[364] “Dapping,” to which I miss allusion even in Dr. Turrell’s excellent Ancient Angling Authors, is so often regarded as a more or less modern method that, even at the risk of a portentous note, I must record my reasons for differing in toto from this view. Walton certainly employed it in the seventeenth century. Pursuing the device further back, it is distinctly enjoined in the earliest fishing treatise in English, the earlier version of The Boke of St. Albans (i.e. a MS. of about 1450 printed from a MS. in the possession of A. Denison, Esq., with Preface and Glossary by T. Satchell, London, 1883), and seems, although not clearly described, surely specified as follows: In “How many maner of Anglynges that ther bene ... The IIIIth with a mener for the troute with owte plumbe or floote the same maner of Roche and Darse with a lyne of I or II herys batyd with a flye. The Vth is with a dubbed hooke for the troute and graylyng....” This passage draws a decided distinction between baiting with a fly and a dubbed hook, or artificial fly. But no lead (plumbe) or float was to be used, therefore the method intended seems without doubt “dapping,” which warrants, to my mind, the assumption that this device is as old as the earliest instructions in English. This older form of the Treatise seems, it is true, to have differed slightly from the version used for The Boke of St. Albans in 1496. T. Satchell held that they both had a common origin in the “bokes of credence,” which are mentioned in the latter, and may, he suggests, have been French, but of this I am doubtful, principally because the French and English traditions appear to me to have marked points of difference.
[365] The two smallest perfect hooks scale about No. 10 and No. 11 respectively in the old, and 5 and 4 in the new numbering. They are considerably smaller than the Kahun (XII Dynasty) hook, which Petrie believes to be the smallest known in ancient Egypt. Cf. his Tools and Weapons (London, 1917), p. 37 f. But the Kahun hooks scale Nos. 9 and 6 respectively.
[366] Od., XVII. 383 and 386.
[367] “Il est peu de poissons et même d’animaux qui aient été, pour les premiers peuples civilisés de l’Europe, l’objet de plus de recherches, d’attention, et d’éloges que le Scare” (Lacépède). On the family of the Labridæ (of which the Scarus forms a genus) the same author asserts that Nature has not conferred either strength or power, but they have received as their share of her favours, agreeable proportions, great activity of fin, and adornment with all the colours of the rainbow. Of the two cousins of the Scarus, the Turdus and the Julis, his eulogy can not be omitted: “Le feu du diamant, du rubis, de la topaz, de l’émeraude, du saphir, de l’améthyste, du grenat scintille sur leures écailles polies: et brille sur leure surface en gouttes, en croissants, en raies, en bandes, en anneaux, en ceintures, en zones, en ondes; il se mêle à l’éclat de l’or et d’argent qui y resplendit sur de grandes places, les teintes obscures, les aires pâles, et pour ainsi dire décolorées.” Nicander of Thyatira (cp. Athen. 7, 113) states that there were two kinds of Scarus, one αἰόλος of many diverse colours, the other ὀνίας of a dull grey tint.
[368] Pliny, IX. 79.
[369] See J. B. Du Halde, Description géographique ... de l’Empire de la Chine.... (Paris, 1735), vol. i. p. 36.
[370] Petron., Sat., 93, 2.
[371] Archestratus is constantly quoted and always praised by Athenæus as “excellent,” “experienced,” etc. Archestratus the Syracusan in his work—variously termed “Gastronomy,” “Hedypathy,” “Deipnology,” “Cookery”—begins his epic poem, “Here to all Greece I open wisdom’s store”! (Yonge’s trans.). From delivering his precepts in the style and with the gravity of the old gnomic poets, Archestratus was dubbed “the Hesiod or Theognis of opsophagists.” The comic poets have many a gibe at him, e.g. Dionysius of Sinope sums up the author of Gastronomy, τὰ πολλὰ δ’ ἠγνόηκε, κοὐδὲ ἒν λέγει (Thesmophorus, frag. I. 26, Meineke)! Before publishing this work, the author travelled far and wide to make himself master of every dish that could be served at table. Known to us almost entirely as a supreme bon vivant, and as the earliest (except Terpsion) and certainly greatest Mrs. Glasse of the Greeks, his accuracy of description of the various fishes used for the table was so consistent, that we find even so high an authority as Aristotle making use of it in his Natural History. Archestratus in his travels concerned himself not at all as to the manners or morals of the countries visited, “as it is impossible to change these,” and held little or no intercourse with any but those, e.g. chefs, who could advance the pleasures of taste. Whatever the cause, whether too many sauces or too little nutritive food, he was so small and lean that the scales are supposed to have returned his weight as not even one obol! (Cf. Hayward, The Art of Dining). Hayward himself must have appreciated the limitation of guests, which Archestratus imposes for a proper dinner
“I write these precepts for immortal Greece, That round a table delicately spread, Or three, or four, may sit in choice repast Or five at most. Who otherwise shall dine, Are like a troop marauding for their prey.” (I. Disraeli’s trans.)
The sentiment, if not the number, coincides with the Latin proverb—“Septem convivium, novem convicium.”