212 USE OF NETS FROM THE EARLIEST PERIODS. 



with the more modern appliances, and, to some extent, 

 European methods with our own. By this plan our matter 

 must certainly be more picturesque, vivid, and interesting. 



The use of nets for entrapping the finny inhabitants of the 

 deep date from the earliest periods. Besides the frequent 

 mention of them in the Holy Scriptures, we find illustrations 

 in the bas-reliefs of Assyria, Greece, and Rome, and in the 

 mural or wall paintings of Egypt. The latter nation 

 delighted in fishing, and, not contented with the abundance 

 afibrded by the Nile, they constructed in their grounds 

 spacious sluices or ponds for fish, like the vivaria of the 

 Romans, where they fed them for the table, and amused 

 themselves by angling. The fishermen, who composed one 

 of the sub-divisions of the Egyptian castes, generally used 

 the net in preference to the line. The ancients entertained 

 a number of prejudices relative to the wholesomeness or 

 injurious qualities of certain fish. The priests in Egypt 

 were prohibited from eating fish of any kind. For fear 

 of leprosy, the people also were forbidden the use of any 

 fish not covered with scales. Moses adopted the same prin- 

 ciples with the Jews: "Whatever hath fin or scales in the 

 water in the seas, them shalt thou eat; whatever hath no 

 fins or scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination to 

 you." 



The Greeks and Romans used nets ; trawling at sea was 

 also a favorite mode of angling, and harpoons were in gen- 

 eral use, by means of which many large fish were secured. 

 Some mosaics discovered at Palestrina represented men 

 engaged in taking fish out of a ready decoy by means of 

 small hand-nets. Arrian, in his " Indian History," mentions 

 a people on the coasts of the Persian Gulf, who had nets 

 capable of covering a quarter of a mile of sea, not made of 

 twine, for hemp and flax were unknown in the land, but of 

 the inner bark of palm trees, being, in fact, papyrus nets. 



In the dialogues composed by Elfric to instruct the Saxon 



