GRAYLING— MOSQUITO FLY 193 



read, then to .^lian would belong the credit of being the first 

 to mention not only the use of the artificial fly, but also the 

 use of the natural fly. 



In XIV. 22, we read of the Thy mains (a kind of grayling), 

 which alone of all fishes gives out after capture no fishy smell, 

 but rather so fragrant an odour that one would almost swear 

 that in his hand he held a freshly gathered bunch of thyme 

 (" that herb so beloved by bees "), instead of a fish, ^lian 

 then lays down that, while it is easy to catch this fish in nets, 

 it is impossible to do so with a hook baited with anything 

 except the Ktovio\p, i.e. the gnat, or more probably from the 

 vivid description by one who has evidently suffered, the 

 mosquito, " that horrid insect, a foe to man, both day and 

 night, ahke with his bite and his buzz." ' 



Here then, in XIV. 22, we get, if the conjecture musco 

 should be held to deprive Martial of his priority, the first men- 

 tion of angling with a natural fly. 



The dif^ficult3^ obvious at once to the practical angler, of 

 how the ancients (or even the moderns with all the elaborate 

 perfections of Redditch) could manufacture a hook Httle enough 

 to impale a mosquito did not escape Aldrovandi.2 But the 

 KMVMxp, said to spring from the (TKioXijKsg, i.e., larvce found in 

 the sediment of vinegar, was apparently even smaller than his 

 brother mosquito, the I/^ttIq.^ 



As only with great care, and even then only on very fine 

 wire, can the smallest modern hook. No. 000, be coaxed to impale 

 a big gnat, the problem before the Ancients of impahng with 

 a hook one, and this not even the largest, of the mosquito 

 tribe seems insoluble. But perhaps iElian's kiovmxP (as probably 

 also his 'iTTTTovpoc) was far larger than its descendant of the 

 present day, or perhaps our author has substituted by mistake 

 the mosquito for some larger but similar gnat. 



* TTovrip^ fxfv ^<f.(f KoX fjLfO' fijj.epav Kal vvKJUip avOpdirois fX^PV '^"^ ^olkuv kol ffuTJcat. 



- For size of hooks, see antea, p. 157 and note i. 



^ Cf. Arist., N. H., V. 19. The (tkwKii^ of Aristotle is an immature product 

 of generation which grows and finally becomes a pupa, or (so Aristotle believed) 

 an egg giving birth to the perfect animal. 



