CHAPTER IX. The First Mention of a Fly

THE FIRST MENTION OF A FLY

The first mention of fishing with a fly occurs apparently in Martial’s lines, “Namque quis nescit, | Avidum vorata decipi scarum musca?” which have been translated:—

“Who has not seen the scarus rise, Decoyed, and killed by fraudful flies?”

These lines are of surpassing interest. In them we may possess the very first mention of a fishing fly, whether natural or artificial, in all the records written or depicted of the whole world.

If the reference be to an artificial fly, it certainly antedates by some two centuries the passage of Ælian (XV. 1), which has hitherto been universally acclaimed the first mention of such a fly. If on the other hand the reference be to a natural fly, it antedates by the same period of time the first mention of the natural fly, or rather winged insect (κώνωψ), to be found also in Ælian (XIV. 22).

And here, pray, observe the cold calm of the classical commentator! This passage, which, as I have said, may be the very first historical document testifying to the use of the fly, the very first tiny beginning of the immense literature consecrated to the fly, the very first starting point in the fly fisher’s journey of sore travail to farther knowledge, this passage so pregnant of possibilities and so provocative of comment, has never, I believe, been suggested by any editor as possibly the locus classicus of fly fishing, far prior to the generally adopted passage of Ælian.

Even if we make great allowance for the wrath of the literary angler at the careless indifference with which these lines appear from his standpoint to be treated, the comments by the editors of Martial must be classed, in other respects also, as unsatisfactory and jejune.

Paley and Stone, for instance, confine themselves to telling us that “scarus is some unknown but highly prized fish, which was caught by an inferior one used as bait.” That is all! nothing more! Their “unknown” stamps their indifference, or ichthyic ignorance. Further, they never even hint that in this passage commentators have suggested two readings, musco—‘moss,’ and musca—‘fly.’ They simply adopt musco without hinting at any difficulty arising from such adoption.

Friedländer adopts musca. His only note consists of, “Vorato—musco wollte Brodæus lesen wegen der von Athenæus, VII., p. 319 f., aus Aristoteles angeführten Stelle ...”

The majority of editors prefer, and probably rightly, the reading musca for many reasons, the chief being that all the manuscripts of Martial without a single exception give musca. The upholders of musco, in their endeavour to enforce that mere conjecture by quoting from Athenæus, “The Scarus flourishes on his food of seaweed,” and supporting it by Pliny, “The Scarus is said to be the only fish that ruminates and is herbivorous” (and here note that as Pliny—like Athenæus—was taking his information from Arist., N. H., VIII. 2, he should have translated φυκίοις by algis, not by herbis), make the mistake of translating φυκίον by muscus. They ignore, moreover, Oppian, II. 649, φέρβονται δ’ ἢ χλωρὸν ἁλὸς μνίον, κ.τ.λ. Φυκίον is, while muscus is not and never has been, algæ or true seaweed; muscus is ‘moss.’

Nor do these Olympian editors, who sit beside their proof-sheets, and whose notes are ever hurled far below them in the valley, condescend to explain to us poor gropers after light how moss to a sea-fish like the Scarus can be of value as food.

Most fishermen will tell you that fresh-water fish do eat moss; that they themselves have seen them in the act of eating such moss on the Thames; that roach in especial are particularly fond of this moss, which is used in summer months as a bait with great success; this moss they call by various names, ‘silk weed,’ ‘flannel weed,’ ‘blanket weed,’ and ‘crow-silk.’ Now all these so-called mosses are not mosses at all, but belong to the family Confervæ, which are fresh-water green algæ: so even in rivers we find that moss is not used as bait.

That not only the Scari but other fish, e.g. the Melanuri, feed on seaweed and that they are taken by baits composed of seaweed, many writers besides Athenæus and Pliny duly record. Theocritus (Id., XXI. 10) speaks of “baits of seaweed.” Oppian, describing the manner of catching the salpæ by baiting a place with stones covered with seaweed, states that when the fish have gathered round this in numbers, “then prepares he (the fisher) the snare of the weel.” Ælian asserts that among the marine plants, on which he says fish feed, are Βρύα ... καὶ φυκία ἄλλα, the difference between which seems according to Aristotle merely one of size.

If a poll of writers on Fishing and of practical Pisciculturists were taken to-day, a large majority would vote that sea-fish do not eat seaweed, but feed on the larvæ, and other minute insects in or on the various algæ or seaweeds. But against this opinion is arrayed the authority of Darwin and Wallace, who state that various species of Scarus do browse, and do graze on seaweed, and some of them exclusively on coral.

The Skaros (according to Aristotle) was the only fish which seemed to ruminate, whose food was seaweed, and teeth, set in deep saw-edged jaws, were not sharp and interlocking, like those of all other fish, but resembled those of a parrot, as its beak resembled that of a parrot.

