HISTORY 



OF 



ANGLING LITERATURE. 



* m > '\-> i 1 * 



CHAPTER I. 



On the Angling Literature of the Ancients, and on matters 

 connected with Fish in general, from the earliest times 

 to the Christian Era. 



JL HERE have been many odd notions and quaint fancies 

 on the origin of angling. Some of the middle age 

 writers imagined that Seth was the first who handled a 

 rod and fixed a hook upon a line, and that he taught his 

 family the gentle art with great minuteness and success. 

 Angling, like everything else, having been once fairly es- 

 tablished as a pursuit of human life and amusement, was 

 subsequently handed down by tradition to posterity ; and, 

 during particular epochs, it might possibly be engraved, 

 in common with music and other arts, upon large stone 

 pillars, which would survive the havoc of time, and the 

 universal deluge. Whether there be any truth in these 

 dim traditions, certain it is, that angling of some sort can 

 be traced to a very remote period in the history of the 



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