Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

SPIDER FISH NET—OCTOPUS LANDS COAL 43are correct in their conjectures that our primitive piscator,when endeavouring to catch by hand fish half stranded orspawning in small pools, blocked any little exit by plaitedtwigs—wattling, according to C. F. Keary, was one of theearliest prehistoric industries—or stones, that they erectedin fact the world's first barrage, then must this ascendant orScotch cousin of the Net take precedence of the Spear andevery other artificial device.Of the Net's kith and kin are there not some scores specifiedin the Onomasticon of Julius Pollux, or depicted in M. Dabryde Thiersant's Pisciculture en Chine ? The Net was to begeta progeniem to the Angler at any rate vitiosiorem, and (to dragin another tag) almost like Kvfiarwv avrtpiBjxov yeAao-^ta.Three of this big family stand out conspicuous by theirdiversity.(A) The fairy-Hke Net — perhaps the most interestingbecause the most incredible—made by Spiders and used by thePapuans. 1 (B) The " Vimineous Weel " of Oppian. (C) Thehuge steel trawls, which lately encompassed those raveningsharks of the sea, the German submarines.How the following device should be classed, I am not sure ;it is neither Spear, nor Hook, nor Net. But it deserves to beput on record as an ingenious and successful species of fishing,employed by the Cretans during the War.According to Mr. J.D. Lawson, Fellow of PembrokeCollege, Cambridge (to whom I am indebted for the account),the natives, eager to recover the coal that ships while coalingdropped into the sea, set out to fish for it. Since the coalcould not swallow the bait,they resolved that the bait shouldFischerei (Berlin, 1903), s. 62, " Das Fischnetz gait also schon in der VorgeschichtlichenZeit, im grauen Altertum fiir uralt. Mit Recht darf der Fischer sichden altesten Gewerben der Menschheit zuzahlen."^ Cf. A. E. Pratt, Two Years among the New Guinea Cannibals (London,1906), p. 266, and 3 photographs. The webs spun by the spiders in the forestsare six feet in diameter, with meshes varying from one inch at the outside toabout one-eighth at the centre. The diligence of the creatures has beenpressed into weaving fishing-nets for the use of man by setting up, where thewebs are thickest, long bamboos bent over in a loop at the end. On thismost convenient frame the spider in a short time produces a web which resistswater as readily as does a duck's back, and holds fish up to a pound satisfactorily.See also Robert W. WilUamson {The Maflu Mountain People ofBritish New Guinea (London, 1912), p. 193) who differs materially from Prattas to the formation of the net. The illustration is reproduced by the kindpermission of The Illustrated London News Co,