The little creature, which caused malaria, lived on the mosquito by whom it was carried. The mosquito spent its larval life in the fresh waters. Little fish were the enemy of the mosquito—particularly the fish known as “millions”—which consumed the pest at a great rate.
The professor suggested, therefore, that what had happened in Greece was that there had not been enough little fish to keep the mosquitos in check. Because of this, malaria had been brought into the country, and that plague helped, if it did not cause, the destruction of the wonderful civilisation of Greece.
CHAPTER XVI
LEGAL REGULATIONS OF ROME AS REGARDS FISHING
Previous instances of taking fish belonging to another have so far only been attended by divine or superhuman punishment. I venture now a few sentences on what were the Roman (I have discovered no Greek) legal regulations—for there does not appear to have existed at Rome any special law on Fishing—and how the rights of fisheries and fishers were protected.
From the evidence available it is clear—
(1) That among Res Nullius, or things belonging to no one, were fish and wild animals in a state of nature. The Digest, 41. 1. 1, lays down that “omnia animalia, quæ terra, mari, cælo capiuntur, id est feræ bestiæ, volucres, et pisces, capientum fiunt.”
(2) That they became the property of the person who first “reduces them into possession,” i.e. captures them.
(3) That the sea and public rivers were not capable of individual ownership.