54 INTRODUCTION 
two Greek words formed the so-called Gnostic formula and 
occur frequently on amulets, etc. The Geoponika adds 
immediately, ‘‘ this name the Ichthyophagi use.”’ 
About the fourteenth century a poem entitled De Vetula, 
attributed to R. de Fournival, got translated or imitated by 
Jean Lefevre. The fishing portion (68 lines) awakes our 
interest, as it shows that “ more than six hundred years ago, 
and probably two hundred years before the date of The Boke 
of St. Albans, most of the modern modes of fishing were 
practised; for instance, the worm, the fly, the torch and 
spear, the night line, the eel-basket and fork,”’ etc. 
This quotation from Westwood and Satchell might cause 
a casual reader to suppose that (a) from De Vetula, written 
only some two centuries before The Boke of St. Albans; we 
gain our first information ‘‘ of these modes of fishing,” and 
(8) that these were “‘ modern,”’ whereas Oppian had described 
them all, some thirteen hundred years before The Boke of 
St. Albans saw light. 
With the exception of de Fournival and the elusive MS. of 
Dom Pichon,! which (written about 1420 but only rediscovered 
about. 1853) probably stamps this monk as the first to practise 
artificial hatching, the Continent produced practically nothing 
till the appearance at Antwerp in 1492 of the first printed 
original book on Fishing, which as regards printing precedes 
The Boke of St. Albans. 
This little Flemish work by an unknown author contains 
twenty-six chapters of a few lines, gives recipes for artificial 
baits, unguents, and pastes, and in the last two pages notes 
the periods when certain fish eat best. As its title sets out, it 
teaches ‘‘ how one may catch birds and fish with one’s hands, 
and also otherwise.” 2 
books. Ultimately we get back to Cassius Dionysius of Utica, who translated 
the Carthaginian Mazo’s work on agriculture (88 B.c.). 
1 See infra, p. 291. 
2 The date of 1492 is suggested by Mr. Alfred Denison, who translated 
and issued privately twenty-five copies of Dit Boecxken leert hoe men mach 
voghelen vanghen metien handen. Ende oeck andersins. From the press of 
Mathys Van der Goes. The marriage of Madame Van der Goes to Godfridus 
Bach, whose printer’s mark also appearsin the book, seems to point to 1492. 
See, however, M. F. A. G. Campbell, Annales de la Typographie Neerlandaise 
au xve siécle (La Haye, 1874), p. 80, and Bibl. Pisc., pp. 35, 36. 
