xviii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



reader with liie much vexed question of its authorship. 

 The Halieuticon contains enough to make us deeply regret 

 that the whole work has not reached us. Here, for the first 

 time, we find the comparison, so often since repeated, be- 

 tween lumting, fowHng, and fishing ; the author preferring 

 iiis uwn sport, because of its freedom from the dangers 

 which attend the chase. He sets out to describe his art 

 with genuine enthusiasm : 



Nostcr in arte labor positus, apes omiiis in ilia (1. S2). 



He then advises his disciples not to put far out into the sea, 

 but to pursue the sport on the shore, or not far from it, de- 

 scribing the ground which should be chosen ; and promises 

 a description of the jiroper tackling, upon which, and the 

 skilful use of it, so much depends. He also gives a brief 

 but spirited description of the various play of fish after 

 they are hooked ; how this one hangs resolutely on until he 

 is drawn, clato calamo, fairly up, when he spits from his 

 mouth the " hook naked ;" how another shakes violently 

 the line, and runs off with it broken ; and another thrashes 

 about until the hook tears away from the extended wound; 

 how the niurcena bites himself clear, and the anthias cuts 

 himself loose by chafing the bottom line against his armed 

 back. There is such a spirit in these passages, that we 

 lament again and again the absence of those which are 

 lost to us. 



The next work in order of time, which demands notice, 

 is tlie dialogue in Plutarch's Moralia, On the comparative 

 cunning of land and water animals. Two disputants are 

 introduced, one of whom, Aristotimus, takes the side of 

 the land animals, v/hile the other, Phoedimus, maintains the 

 honor of the fish. A great number of curious facts in 

 Natural History are adduced, making it on that account a 

 very interesting treatise ; but, very naturally, the question 

 diverges every now and then upon fishing, as compared 



