322 FISHING GOSSIP. 
pursuit, and we believe also with a far higher degree 
of benefit to the world at large. The arts then in- 
vented, as we shall see, were highly valued in many 
successive generations, and have never ceased to be 
employed down to our own times. 
The natural historian Pliny knew nothing of the 
remotest history of the world ; but he records a tradi- 
tion which he must have copied from some ancient 
writer-whose works are lost (b. iii. c. 5,7; b.v.c. 13; 
b. vii. c. 56), that Joppa had been a city situated on 
the coast of the sea before the date of the great flood — 
that was spread over the earth; and that the west 
border of Syria at that remote date was a coast of the 
sea, is more distinctly affirmed by the Phcenician his- 
torian Sanchoniatho, te whose narrative we are in- 
debted for further interesting particulars. 
The earliest inventions and amusements in the 
arts of life, as also in elegant improvements, were by 
the reprobate son of Adam and his near descendants ; 
and perhaps it was as combining both these characters 
that we are told how a boat was first formed, which 
was for the pursuit of fishing, by the father of Vul- 
can, and who was called, by a Greek accommoda- 
tion with such as were more ancient and of another 
‘lineage, Halieus—a name which fixes his employment 
as being conducted on the sea, where his first attempt 
at seamanship was only such as is practised in our 
own times by men possessing the lowest amount of skill 
