38 



wings. This ancient description of the mode 

 of dressing an artificial fly has been over- 

 looked by all modern writers on angling; 

 and many persons, not being aware of the 

 passage, have supposed fly-fishing to be of 

 comparatively modern invention. No express 

 mention of the trout occurs in this author, 

 for the fish described by him as the " Trocta" 

 is evidently of another species, and might 

 be mistaken for the pike, were we not in- 

 formed that it frequents the sea. Ausonius 

 mentions two species of fish, the Salar and 

 the Fario, which are evidently the burn and 

 the salmon trout of modern times ; and 

 though he takes no notice of angling with a 

 fly, he describes a scene of river fishing 

 with a rod and a float in the language of 

 poetry and truth.* We also learn from him 

 that boys used then to fish for bleak in the 

 Moselle, as they do now for minnows in the 

 streams of our own country. These instances, 

 I think, will be sufficient to show the in- 



* Ausonii Mosella, v. 240 265. 



