OCTOPUS AND TOBACCO—LEISTERING 179 
‘* By those who curious have their art ‘defined, 
Four sorts of fishers are distinct assigned. 
The first in Hooks delight : here some prepare 
The Angle’s Taper Length, and Twisted hair. 
Others the tougher threads of flax entwine, 
But firmer hands sustain the sturdy Line. 
A third prevails by more compendious ways, 
While numerous Hooks one common Line displays.” 
We then pass to fishing by Nets, Mazy Weel, and Spears 
or Tridents. A spirited passage, spoilt in the translation by 
superfluous verbiage, sings of nocturnal fishing with spears 
and an attracting light. The method probably obtained the 
world over, certainly in China, Rome, and Greece, where 
Plato (Soph., 220 D.) classes it under the heading upeurixy 
next to Angling. In Scotland it prevailed extensively, if 
illegally, as Burning the Water, or Leistering, a Norse term, 
and practice which Thor himself did not disdain. A passage 
from a lost comedy—The Trident—perhaps by Philippides, 
shows a fisher armed with a three-pronged fork and horn- 
lantern off a-Tunnying.! 
The lines ring as true to-day as when Oppian ? penned them. 
“ Erected torches blaze around the Boat, 
And dart their pitchy Rays... 
Admiring shoals the gaudy flames surround, 
And meet the triple spear’s descending wound,” 
while if fishing were legally permitted only to those who came 
up to his ideal of what an angler should be (III. 29-31), 
“ First be the Fisher’s limbs compact and sound, 
With solid flesh, and well braced sinews bound, 
Let due proportion every part commend, 
Nor Leanness shrink too much, or Fat distend,”’ 
1 IV. 640. Cf. Oppian, cyneg., 4, 140 ff. for a similar description. 
? This method, originating from the curiosity of fish and their desire (in 
Shelley’s words) ‘‘ to worship the delusive flame,” is especially successful in rivers 
at the spawning season. Inthe Rhodian Laws—a code for the government of 
mariners and fishermen originally promulgated by Tiberius—occurs a special 
proviso, ve fishing by means of torches, forbidding fishermen to display lights 
at sea, lest thereby they should deceive other vessels. It has been suggested, 
prettily, but I fear not practically, that leistering was learnt from the hunting 
habit and natural endowments of the Halcyon or Kingfisher; just as to the 
brilliancy of its colours and splendour of its flash the fish are attracted, so 
to the brightness of the torches and the shimmer of their rays come the 
salmon, etc. 
