FIRST MENTION OF ARTIFICIAL FLY 187 



displayed, despite deficiency in arrangement, a valuable collec- 

 tion in Natural History, " to us fishermen matters little, for unto 

 him has been ascribed the great glory of being the first author 

 of all ages and of all countries specifically to mention and 

 roughly describe an Artificial Fly. 



And not only is he the first, but also (with possibly one 

 exception) the only author during fourteen hundred years, 

 who makes any reference to any such fly.i From -^lian until 

 the Treaty se of Fysshynge with an Angle we find no mention 

 of, or allusion to, the Artificial Fly, but that it was well known 

 as a method of angling is easily deduced from the authoress's 

 abrupt introduction of the subject, " There ben the xij flies 

 or dubbes with which ye shall angle." - 



The usually accurate Bibliotheca Piscatoria of Westwood 

 and Satchell states under heading of ' .^lian,' that Stephen 

 Oliver (Mr. Chatto), in his Scenes and Recollections of Fly 

 Fishing, first pointed out this remarkable passage. Now the 

 first edition of Oliver's book is dated 1834 ; so, if the Bibliotheca 

 Piscatoria be correct, .Elian's statement apparently remained 

 unknown to Anglers for nearly eighteen centuries. 



I purposely set out a translation of the whole passage in 

 iElian, XV. i, because short extracts are usually given, and 

 because these vary greatly on a very important point. I 

 adopt with some alterations the translation by Mr. O. Lambert 

 in his Angling Literature in England (1881). 



" I have heard of a Macedonian way of catching fish, and 

 it is this : between Beroea and Thessalonica runs a river called 

 the Astraeus, and in it there are fish with speckled skins ; what 

 the natives of the country call them you had better ask the 

 Macedonians. These fish feed on a fly peculiar to the country, 



.Elian extended such transference to his Natural History also, his story of 

 the Pinna, and others would seemingly demonstrate. Sir J. E. Sandys, A 

 History of Classical Scholarship, ed. 2 (Cambridge, 1906), i. 336, goes so far as 

 to say : " He is the author of seventeen books On Animals, mainly borrowed 

 from Alexander of Myndos (first century a.d.)." 



^ Dr. W. J. Turrell, op. cit., XL, states that a Latin poem written by 

 Richard de Fournival, about the thirteenth century, alludes incidentally to 

 fishing, and from this it appears that the fly and the worm were among the 

 lures then used by anglers, but does not state expressly whether Fournival's 

 fly was natural or artificial. 



- Cf. H. Mayer, Sport with Rod and Line, Barnet and Phillips, New York. 



O 



