DESCENT OF FISHING DEVICES 39 
degrees of descent would now involve !—something begat the 
Rod. 
From this genealogical table I venture to dissent. I 
claim that the hunting Spear, Protean in possibilities, was 
either itself the Rod, or was, if “‘ matre pulchra filia pulchrior ”’ 
do not apply, at least the direct parent of the primitive Rod. 
In the bigger hunting of our own sorrowful day the same 
principle manifests itself, for the British soldier in France often 
angled with his line attached to his bayoneted rifle. 
Many writers have attempted, some like de Mortillet with 
typical French logic, some with none, to set down the sequential 
development of fishing. As the Censor has not as yet banned 
free expression of piscatorial opinions, I conclude this chapter 
with essaying a scheme of reconstruction of my own. 
First came fishing with the hand, la péche @ la main, which, 
according to Abel Hovelacque, “‘ est le mode le plus élémentatre 
et certainement le moins productif.’’1 This method we may 
surmise was first exercised on fish left half stranded in small 
pools by the action of tides or floods, or on fish spawning in the 
shallow redds.? 
As la péche & la main was the first to arrive, so was it the 
first to cease from the functions of parentage or of fission, 
for with “‘ tickling,”’ described by A#lian as even in his day an 
ancient device, further evolution of this method practically 
ended.3 
Second came the hunting Spear, used originally on fish 
_lying in pools, small of size but of depth sufficient to prevent 
1 Les Débuis de V’humanité, etc. (Paris, 1881), p. 69. E. Krause, of. cit., 
Pp. 153, agrees. 
2“ Apes know how to get oysters thrown up on the shore, but man has 
been endowed with the knowledge how to get them in and out of the sea.” 
The sentiment, if not the style, of this sentence—to prove the superior design 
and creation of man over the animal creation—seems not quite unworthy of 
Izaak Walton’s pages. 
3 His pleasant description of “ tickling ” and his “ viro Britanno ”’ must 
be my excuse for introducing a writer in Latin-so late after my limit of 500 a.p. 
as Parthenius, better known as Giannettasi, the author of Halieutica, pub- 
lished at Naples in 1689 : ; 
* Paulatim digitis piscator molliter alvum 
Defricat, et sensim palpando repit in ipsas 
Czruleas branchas, subituque apprendit : et illa 
Blanditiis decepta viro fit praeda Britanno.” 
