TROLLING WITH DEAD GORGE-BAIT. 177 



I have searched no further, for Leonard Mascall's ' Booke of 

 Fishing' is a reproduction of the ' Booke of St. Albans,' and beyond 

 the ' Booke of St. Albans ' falls the night. The rest, if rest there 

 be, is a matter of 'lost Pleiads,' and into that limbo of vanished 

 things that holds the 'AXtfurtra of Pancrates, the Arcadian, the 

 ' Ao-n-aXifVTiKa of Seleucus of Emesa, and many other famous scroll of 

 the ancients, may lurk also more than one early English treatise 

 on our sports (the ' old fish-book,' amongst them, whence Walton 

 borrows his ' old rime' ), the recoveiy of which would brighten the 

 eyes and rejoice the heart of every angling bibliomaniac. 



And this recovery may, after all, become a fait accompli that 

 passion of the book collector has conjured out of darkness and 

 oblivion so many rare and forgotten treasures, that we need not 

 despair of adding, some day, to our Bibliotheca Piscatoria a ' grand- 

 father of trollers ' to take precedence of Nobbes. 



Let, however, the honour of the invention in this country 

 be given to who may be best entitled to it, whether Nobbes 

 or some other ' mightie fysher ' of old, it would appear that 

 trolling, in some form or the other, was not only understood, 

 but very frequently practised by the ancient Greeks. It is 

 frequently referred to by Oppian who recommended as bait a 

 live labrax if obtainable, or, if not, a dead fish sunk and raised 

 alternately with a weight attached. The following is the trans- 

 lation of Oppian's description of baiting and working this 

 tackle : 



.... He holds the Labrax, and beneath his head 



Adjusts with care the oblong shape of lead, 



Named, from its form, a Dolphin ; plumbed with this 



The bait shoots headlong through the blue abyss, 



The bright decoy a living creature seems, 



As now on this side, now on that it gleams, 



Till some dark form across its passage flit, 



Pouches the wire, and finds the biter's bit. 



Nothing can be more graphic and at the same time accurate 

 than this description of the gyrations of a gorge-bait as worked 

 fi-om the banks of the Thames in the nineteenth century. 

 ' Now on this side, now on that it gleams,' would seem to 

 indicate that the writer was well up in the more recondite 



II. N 



