EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 107 



Giannetazzio writes on the mode of catching the Be- 

 lone, or Gar-fish, in the Mediterranean sea, by means of 

 its own teeth. The instruments are made at Naples, and 

 its capture successfully practised there. 



** Burnished with blue, and bright as demask steel, 

 Behold the acus tribe with pointed bill, 

 All fringed with teeth ; no greedier fish than they 

 E'er broke the serried lines the foaming bay, 

 Soon, as the practised crew this frolic throng 

 Beholds advancing rapidly along, 

 Adjusting swift a tendon to the line, 

 They throw then drag it glistening through the brine, 

 Anon the lure the greedy fish pursue ; 

 The gristle charms, but soon its charms they rue, 

 Fix'd by the teeth to that tough barbless bait, 

 They struggling yield to suicidal fate." 



Casting an eye from Italy towards Spain, we recognize 

 several books on angling, written, however, chiefly by 

 ecclesiastics. There was one published at Yalladolid in 

 1650, containing a list of river fish, and a description of 

 the various kinds of hooks and lines requisite for their 

 capture. D. Teodoro de Almeida wrote a work On the 

 Nature of Msh y Madrid, 1700, which is interesting, as 

 containing a correct account of a great number of the 

 finest rivers of Spain that are adapted for rod fishing. A 

 little after this period we have the Fisher, by Father 

 Bostos, a moralizing and religious treatise on the general 

 profession of a fisher. And here it may be remarked, that 