From the seeming to ruminate of Aristotle we reach in later writers like Oppian, I. 134 ff., and Ovid, Hal., 119, the positive assertion that the scarus did ruminate.

Is it not possible, if a mere angler may hazard a suggestion on scientific points, that the belief of modern writers and pisciculturists is not far out, and that while some of the Scari do browse and graze exclusively on coral, and some sometimes on seaweed, they do this to obtain as food only the minute larvæ, which their so-called rumination helps them to separate from the seaweed or coral?

A second very practical argument against the reading musco suggests itself. Let us allow that some sea fish do eat not only algæ but moss: even then, why should our Scarus “be deceived” by the small amount possible of attachment to a little hook, of seaweed or moss or their larvæ? This is infinitesimal when compared with the greater masses, giving immeasurably ampler supply of larvæ, growing in the sea.

Were it not for the incitement or excitement caused by the fly’s movements or novelty, hardly a salmon, I venture to think, would rise to a fly; but to our scarus, since algæ and moss (if the latter exist in the sea of sufficient length) are familiar growths and constantly set in motion by the action of the water, both these incitements are surely lacking.

Even if neither of these arguments carries weight, the objection brought forward by Gilbert appears to me to put the reading musco out of court: “Suppose Martial knew what Athenæus and others state as regards this peculiar habit of the scarus, surely this was not the place, where the Scarus is introduced only as a representative of all fish, to air his knowledge—least of all in words such as ‘quis nescit.’”

In conclusion, if musca be the right reading, we can, I think, definitely assert:

A. That this passage contains the very earliest mention of a fly being used for the taking of fish:

B. That from Martial’s employment of it as an illustration, and from his not drawing attention to the novelty or oddness of such use, and especially from the words “quis nescit,” which imply a general knowledge, fly fishing had been long invented, and was a method common among anglers:

C. That this solitary passage is inconclusive as to whether the fly was simply a natural one attached to a hook, and used perhaps as now in dapping, or an artificial one.

To my mind, however, the scale dips deeply in favour of the artificial fly for the following reasons.

1. The trend and purpose of the whole passage, especially when we note carefully the preceding verse and a half, “Odi dolosas munerum et malas artes. | Imitantur hamos dona,” is to inveigh against fraudful gifts, typical of which fraudful flies are singled out—in fact, against all presents which are not what they appear. Mr. A. B. Cook writes: “I quite agree with your view that the passage gains much, if all three lines are made to refer to an artificial fly with a hook concealed in it. Indeed, that is pretty obviously the meaning.”

2. The difficulty which the ancients would have experienced in impaling, etc., on one of their hooks a natural fly would have been greater than dressing an artificial one. The smallest hook in the Greek-Roman Collection at the British Museum (found at Amathus in Cyprus 1894) measures over ¼ in. breadth at the bend. If we allow that owing to oxidation the metal may have coarsened and swollen, the task of impaling, and further of fastening a natural fly securely enough to withstand the buffets of even wavelets of the sea (for N.B. the Scarus is marine) must verily have demanded τὸν δημιοεργόν, “a craftsman of the people, welcome over all the wide earth.”

For these reasons the kudos of the first mention of an artificial fly belongs, in my opinion, to Martial rather than to Ælian.

FOOTNOTES:

Ep., V. 18, 7 f.

See infra, p. 155, note 6.

See infra, p. 155, note 5.

Schneidewin, Ed. I., 1842, and Ed. II., 1852, reads musca, as does Lindsay, 1903. Paley and Stone (1888) musco; W. Gilbert (Leipzig, 1886 and 1896) reads musca, and in his apparatus criticus remarks “vorata d. sc. musca cum libris Scrin. Schn. Glb.—vorato d. sc. musco Brodæus Schn.”

VII. 113. χαίρει δὲ (sc. ὁ σκάρος) τῇ τῶν φυκίων τροφῇ διὸ καὶ τούτοις θηρεύεται, κ.τ.λ. Athenæus mentions Aristotle as his source.

The references by ichthyologists to the bait used for catching the Scarus seem infrequent: I at least have only come across the following. “The fishing requires some experience: fishermen allege that there is necessary un individu vivant pour amorcer les autres, yet here we call to mind what Ælian and Oppian say as to the great number of fish attracted by following a female attached to the line.” See Cuvier and Valenciennes, H. N. des Poissons, vol. XIV., p. 150, Paris, 1839.

