AUTHORS ON SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 549 



which is a much more ingenious device than the modern 

 practice of " sniggling " with a mop of threaded lob-worms. 

 He says : 



" The artful eeler pitches upon a spot favourable for his 

 purpose at the turn of a stream, and lets down from where he 

 stands, on the high bank, some cubits' length of the intestines of 

 a sheep, which, carried down by the current, is eddied and 

 whirled about, and presently perceived by the eels, one of whom 

 adventurously gobbling some inches at the nether end, endeavours 

 to drag the whole away. The angler, perceiving this, applies the 

 other end, which is fixed to a long tubular reed serving in lieu of 

 a fishing-rod, to his mouth, and blows through it into the gut. 

 The gut presently swells, and the fish next receiving the air into 

 his mouth, swells too, and being unable to extricate his teeth is 

 lugged out, adhering to the inflated intestine." 



JElian also speaks of the Thymalus, which we may almost 

 certainly take to be the grayling, as he assigns it to the 

 rivers Ticeno and Adige, in which it still abounds ; the 

 name itself is still associated with the grayling, which has 

 always been considered to emit a thyme-like fragrance ; 

 and the fly, in accordance with what -^Elian says, is its 

 favourite food. 



A voluminous writer on fish and fishing, who chrono- 

 logically next presents himself for mention is Oppian, who 

 was born in the year 183. His chief work was his Halieu- 

 tics, a poem of five books in Greek hexameters, which he 

 is said to have publicly recited in a theatre. A very fair 

 translation of it is that of Diaper (not Draper, as frequently 

 given) and Jones (Oxford, 1772). Many of the quotations 

 from his writings, in their English form, are well known to 

 all readers of books on angling ; but, though hackneyed, 

 a few of them must be here introduced. The modern 

 angler cannot fail to enter into their spirit, and feel that the 



