LACK OF SPORTING INSTINCT 409 
was the knowledge of the existence and value of the Rod 
not acquired ? } 
Those and other queries may have found a ready reply 
in the reputed but lost Book of Solomon on Fishes.2 It may 
possibly have contained some clue, such as a command or 
custom, totemistic or other, common to the old Semitic stock, or 
some trait of temperament which caused Angling to be regarded 
as too slow or too unremunerative a pastime. 
Without its guidance one is almost driven to the con- 
clusion that the ancient Israelites (like the early Greeks and 
Romans) were pot-hunters, bent on the spoil rather than on 
the sport of their catch, but (unlike them) continued this 
characteristic throughout their history, and remained to the 
end uninfected by the joy or passion of Angling. Their desire 
was fish—abundant and cheap, or better still gratis: hence 
when “‘ fed up’ with Manna (Numbers xi. 5) they fell a-lusting 
—‘‘ Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish 
we did eat in Egypt for nought.”’ 
This apparent lack of the sporting instinct contrasts 
strangely with the fact that modern Jews rank among our 
foremost anglers, and that to a Jew we owe the greatest book 
written within the last generation, if not the practical establish- 
ment on a scientific basis of the dry-fly, that most finished 
form of Angling. 
Dr. Kennet, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, while 
holding no brief either way, has, at my request, most kindly 
suggested some reasons which may conceivably account for the 
Biblical absence of Angling. Tomy mind none of these affords 
adequate proof of its existence. 
A. The physical characteristics of the country preclude 
many references to fishing in the Old Testament. However keen 
their desire, the majority of the population were in the position 
of Simple Simon, when he “ went a-fishing for to catch a whale.”’ 
1 If the Egyptian Rod was unknown, “the Egyptian fish (probably 
salted) that came in baskets” were regularly imported. Mishna Makhshirvin, 
VI. 3. 
2 See 1 Kingsjiv. 33, ‘‘ And he spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of 
creeping things, and of fishes.” Some authorities hold that this mention of 
Solomon’s natural history researches is quite late, and meant to be a set off 
against Aristotle’s, 
