FISHING AND FISH-HOOKS, ETC. 321 
FISHING AND FISH-HOOKS OF THE 
EARLIEST DATE. 
Many have been the writers who have indulged them- 
selves and their readers in describing the pleasure to 
be derived from the arts of taking fish, and who have 
thus obtained as much gratification from delineating 
the methods by which they have ensnared their prey 
as in putting these arts into successful execution. ~ 
But in referring to the history of this pleasing pur- 
suit no one has ventured to travel back into very 
primitive times, as if not expecting to find in the 
earliest ages of the world any authentic notice of 
the art, and perhaps concluding that in primitive 
ages the people were altogether ignorant or careless 
about it. Yet there is evidence that such was far 
from being the case; and on close inquiry into the 
habits of life of the people who lived even before the 
flood of Noah, we are able to discover that ingenuity 
had been then exercised—and that too by men of high 
eminence in science—for the same purposes, and to 
as large an extent, as we find in our own day; in 
which case we may believe that they experienced as 
large an amount of pleasure as ourselves in the same 
Y 
