4 ANGLING LITERATURE OF 



the sciences, and in the fine arts, and was afterwards 

 worshipped as a god in the temples of Babylonia. Its 

 body, says the historian, was that of a fish, but under the 

 head of a fish icas that of a man, and to its tail were joined 

 women's feet. Eive such monsters rose from the Persian 

 Gulf at fabulous intervals of time. It is conjectured that 

 this myth denotes the conquest of Chaldea at some remote 

 and prehistoric period, by a comparatively civilized nation, 

 coming in ships to the mouth of the Euphrates." The 

 Dagon of the Philistines and of the inhabitants of the 

 Phoenician coast was worshipped, according to the united 

 opinion of the Hebrew commentators of the Bible, under 

 the same form. When the ark of the Lord was brought 

 into the great temple of the idol at Ashdod, and the 

 statue fell a second time, " the head of Dagon, and the 

 palms of his hands were cut off upon the threshold ; only 

 the fishy part of Dagon was left to him " (1 Sam. v, 4). 

 His worship appears to have extended over Syria, as well 

 as Mesopotamia and Chaldea. He had many temples, 

 as we learn from the Bible, in the country of the Phi- 

 listines ; and it was probably under the ruins of one of 

 them that Samson buried the people of Gaza, who had 

 " gathered together for to offer a great sacrifice unto 

 Dagon their god, and to rejoice \" c * 



Angling must have been followed in the East, from 

 the earliest times, much in the same fashion as at present. 



2 See also, Types of Mankind, or Ethnological Eesearches, 

 &c. &c. London, 1854. 