IX. 29. Scarus solus piscium dicitur ruminare herbisque vesci, non aliis piscibus. See also Oppian, II. 645-650.

The Oxford Dict. gives, “Alga, a seaweed: in plural, one of the great divisions of the Cryptogamic plants including seaweeds, and kindred fresh-water plants, and a few ærial species,” and “Moss, any of the small herbaceous Cryptogamous plants constituting the class Musci, some of which form the characteristic vegetation of bogs, while others grow in crowded masses covering the surface of the ground, stones, trees, etc.” As “applied to seaweed rare”, I might venture to add either poetical, as in Tennyson’s Mermaid, “in hueless moss under the sea,” or loose and unscientific.

Compare J. Britten and R. Holland, Dict. of English Plant Names (London, 1884), III. 576. Wright in his Dialect Dictionary, “Crow-silk, Confervæ, and other Algæ, especially C. rivularis.”

Oppian, III. 421. Τῆμος ὲπεντύνει κύυρτου δόλον. These were traps of wickerwork, resembling our lobster pots or weels, in which the fish were caught as they flocked to suck at the seaweed, with which the stones (placed inside the traps to sink them) were covered. Cf. Ælian, XII. 43, who states that for this sort of fishing fishermen made use of φύκους θαλασσίου.

N. H., XIII., 3. Cf. also ibid., I, 2.

Voyage of the Beagle, ch. 20: “Two species of fish of the genus scarus, which are common here (Keeling Island), exclusively feed on coral.” Sir R. Owen, “The anterior teeth are soldered together and adapted to the habits and exigences of a tribe of fishes which browse on the lithophytes, that clothe the bottom of the sea, just as ruminant quadrupeds crop the herbage of the dry land.”

N. H., II. 17: μόνος ἰχθὺς δοκεῖ μηρυκάζειν. Cf., however, N. H., IX. 50.

VIII. 2, 13.

Arist., N. H., II. 13. Pliny, XI. 61. “Piscium omnibus (dentes) serrati, præter scarum: huic uni aquatilium plani.”

In VII. 113, we again find Athenæus misrepresenting Aristotle.

“This idea of rumination,” according to Mr. Lones, op. cit., p. 237, “by the parrot wrasse (Scarus cretensis), which is clearly the Skaros of the Ancients, probably arose from its grazing or cropping off marine plants, and grinding them down, assisted by its having a strongly walled stomach” (cf. the functions of the gizzard of a fowl) with which, out of the myriads of fishes, the scarus and his tribe alone are endowed. On p. 162, “The stomach of a skaros is without a cæcum, and appears to be of far simpler form than that of most fishes.”

A trout often appears to ruminate, working its jaws quietly for a considerable time—perhaps this is merely to settle its last mouthful comfortably and to its liking. According to Banfield, in Dunk and other islands off Northern Australia, a fish, very similar to only even more brilliant in hues than the Pseudoscarus rivulatus, is able by the strength of its teeth (some sixty or seventy, set incisorlike) to pull from the rocks limpets (its chief food), which when steadfast can resist a pulling force of nearly 2000 times their own weight! It swallows molluscs and cockles whole, and by its wonderful gizzard grinds them fine. See Confessions of a Beachcomber (London, 1913), p. 156.

“Dapping,” to which I miss allusion even in Dr. Turrell’s excellent Ancient Angling Authors, is so often regarded as a more or less modern method that, even at the risk of a portentous note, I must record my reasons for differing in toto from this view. Walton certainly employed it in the seventeenth century. Pursuing the device further back, it is distinctly enjoined in the earliest fishing treatise in English, the earlier version of The Boke of St. Albans (i.e. a MS. of about 1450 printed from a MS. in the possession of A. Denison, Esq., with Preface and Glossary by T. Satchell, London, 1883), and seems, although not clearly described, surely specified as follows: In “How many maner of Anglynges that ther bene ... The IIIIth with a mener for the troute with owte plumbe or floote the same maner of Roche and Darse with a lyne of I or II herys batyd with a flye. The Vth is with a dubbed hooke for the troute and graylyng....” This passage draws a decided distinction between baiting with a fly and a dubbed hook, or artificial fly. But no lead (plumbe) or float was to be used, therefore the method intended seems without doubt “dapping,” which warrants, to my mind, the assumption that this device is as old as the earliest instructions in English. This older form of the Treatise seems, it is true, to have differed slightly from the version used for The Boke of St. Albans in 1496. T. Satchell held that they both had a common origin in the “bokes of credence,” which are mentioned in the latter, and may, he suggests, have been French, but of this I am doubtful, principally because the French and English traditions appear to me to have marked points of difference.

The two smallest perfect hooks scale about No. 10 and No. 11 respectively in the old, and 5 and 4 in the new numbering. They are considerably smaller than the Kahun (XII Dynasty) hook, which Petrie believes to be the smallest known in ancient Egypt. Cf. his Tools and Weapons (London, 1917), p. 37 f. But the Kahun hooks scale Nos. 9 and 6 respectively.

Od., XVII. 383 and 386.