xxiv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



reason may be readily seen in that they were merely Ha- 

 lieutical writers, giving account only of sea-fishing, or river- 

 fishing near the sea. The trout, so far south, are only found 

 in the colder mountain streams ; and the mountaineers, 

 though they might have been anglers, were not writers ; 

 but it is incredible, that the liabit of the trout and most 

 of its congeners to leap at the grasshopper and ephemercB 

 on the surface, should not have taught men, anxious for a 

 dinner, first to dap with the living insect, and then to imi- 

 tate it artificially. They were as likely to discover the 

 art as our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, among whom we may 

 trace the fly till it is lost in the darkness of unrecorded 

 times. It is, therefore, with more satisfaction than surprise, 

 that we do find a very distinct account of fly-fishing, and 

 that as early as A.D. 230, in ^Elian's xv., 1, of his History 

 of Animals. He there savs : " I have heard this account of a 

 mode of fishing in Macedonia. In a river, called Astrseus, 

 wliich flows between Beroea and Thessalonica, are found 

 fishes marked w^th various colors (spotted trout). These 

 feed upon flies that play upon the water, which are unlike 

 any other flies ; differing from bees, wasps, or hornets, but 

 of a distinct species. They have the boldness of other 

 flies, are about the size of hornets, of the color of wasps, 

 and make a bumbling noise like bees. These they call 

 •IffTo-pov. These, as they sport on the surface, the fish see; 

 and, moving slily through the water till tliey get under the 

 insect, leap upon it as a wolf upon a sheep in a flock, or 

 an eagle upon one of a flock of geese, and, seizing their 

 prey, sink again into the deep water. This the fisher- 

 men observed, but could nt>t use them for bait; as, when 

 caught in the hand, the flies lost their color and their 

 wings ; for which cause they hated them (tlie fishes glut- 

 ting themselves upon the bait, which the angler knew not 

 how to use). But, in process of time, as their angling 

 science advanced, they learned to outwit the fish by their 

 ingenuitv. Thev first wrnpperl nronnd tlieir honk snmo 



