The following explanation is interesting, but to my mind indecisive, even though it claims the authority of “the old commentators.”[340] Crescente—“L’oiseleur caché sous un arbre rappelait les oiseaux en imitant leur chant: puis, quand les oiseaux étaient sur l’arbre, il allongeait le roseau enduit de glu, qu’il tenait à la main et les oiseaux venaient s’y prendre. Le poëte dit que le roseau croissait, parcequ’à mesure que l’oiseleur se hissait sur ses pieds, la baguette engluée semblait croître en effet. Telle est la manière dont les commentateurs anciens interprètent ce distique.”
Much again depends on whether we read vadis (shallows) or levis (swift); vadis would incline the balance heavily, but not absolutely, to the rod, not to the reed. We get no help from Friedländer, who contents himself with a mere reference to Martial, Ep., XIV. 218, quoted below.
Paley is of doubtful or little avail. He holds that harundo means the fowler’s reed. The implement was so contrived that a smaller reed, tipped with birdlime (viscum),[341] made from the cherries of the mistletoe, was suddenly protruded (perhaps blown) through a thicker reed against a bird on its perch, and that to this lengthening crescente refers. Cf. Ep., XIV. 218.
“Non tantum calamis, sed cantu fallitur ales, Callida dum tacita crescit harundo manu.”
The fowler attracted the attention of the bird as he approached it, by imitating its note.[342]
Propertius refers to fowling (Vertumnus, V. 2, 33), and in Petronius (Sat., 109, 7) we find “volucres, quas textis harundinibus peritus artifex tetigit.”[343] Textis here, which Mr. Heseltine renders ‘jointed,’ would seem to show Paley’s suggestion, that the first cane was hollow, while the second was “protruded” through it, to be wrong.
Rich explains this method of fowling as follows. The sportsman first hung the cage with his call bird on the bough of a tree, under which, or at some convenient distance from it, he contrived to conceal himself. When a bird, attracted by the singing of its companion, perched on the branches, he quietly inserted his rod amongst the boughs until it reached his prey, which stuck to the lime and was thus drawn to the ground. When the tree was very high, the rod was made in separate joints, like our fishing rod, so that he could lengthen it out until it reached the object of his pursuit, whence it is termed crescens or texta.
If the example given by Rich (from a terra-cotta lamp) be faithfully rendered, the joints in the rod are easily discernible.[344]
