Note 80 — PART I

The Life of the Salmon, p. xv, London, 1907: “At once the most primitive and most deadly method of catching fish, which inhabit rivers, is the erection of built barriers and enclosures.” Plutarch (De Sol. Anim. 26) has no doubt of the priority of the Line over the Net: “Fishermen when perceiving that most of the fishes scorned the line and hook as stale devices or such as can be discovered, betook themselves to fine force and shut them up with great casting nets, like as the Persians serve their enemies in their wars”—σαγηνεύειν—(Cf. Herodotus, vi. 31) “to sweep the whole population off the face of a country” (Hollands’ Trs.). W. v. Schulenburg, Märkische Fischerei (Berlin, 1903), s. 62, “Das Fischnetz galt also schon in der Vorgeschichtlichen Zeit, im grauen Altertum für uralt. Mit Recht darf der Fischer sich den ältesten Gewerben der Menschheit zuzählen.”