40 
THE CALIFORNIAN SALMON. 
EISHIN&. 
In Badham’s “Ancient and Modern Bish Tattle/’ an 
amusing, quaint, learned and delightful book, there are 
many curious facts illustrative of the art of fishing. 
“Bish,” he says, “being more distinguished for the size of 
their heads than for the amount of brains lodged in 
them, and affording an easier capture than either 
beasts or birds, fell early victims to the crafts and 
assaults of their arch-enemy, man and he goes on 
to quote early writers from Habakkuk and other sacred 
authorities down through Homeric stanzas and Oppians 
verses on the same subject, Suetonius speaks of gold 
and purple nets to charm the fish to a sweet death. 
History tells of Antony and Cleopatra’s love for the sport, 
and how the latter played a cunningly devised trick off 
upon her admiring triumvir when he was unsuccessful in 
angling, by sending down a diver to fasten a fish upon his 
hook, which first delighted him with his apparent success, 
but afterwards caused him to feel annoyed with his 
inamorata for bringing him into ridicule. 
Brom the earliest records down to the days of Isaac 
"Walton and our own times, angling has been practised and 
enjoyed as being a most delightful sport. Sir Henry 
Wotton calls angling “an employment for his idle time, 
which was not then idly spent, for angling after tedious 
study was a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a 
diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a 
moderator of passion, a procurer of contentedness, and 
begets habits of peace and patience in those who practise 
it.” In ancient Home the artificial fiy was used as a bait^ 
and fishhooks of hardened bronze and of steel were disin- 
terred from the buried ruins of Pompeii. Martial refers to 
fish “ decoyed and caught by fraudful flies,” and -®lian 
describes the construction of the same by 
