Part 7

THEAETETUS: How would you make the division?

STRANGER: Into the hunting of living and of lifeless prey.

THEAETETUS: Yes, if both kinds exist.

STRANGER: Of course they exist; but the hunting after lifeless things having no special name, except some sorts of diving, and other small matters, may be omitted; the hunting after living things may be called animal hunting.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And animal hunting may be truly said to have two divisions, land-animal hunting, which has many kinds and names, and water-animal hunting, or the hunting after animals who swim?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And of swimming animals, one class lives on the wing and the other in the water?

THEAETETUS: Certainly.

STRANGER: Fowling is the general term under which the hunting of all birds is included.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: The hunting of animals who live in the water has the general name of fishing.

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: And this sort of hunting may be further divided also into two principal kinds?

THEAETETUS: What are they?

STRANGER: There is one kind which takes them in nets, another which takes them by a blow.

THEAETETUS: What do you mean, and how do you distinguish them?

STRANGER: As to the first kind--all that surrounds and encloses anything to prevent egress, may be rightly called an enclosure.

THEAETETUS: Very true.

STRANGER: For which reason twig baskets, casting-nets, nooses, creels, and the like may all be termed 'enclosures'?

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And therefore this first kind of capture may be called by us capture with enclosures, or something of that sort?

THEAETETUS: Yes.

STRANGER: The other kind, which is practised by a blow with hooks and three-pronged spears, when summed up under one name, may be called striking, unless you, Theaetetus, can find some better name?

THEAETETUS: Never mind the name--what you suggest will do very well.

STRANGER: There is one mode of striking, which is done at night, and by the light of a fire, and is by the hunters themselves called firing, or spearing by firelight.

THEAETETUS: True.

STRANGER: And the fishing by day is called by the general name of barbing, because the spears, too, are barbed at the point.