supplied a large portion of nutritive sustenance to the 

 various inhabitants, and, in some places, has progres- 

 sively risen from a domestic trade to a material branch 

 of the public revenue by exportation. As a practical art 

 it has experienced little if any alteration for centuries. 

 Instances may be found of the untutored savage exer- 

 cising his adroitness by diving, while the invention of 

 more polished regions is exhibited in the varying mesh 

 and subtle deception of a baited hook. Painters and 

 poets of all periods describe similar modes of destruc- 

 tion. Of our domestic records, upon the research of a 

 late antiquarian, into the sports and pastimes of the 

 people, not any particulars were met with (e sufficiently 

 deviating from the present method of taking fish to 

 claim a place in his work."* The following extract 

 is curious, and is one af the earliest notices upon the 

 subject, which combines the statute and common law 

 of the realm at that period. " If any man fysshe in 

 the lordes pooles or meyres, the lorde maye haue his 

 accyon vpon the statute of Westmynster primT. [3 Ed. 

 I. C 20 1275.] And yf he fysshe in the rynning and 

 seuerall waters, the lorde may haue his actyon at the 

 conTen lawe, 8c in lykewyse the lordes tenaUnt, if any 

 man fysshe in his ferme holde, be it standynge waters 

 and rynninge waters : and where he saythe de omni- 

 bus of commen fysshynges, that is lytell profyte to y e . 

 lorde but to his tenaules, except he dwell nighe the 

 sea, and wyll cause his seruant to fysshe there for hym, 

 for y*. is the best conTen water y*. any man can fisshe 

 in. And some rynning waters be confen, as lytell 



* Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, p. 7. 



brokes, 



