remark that many modern anglers advocate the primitive pattern. Seth Green 

 will not use hooks with barbs. 



In the books of Habakkuk we read of fish being taken with an "angle." Isaiah 

 speaks of those who "cast their hooks into the river," indicating evidently that rods 

 tvere then used. 



Angling with rod and line, and with the hand line alone, were practiced and 

 well understood early in the Christian era. In the New Testament we read of 

 Peter taking a fish with a hook; and furthermore it had a piece of silver money in 

 its mouth ! However, there was nothing strange about that. We read every season 

 of fishes being caught with miscellaneous collections in their pocketi sufficient to 

 stock a small museum. The accidental dropping into the water cf a silver coin 

 and its pursuit by a fish which darted after it led to the invention of the spoon 

 hook or troll. 



It does not appear that reels were in use in the early centuries. The reel is 

 an invaluable adjunct to facilitate the capture of big fish; and to take in a fifty- 

 pound anthia from Lake Tiberius or the classic streams of ancient Greece without 

 one must have required the skill of an expert worthy to chalk his name high up 

 beside those of the most illustrious anglers of modern times. 



Here is a graphic description of fishing with a rod, written by the poet Oppian 

 in the second century. I find it in Manley's book. It would do justice to anything 

 written since, and proves that the poet understood the art of angling thoroughly. 

 It makes one feel that the fishermen of old were of the same stuff as brothers of 

 the angle now : 



(118) 



