FISHING INCLUDES ANGLING. 19 



tie is known ; but I feel assured that they would rank higher 

 in the " scale of entities" than the fourth class of vertebrate 

 animals, accorded them by Cuvier, did all men of thought and 

 science appreciate and pursue fishing. 



Fishing, as a term, is general ; while angling is a special 

 kind of fishing. The word angling is supposed to have been 

 derived from the bend of the hook, forming an angle ; but 

 the origin or antiquity of the term is comparatively unim- 

 portant now. It is sufficient to know that the art of angling 

 " requires as much enthusiasm as poetry, as much patience as 

 mathematics, and as much caution as housebreaking." 



That field-sports were among the earliest and most respect- 

 able pastimes of the ancients, we have abundant evidence 

 from their poets and philosophers, such as Aristotle, Plato, 

 Cicero, and Horace ; and that angling was practiced " with 

 much success and love of the sport is evident from the Hali- 

 eutics of Oppian, the only Greek poem now extant on this 

 subject ;" but we learn from Athenasus that several other 

 writers had written treatises or poems upon fishing some 

 centuries before the Christian era. 



" Fishing was a favorite pastime of the Egyptian gentle- 

 man, both in the Nile and in the spacious ' sluices, or ponds 

 for fish,'* constructed within his grounds, where they were 

 fed for the table, and where he amused himself by angling,f 

 and the dexterous use of the bident, a two-pronged spear for 

 striking two fish at a time. These favorite occupations were 

 not confined to young persons, nor thought unworthy of men 

 of serious habits ; and an Egyptian of rank, and of a certain 

 age, is frequently represented in the sculptures catching fish 

 in a canal or lake, with the line, or spearing them as they 

 glided past the bank. Sometimes the angler posted himself 

 in a shady spot by the water's edge, and, having ordered his 

 servants to spread a mat upon the ground, sat upon it as he 

 threw his line ; and some, with higher notions of comfort, 

 used a chair, as ' stout gentlemen' now do in punts. The rod 

 * Isaiah xix., 10. t Isaiah xix., 8. 



