If the Net proper, the barrage, and the fish fence sprang from the same parent,[1130] then in China the fish fences of bamboo, erected for catching and spawning purposes, should be included in the term Net.[1131]
If this be the case, the Chinese stand out as experts both in the diversity and the ingenuity of their devices. Passages from old Chinese authors justify this appreciation.[1132] They are too numerous for quotation here, but three or four seem worthy of notice.
The Chronicles of the Elders of Hsiang Yang set forth that the villages, when forbidden to catch the fine bream of the Han river, achieved their purpose by erecting a fence, probably of the same nature as that which in Lu Kuei-mêng’s History is called Wei hsiao—“which name was taken from the kind of fence used to catch crabs.”
The Shan t’ang ṡsu K’ao describe the mêng sou as a basket net, plaited of small bamboos: “The cover of its mouth was woven of bamboo splints: to it hairy and bristling bamboos were fixed: it gradually decreased in size from the mouth to the junction with the hairy and bristling bamboos (elsewhere, bamboos with whiskers) so preventing the fish from going out after they had got in.”
From the same source we learn that the mêng chou resembled in shape a sieve. When the water became cold, the fish hid in it.[1133] It was used for fishing, but how it, the ch’u kuo, or the chao were used or found useful, deponent maketh not clear. But the hung, a sort of bamboo dam, holds the record. With but one of these the people of Ch’ien T’ang obtained during the Chin Dynasty a million fish a year, whence the name Wan chiang hung, or “the million-worker dam.”[1134] The Odes of Lu Kuei-mêng tell of a bamboo fence 10,000 feet or about 2 miles long.[1135]
We read in the Kuang chou of baiting the nets with the whites of eggs. In the Ko Kai we encounter a method and a net, both of which to me, at any rate, are new and may be unique. The San ts’ai t’u hui states the ko kai was the net commonly called the kai-ou—literally “striking net.” It was an implement for taking fish out of a larger net. The kai-tou was brought down with force on to the larger net near the fish, which thus were made to rebound into it.
CHINESE NETTING.
From Tū Shu Chi Ch’êng, XVII, Pl. 9.