GRAYLING—MOSQUITO FLY 193 
read, then to Zlian would belong the credit of being the first 
to mention not only the use of the artificial fly, but also the 
use of the natural fly. 
In XIV. 22, we read of the Thymalus (a kind of grayling), 
which alone of all fishes gives out after capture no fishy smell, 
but rather so fragrant an odour that one would almost swear 
that in his hand he held a freshly gathered bunch of thyme 
(‘that herb so beloved by bees’’), instead of a fish. lian 
then lays down that, while it is easy to catch this fish in nets, 
it is impossible to do so with a hook baited with anything 
except the cévwy, z.e. the gnat, or more probably from the 
vivid description by one who has evidently suffered, the 
mosquito, “ that horrid insect, a foe to man, both day and 
night, alike with his bite and his buzz.” ! 
Here then, in XIV. 22, we get, if the conjecture musco 
should be held to deprive Martial of his priority, the first men- 
tion of angling with a natural fly. 
The difficulty, obvious at once to the practical angler, of 
how the ancients (or even the moderns with all the elaborate 
perfections of Redditch) could manufacture a hook little enough 
to impale a mosquito did not escape Aldrovandi.2 But the 
kwve, said to spring from the oxwAnkec, 2.¢., Javve found in 
the sediment of vinegar, was apparently even smaller than his 
brother mosquito, the éuric.3 
As only with great care, and even then only on very fine 
wire, can the smallest modern hook, No. 000, be coaxed to impale 
a big gnat, the problem before the Ancients of impaling with 
a hook one, and this not even the largest, of the mosquito 
tribe seemsinsoluble. But perhaps #lian’s xkévwy (as probably 
also his trmovpoc) was far larger than its descendant of the 
present day, or perhaps our author has substituted by mistake 
the mosquito for some larger but similar gnat. 
1 rovnp@ per (yp nat pel” juepay kal vixrwp avOpdmois €xOpG kal Sareiy kal Bofoa. 
2 For size of hooks, see antea, p. 157 and note 1. 
5 Cf. Arist., N.H., V. 19. The oxdéané of Aristotle is an immature product 
of generation which grows and finally becomes a pupa, or (so Aristotle believed) 
an egg giving birth to the perfect animal. 
