240 TACKLE—CURIOUS METHODS—SILURUS—EELS 
bread, to poison the fish.1 From Oppian’s description of the 
workings of the poison, IV. 658 ff., we take the lines : 
“Soon as the deadly Cyclamen invades 
The ill-starred fishes in their deep-sunk glades, 
. . the slowly working bane 
Creeps o’er each sense and poisons every vein, 
Then pours concentred mischief on the brain, 
Some drugged, like men o’ercome with recent wine, 
Reel to and fro, and stagger thro’ the brine ; 
Some in quick circlets whirl: some ’gainst the rocks 
Dash, and are stunned by repercussive shocks ; 
Some with quenched orbs, or filmy eyeballs thick, 
Rush on the nets and in the meshes stick, 
In coma steeped their fins more feebly ply, 
Some in titanic spasms gasp and die. 
Soon as the plashings cease and stillness reigns, 
The jocund crew collect, and count their gains.” 
In the simile—inevitable in Oppian—which ends the 
passage our author may indicate, though he does not name, 
the Germanic tribes (for over Rome in his day as over Europe 
in ours hung the barbarian menace) when he condemned the 
abhorred habit practised by the enemy of poisoning the springs 
and wells : 
“the brave defendants sink 
In thirsty pangs, or perish if they drink.” 
In the number of methods, in the variety of devices, the 
fishermen of Oppian and AZlian are not behind their modern 
successors ; it is indeed the reverse of 
“« John P. Robinson he 
Guessed they did not know everything down in n Judea? 
We moderns are, in fact, merely the heirs to a piscatorial 
estate, which by scientific improvement or intensive culture 
1 For the poisoning of the Tunny, cf. Aristot., N. H., VIII. Cakes made of 
cyclamen and clay were let down near the lurking places of the fish, according 
to Oppian. 
: Awith, one method of fishing the ancients (in common with nearly all the 
moderns) were unfamiliar. The locus is off Catalina Island, etc.: the modus 
is by kites with line and bait attached, to which last, moving over and on the 
surface of the water, the Tuna seems irresistibly attracted. See antea, p. 41, 
note 3. 
