4 INTRODUCTION 
it is but seemly, it is certainly of interest, to essay the tracing 
of its pedigree, and the linking of the generations of its far-flung 
lineage. 
What were, and whence came its first forbears, and of what 
manner and of what matter were the original parents of its 
devices are questions which should appeal to the large majority 
of its followers. The sansculottes, however stalwart, who does 
not in his heart of hearts rejoice in owning, or claiming, some 
genealogical garments, wherein to hide his nakedness, is rare 
and abnormal. 
The pedigree is like and unlike its celebrated Urquhart 
brother. Like in the gaps in generations, which in his en- 
deavour directly to deduce his family from Adam even Sir 
Thomas’s ingenuity failed to bridge, despite the prolongation 
when necessary of the lives of his ancestors to ten times 
the allotted span. Unlike in antiquity, since it stretches 
far, very far beyond “ Deucalion’s Floud’’ and Adam’s Para- 
dise. 
Angling, despite wide ramifications, has perhaps stamped 
its stock more vividly and has bred truer to original type than 
its elder brother Hunting. The variance of a repeating rifle 
from what some hold to be their common first sire, a sharpened 
pole, is larger and more marked than that of our most up-to- 
date Rod. 
The riddle, as in other cases of disputed succession, of 
identifying the first real head of the family or the earliest 
begetter of the race is rendered more complex by wide geo- 
graphical dispersion. It is possibly insoluble. 
Nevertheless to this labour of love I now address myself. 
The question of priority of the implement used for catching 
fish has been often moot, sometimes acute, for, in Walton’s 
words, “former times have had their Disquisitions about 
i. 
How did the earliest fisherman secure his prey? Was it 
by means of the Spear, under which term I include harpoons 
and barbed fishing spears of any kind, the Net, or the Line ? 
None of these has lacked its champions, of whom the Line 
has attracted the fewest, the Spear the most. 
