“Entanglement by Appetite,” of which a primitive form exists among the Fuegians,[74] did literally “line upon line,” almost wythe upon wythe multiply its seed, if not quite like the sand of the sea, yet freely. Proofs of this fecundity exist in the varying and world-wide forms of its issue. A strong family likeness enables us roughly to divide these descendants into two classes.
The first (A) where (to quote our leading law case) “the human element” is absent, as in night lining, or in “trimmering,” or in its distant and nowadays probably illegal connection, the method of live-baiting for pike with the aid of a goose or a duck, as set forth by T. Barker with his customary gusto.[75]
The second (B) where “the human element” is present, as in hand-lining and in its very latest descendant, invented for “big game fishing” off Santa Catalina, viz. a line attached to a kite, which device secures the required “skittering” along the surface and from wave to wave of the flying fish-bait.[76] Even this very up-to-date device is no new invention. In the Malayan Archipelago and many Melanesian islands a kite has long been employed, sometimes as in the Solomon group, with a hookless bait of a spider’s web, which, as wool with eels, gets itself firmly entangled in the small teeth of the Gar fish.[77]
Next arose, as snags and obnoxious branches in primitive days abounded, and water bailiffs did not, the further crux, not quite unknown even to-day, how to get the bait over the intervening obstacles which the mere hand line was incapable of clearing, or how to obtain the length necessary to place the bait properly before the fish.[78]
The difficulty was in time overcome by attaching the tackle, wythe, gorge, and bait to the hunting Spear. It is at this stage I claim that the hunting Spear with wythe, gorge, and bait so attached became, in fact for all purposes was, the original pole, or at any rate was the immediate sire by a more springy sapling of what in the procession of the ages was to attain unto the “tremendous,” if at times unmastered, “majesty” of our modern Rod.
FISHING NET SPUN BY SPIDERS IN NEW GUINEA.
Last of all, I suggest, though the evidence is conflicting, comes fishing by Net. If Tylor,[79] Calderwood,[80] and others are correct in their conjectures that our primitive piscator, when endeavouring to catch by hand fish half stranded or spawning in small pools, blocked any little exit by plaited twigs—wattling, according to C. F. Keary, was one of the earliest prehistoric industries—or stones, that they erected in fact the world’s first barrage, then must this ascendant or Scotch cousin of the Net take precedence of the Spear and every other artificial device.