22 PROSE HALIEFTICS. 



Oppian has ably described the deleterious workings of 

 this very same plant, employed thus to catch fish sixteen 

 hundred years ago: — 



Soon as the deadly cyclamen invades 

 The iU-starr'd fistes in their deep-sunk glades, 

 Emerging quick the prescient creatures flee 

 Their rooky fastnesses, and make for sea. 

 Nor respite know; the slowly working bane 

 Creeps o'er each sense and poisons every vein. 

 Then pours concentred mischief on the 'brain. 

 Some drugg'd, like men o'ercome with recent wine, 

 Reel to and fro, and stagger through the brine; 

 Some in quick circlets whirl ; some 'gainst the rocks 

 Dash, and are stunn'd by repercussive shocks ; 

 Some with quench'd orbs or filmy eyeballs thick 

 Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick; 

 In coma steep'd, their fins some feebly ply; 

 Some in tetanic spasms gasp and die. . . . 

 Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns. 

 The jocund crew collect and count their gains. 



Notwithstanding all these appliances, however, had 

 there been no more effectual means in vogue, the ancients 

 would never have regaled, to the unbounded extent they 

 did, upon the produce of the waters: all great takes of 

 the finny tribes must be eSected chiefly by means of 

 nets; and with these, accordingly, we now proceed to 

 show that even uncivilized nations of antiquity were 

 amply supplied. There seems indeed little reason to 

 doubt that nets are quite as old an invention as hooks, 

 and possibly even of an origin anterior to them; both 

 are mentioned together in the earliest records of the 

 past ; and though they may not have preceded aU hooks, 

 at any rate they were in use before metal hooks, and 

 had been carried to a great perfection ere advancing ci- 

 vilization had introduced the fabrication of these last. 



The nation of ichthyophagi, of whom Arrian, in his 

 Indian History, furnishes some interesting details, were 

 a people occupying a large tract of inhospitable shore 



