iv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



life, "if his free breathing be denied" among the meadows, 

 the glens, and the uplands. Nevertheless, we shall speak 

 of fishing in any of the ways followed by those, who lived 

 so much in the dark ages as to know nothing of the fly ; 

 yet enjoyed what the learned author of " L'Art de la 

 Peche aux lignes volantes et flottantes, aux filets et autres 

 instrumens," calls by a rare melange of languages, " Pis- 

 ciceptologiey 



Fisher, editor of the Angler's Souvenir, from a praise- 

 worthy pride in his nominal ancestors, says the Saxon race 

 were called Anglo, because of their skill with the angle; 

 and truly they have earned such an honorable epithet, for 

 the art is well carried out only among their descendants ; 

 though Kresz (aine) has written on artificial flies with 

 rare cleverness for a Frenchman ;* and it is worthy of 

 remark, that Masaniello, vulgarly called The Fisherman of 

 Naples, was an angler, who used " to catch small fish with a 

 rod and hook."t We must, however, go further back than 

 the ultima Thule of our Saxon lineage, for the first fisherman. 



Gervase Markham, in his book of "Country Content- 

 ments " (A.D. 161 1), speaking of aniding, says : " For the an- 

 tiquity thereof (for al pleasures, like Gentry, are held to be 

 most excellent, which is most ancient), it is by some Writers 

 sayd to be found out by Deucalion and Pyrrha his Wife 

 alter the general flood ; others write that it was the inven- 

 tion of Saturne, after the peace concluded between him 

 and his brother Tvtan ; and others that it came from Belus 

 the sonne of Nimrod, who invented all holv and vertuous 

 Recreations ; and al these, though they savour of fiction, 

 yet tliey differ not from truth, for it is most certaine that 

 both Deucalion, Safurne, and Belus, are taken for figures of 

 Noah and his Family, and the invention of the art of 



• There is a tmnshition of this treatise in the Sporting Magazine, Lon- 

 don, xxiii., xxiv., Is^'J. 



t La professione di lui era di pcscare pcsciolini con la canna e con 

 I'hamo. — Lr Hrvoluzioni di .Yapoli ilal Si^nor .llpsnandro Girajffi. 



