CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE. 263 
world of life—the insect classes—the wise ordering 
of which keeps our rivers free from organic matter, 
and which is never ceasing in its beneficial conver- 
sion of what is effete into fresh combinations and vital 
material. 
The Rev. C. D. Badham, in his Prose Halieutics, 
says that the Izaak Waltons of antiquity employed 
divers pastes, equal to (and it would be hard to sur- 
pass) our own, for complicity of composition, and the 
truly surprising effects resulting from the different 
ingredients introduced. , 
That some fish were attracted by strong scents, 
and would take a whole pharmacopceia of “ foetids,” 
prescribed by a scientific practitioner, was indeed as 
well known to the poacher of early days as now. 
Oppian speaks of myrrh dissolved in wine-lees, and 
again of certain drugs familiar to the sons of Aiscu- 
lapius as well as fishermen, and turned to account by 
the latter in impregnating their nets, as expedients 
that never failed. These substances entered into the 
composition of many fishing pastes, the recipes for 
which have come down to us. They were of two 
classes, intoxicating and poisonous. Pliny records 
that: all aristolochias yield an aromatic smell, but 
that one, called popularly “the earth’s poison,” is 
successfully used by. Campanian fishermen for the 
purposes of their craft. 
“T have seen them use the plant,” says he, “ in- 
