DATES—EARLIEST USE OF GUT 451 
Papyri) many quite new excerpts from lost writers, in addition 
to accounts, etc. 
A goodly store of stories and descriptions of prehistoric 
Fishing and Fishers exists in ancient and modern works. 
The statement that ‘“ Fishermen used the silk from the 
cocoon for their lines, a piece of sharpened iron for their hook, 
thorn-stick for their rod, and split grain for their bait’’ 2 
carries us back to an age very early and indefinite. On, asking 
a high Sinitic authority what was the date of the Emperor in 
whose reign this tackle was employed, he rapped out, “ Date! 
What was Adam’s date? ”’ 
The use of gut was familiar at any rate about the fourth 
century B.c., judging from the sentence in Lieh Tzi: “ By 
making a line of cocoon silk, a hook of a sharp needle, a rod 
of a branch of bramble or dwarf bamboo, and using a grain 
of cooked rice as bait, one can catch a whole cartload of 
fish.”’ 3 
Angling as a pastime must have secured the Imperial 
favour in early ages, as its metaphorical use by Sung Yii, 
fourth century B.c., indicates. ‘In the golden age,”’ he tells 
us, “the Emperors were fishers of men, using sages as their 
rod, the true doctrine as their line, charity of heart and duty 
to one’s neighbour as their bait, the world being their fishing 
ground, and the people their fishes.”’ 
Strolling down the lane of Time, we meet (c. 1122 B.C.) 
with Chiang Tzii-ya, the first statesman to recognise the 
importance of fishing, and its allied industry, the manufacture 
of salt.4 
The tale—not of Chiang’s rise from a very lowly station 
to governance of a great Empire, for history furnishes many 
1 If the Chinese were behind the Egyptians in inscriptions on material 
such as papyrus, they anticipated Gutenberg and printing by some 600 years, 
as is proved by the recent discovery of the first specimen of block printing in 
the roll containing the Diamond Sutra, with woodcut of 868 a.p., which deprives 
Féng Tao (of the tenth century) of the fame of being the inventor of printing. 
2 Cf, Introduction, p. 60. I shih chi shih, or The Origin of Things, although 
of modern date, gives an account of the introduction of the various Things 
among the Chinese. 
8 Apud Werner, op. cit., p. 277. 
4 Mr. Wei-Ching W. Yen, Address before the fourth International Fishery 
Congvess, Washington, 1908. 
