SPIDER FISH NET—OCTOPUS LANDS COAL 43 
are correct in their conjectures that our primitive piscator, 
when endeavouring to catch by hand fish half stranded or 
spawning in small pools, blocked any little exit by plaited 
twigs—wattling, according to C. F. Keary, was one of the 
earliest prehistoric industries—or stones, that they erected 
in fact the world’s first barrage, then must this ascendant or 
Scotch cousin of the Net take precedence of the Spear and 
every other artificial device. 
Of the Net’s kith and kin are there not some scores specified 
in the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux, or depicted in M. Dabry 
de Thiersant’s Pisciculture en Chine? The Net was to beget 
a progeniem to the Angler at any rate vitiosiorem, and (to drag 
in another tag) almost like kuparwv avhpiOuov yéduoua. 
Three of this big family stand out conspicuous by their 
diversity. (A) The fairy-like Net—perhaps the most interesting 
because the most incredible—made by Spiders and used by the 
Papuans.! (B) The “ Vimineous Weel”’ of Oppian. (C) The 
huge steel trawls, which lately encompassed those ravening 
sharks of the sea, the German submarines. 
How the following device should be classed, I am not sure ; 
it is neither Spear, nor Hook, nor Net. But it deserves to be 
put on record as an ingenious and successful species of fishing, 
employed by the Cretans during the War. 
According to Mr. J. D. Lawson, Fellow of Pembroke 
College, Cambridge (to whom I am indebted for the account), 
the natives, eager to recover the coal that ships while coaling 
dropped into the sea, set out to fish for it. Since the coal 
could not swallow the bait, they resolved that the bait should 
Fischeret (Berlin, 1903), s. 62, ‘‘ Das Fischnetz galt also schon in der Vorgeschicht- 
lichen Zeit, im grauen Altertum fiir uralt. Mit Recht darf der Fischer sich 
den Altesten Gewerben der Menschheit zuzahlen.” 
1 Cf. A. E. Pratt, Two Years among the New Guinea Cannibals (London, 
1906), p. 266,and 3 photographs. The webs spun by the spiders in the forests 
are six feet in diameter, with meshes varying from one inch at the outside to 
about one-eighth at the centre. The diligence of the creatures has been 
pressed into weaving fishing-nets for the use of man by setting up, where the 
webs are thickest, long bamboos bent over in a loop at the end. On this 
most convenient frame the spider in a short time produces a web which resists 
water as readily as does a duck’s back, and holds fish up to a pound satis- 
factorily. See also Robert W. Williamson (The Mafiu Mountain People of 
British New Guinea (London, 1912), p. 193) who differs materially from Pratt 
as to the formation of the net. The illustration is reproduced by the kind 
permission of The Illustrated London News Co, 
E 
