154 FIRST MENTION OF A FLY 
moreover, Oppian, II. 649, pépBovra & 4} xAwpov adbdc prior, 
k.7.A. Puxiov is, while muscus is not and never has been, alge 
or true seaweed ; muscus is ‘ moss.’ ! 
Nor do these Olympian editors, who sit beside their proof- 
sheets, and whose notes are ever hurled far below them in the 
valley, condescend to explain to us poor gropers after light how 
moss to a sea-fish like the Scarus can be of value as food. 
Most fishermen will tell you that freshwater fish do eat 
moss; that they themselves have seen them in the act of 
eating such moss on the Thames; that roach in especial are 
particularly fond of this moss, which is used in summer months 
as a bait with great success; this moss they call by various 
names, ‘silk weed,’ ‘flannel weed,’ ‘blanket weed,’ and 
‘ crow-silk.’ Now all these so-called mosses are not mosses at 
all, but belong to the family Conferve, which are freshwater 
green alg@: so even in rivers we find that moss is not used as 
bait.2 
That not only the Scari but other fish, e.g. the Melanuri, feed 
on seaweed and that they are taken by baits composed of 
seaweed, many writers besides Athenzus and Pliny duly record. 
Theocritus (Id., XXI. 10) speaks of “baits of seaweed.’ 
Oppian,? describing the manner of catching the salpe@ by baiting 
a place with stones covered with seaweed, states that when 
the fish have gathered round this in numbers, “ then prepares he 
(the fisher) the snare of the weel.’’ Elian 4 asserts that among 
the marine plants, on which he says fish feed, are Bpta . . . 
1 The Oxford Dict. gives, ‘“‘ Alga, a seaweed: in plural, one of the great 
divisions of the Cryptogamic plants including seaweeds, and kindred fresh- 
water plants, and a few zrial species,” and ‘‘ Moss, any of the small herbaceous 
Cryptogamous plants constituting the class Musci, some of which form the 
characteristic vegetation of bogs, while others grow in crowded masses covering 
the surface of the ground, stones, trees, etc.” As “‘ applied to seaweed rare ”’ ; 
I might venture to add either poetical, as in Tennyson’s Meymaid, ‘‘ in hueless 
moss under the sea,”’ or loose and unscientific. 
2 Compare J. Britten and R. Holland, Dict. of English Plant Names 
(London, 1884), III. 576. Wright in his Dialect Dictionary, “‘ Crow-silk, Con- 
ferve, and other Alge, especially C. rivularis.” 
3 Oppian, III. 421. Tijos emevtéver xbprov SéAov. These were traps of 
wickerwork, resembling our lobster pots or weels, in which the fish were 
caught as they flocked to suck at the seaweed, with which the stones (placed 
inside the traps to sink them) were covered. Cf. Ailian, XII. 43, who states 
that for this sort of fishing fishermen made use of pvxovs Paracglov, 
$N,H., XIIL, 3. Cf. also 7b7d., I, 2, 
