FISHING AND FISH-HOOKS, ETC. 321 



FISHING AND FISH-HOOKS OF THE 

 EARLIEST DATE. 



MANY have been the writers who have indulged them- 

 selves and their readers in describing the pleasure to 

 be derived from the arts of taking fish, and who have 

 thus obtained as much gratification from delineating 

 the methods by which they have ensnared their prey 

 as in putting these arts into successful execution. 

 But in referring to the history of this pleasing pur- 

 suit no one has ventured to travel back into very 

 primitive times, as if not expecting to find in the 

 earliest ages of the world any authentic notice of 

 the art, and perhaps concluding that in primitive 

 ages the people were altogether ignorant or careless 

 about it. Yet there is evidence that such was far 

 from being the case ; and on close inquiry into the 

 habits of life of the people who lived even before the 

 flood of Noah, we are able to discover that ingenuity 

 had been then exercised and that too by men of liigh 

 eminence in science for the same purposes, and to 

 as large an extent, as we find in our own day ; in 

 which case we may believe that they experienced as 

 large an amount of pleasure as ourselves in the same 



Y 



