313 PEOSE HAXIEFTICS. 



Trout and grayling at flies 

 Are so ready to rise, 



as Cotton instructs his readers ; and the Greek sophist 

 tells iis, to the same purposej that there is but one way 

 for Piscator to take thymaluSj and that is^ to ' forego all 

 the more ordinary fish-haits, and employ in place of them 

 that troublesome little fly the conops, which night and 

 day torments mankind by his buzzing and biting.* 

 Using this for a lure, the sport is assured whenever there 

 are any thymali iu the neighbourhood.' Aldrovandi, 

 citing the above passage from iEUan, marvels what hook 

 could be fine enough to impale a gnat ; and indeed it 

 seems quite clear, that this author, — no great adept him- 

 self, apparently, in myology or fly-fishiug, — has substi- 

 tuted, by mistake, the ' culex pipiens' for some other fly, 

 more or less resembliag it in shape — perhaps for the 

 Mayfly itself! 



It seems thus pretty certain, that the ancients knew 

 some, perhaps many, members of the salmon family, 

 though of that prince of river-fish — the glory and repre- 

 sentative of this large family, the salmo. salar, or salmon 

 proper — they knew probably next to nothing, for the 

 Gree'ks have left no notice of this species ; and, though 

 we know that many of their treatises on fish, where 

 mention of the salmon may have occurred, have not 

 come down to us, one can hardly imagine such a noble 

 species, if known in Greece at all, should by any possi- 

 bility have escaped the eyes of Aristotle, and the mouths 

 of the host of deipnosophist fish-fanciers quoted iu 

 Athenseus. Among the Latins, Pliuy is the only author 

 who makes even cursory mention of the salar ; and he 

 does not speak of it as an Italian fish, but as frequenting 



* Kmvioiri 8e alpelrai fiova Trovijpm* fisv (ma Kal jxed ' fjnepav KaX 

 vvKTOtp avOpamois ^X^PV ''"' ^"''eij' ^oija-av aipei fit tou Qv/iatiXov tov 

 7rpoeipr]p.€vou, (f)ikT}8eL yap aurw povta. 



