18 PEOSB HALIEUnCS. 



tion of ancient authors on the subject, that their rods 

 and lines, however simple, were of good material at 

 least, and well made; and though, from the perishable 

 nature of the substances employed, we have no positive 

 evidence of the fact, it may be taken for granted, we 

 think, that they would have sustained a comparison with 

 those attractive displays of hickory and bamboo, which, 

 stretching across the gutters of Holbom and Crooked- 

 lane, bend on the least stir of air, to the mimic struggles 

 of a pasteboard perch, and angle not unsuccessfully up 

 and down the street for customers. The old sportsman 

 (if he had not as copious a piscatory apparatus as the 

 modem) had recourse at least to as many different 

 modes of taking fish, which will best be seen by com- 

 paring the several resources of the art at these two dif- 

 ferent periods. 



To begin with the tiptop of angling : fly-fishing was a 

 mode of capture familiar to the Koman sportsmen. 



Who lias not seen tiie scarus rise, 

 Deooy'd and caught by fraudful flies P 



asks Martial ; and the following interesting passage from 

 iElian still more clearly establishes that 



AxoTind the hook the chosen inr to wind, 

 And on the back a speckled feather bind, 



is no new, but a most ancient practice, resorted to two 

 thousand years before Gay's distich was written ; though 

 Beckman has strangely overlooked it in his ' History of 

 Inventions': — 



The Macedonians (says iElian) who live on the banks of the 

 river Astreus, which flows midway between Berea and Thessa- 

 lonioa, are ia the habit of catching a particnlar fish in. that river 

 by means of a fly called hippurus. A very singular insect it is; 

 bold and troublesome like all its kind, in size a hornet, marked 

 like a wasp, and buzzing like a bee. These flies are the prey of 

 certain speckled fish, which no sooner see them settling on the 



