CURIOSITIES OF ANGLING LITERATURE. BY RED GILL. (Continued from page 393, Vol. I.) OILS AND SCENTED BAITS. HA AVE fish the sense of smell, and if so, to what extent? is a question, often asked, and, we believe, as yet, never satisfactorily answered. It is conceded that all Animals have this power, more or less, and that in some the gift takes the characteristics of the marvellous. Until it is proved to the contrary by all the accepted laws of logic, creatures with nostrils should be admitted into the category of smellers. And thus we might settle the question and say in approved parliamentary language, that the noes" have it. But against this prominent feature of the argument we get the somewhat sophistical blow that there exist individuals, who like the blind deprived of sight, the deaf of hearing and, it may be added, the unfeeling of the sense of touch-are equally bereaved of the olfactory attribute. Man, as a general rule, possesses a greater perceptive sagacity in this facial organ for the detection of coarse and objectionable odours, than the gentler sex, while the latter, apparently ignorant of the presence of much that is offensive to the ruder nature of man, can analyze shades of difference in the essential odours arising from a flower almost to the extent of determining thereby the exact period of the day. There are few of us but are acquainted with some one or other of our fellows who will faint at the smell of a rose, become pale and sick in the too close proximity to a melon, that cannot sit down to table if there be vinegar at the board, and on the other hand, have a vigorous relish for exhalations unbearable to the rest of the community. We knew a young lady once, whose delight (when in the country), was to lean over the balustrades and blow out the lamps, the fumes from the viscous gases of which she thought exquisite, as reminding her of the opera! Again, with us, a passing "sniff will recall the minute details of some scenes of interest long past or remind us of circumstances which we neither cared for at the period of their occurrence nor ever after. All these, and endless other instances to which we could refer, tend to prove that where there exist noses, there the absence of the sense of smell must be taken as the exception, and not as the rule. Davies quaintly tells us of that "Next, in the nostrils she doth use the smell, As God the breath of life in them did give: If then, in other words, we accept the general conclusion that the nose is the sentinel of the stomach, and we find by proper examination that fish possess the organ with its due proportion of muscles and nerves, we cannot conscientiously deny that they likewise are endowed to some extent with the power, more or less, of discriminating what is good or bad for them. Most anglers are aware that the fresh bait of to-day eagerly seized and pouched by the salmon or the pike, and to-morrow rejected by both, will be greedily devoured by the less fastidious eel, which yet, after a greater degree of staleness in the bait, would turn up its nose at it whether blunt or pointed, thus giving the still greater scavenger of the water-the craw-fish-the chance of making an acceptable meal. Call this an exercise of taste, or by what name you will, it is too intimately connected with smelling-which in some persons means the same thing,-to be rejected in a question which involves the sagacity of our forefathers, for they, one and all, as anglers, gave fish the credit of possessing the faculty to so refined a degree, that even the apparently infinitesimal distinction between the fat of the kidney of a lamb and that of a sheep is insisted upon for the proper admixture of certain descriptions of pastes. As we would shew that the act of smelling precedes that of taste in all living beings, so would we desire to protect the old anglers from the charge of ignorance by endeavouring to obtain for them the credit of possessing a treasury of information and observation in the habits of fish, the door to which must once have existed although the key is now almost lost to us; in doing this we are quite aware we may be but removing the mental fools-cap off the head of the ancients to place it upon our own, but it does not follow that because the baits of centuries ago are not used now, they might not be found equally efficacious as then. We have shewn that a stale bait will be rejected by different descriptions of fish; it will be as easy for us to get an affirmative to the assertion that mouldy bread or bran is equally repugnant to the delicate palates of trout, chub, roach, &c., either used as groundbait or in the form of paste. The same objection to a dead or putrid worm may be noticed in reference to trout and perch. It may be urged that this aversion is arrived at by a close occular inspection on the fish's part. But if such be the case we should find fish in the morning upon the hooks of night lines, whether the worms were fresh or otherwise, and this is not the case. Nor must the absence of the bait removed from hooks thus unwisely baited, be attributed to the attacks of fish with choice and delicate appetites, but to those we have alluded to, crawfish, &c. In fact smell is less fallible than sight, for there are a great many things that look repulsive which are good to eat and there are few things, if any, that smell objectionable that the palate or stomach will tolerate. When fish take to eating stale or corrupt baits, either by day or night, it will be so much the worse for the water-rat and the moorhen, and that immense minor world of life-the insect classes-the wise ordering of which keeps our rivers free from organic matter and is never ceasing in its beneficial conversion of that which is effete, into fresh combinations and vital material. The Rev. C. D. Badham in his "Prose Halieutics" says that the Izaak Waltons of antiquity employed divers pastes, equal to (and it would be hard to surpass) our own, for complicity of composition, and the truly surprising effects resulting from the different ingredients introduced. That some fish were attracted by strong scents, and would take a whole pharmacopoeia of "fetids," prescribed by a scientific practitioner, was indeed as well known to the poacher of early days as now. Oppian speaks of myrrh dissolved in wine lees, and again of certain drugs familiar to the sons of Esculapius as well as fishermen, and turned to account by the latter in impregnating their nets, as expedients that never failed. These substances entered into the composition of many fishing pastes, the recipes for which have come down to us. They were of two classes, intoxicating and poisonous. Pliny records that all aristolochias yield an aromatic smell, but that one, called popularly the earth's poison,' is successfully used by Campanian fishermen for the purposes of their craft. "I have seen them use the plant" says he, "incorporating it with lime and throwing detached pellets into the sea, one of which was no sooner swallowed than the fish, immediately turning over, floated up dead But the most interesting of these poisons is unquestionably prepared from the cyclamen, or sow-bread, two species of which possess the property of drugging fish in a remarkable degree, the C. hederafolium and the C. Neapolitanum. The lazzaroni, from whom we first learnt the qualities of this plant, stated that they were in the habit of mixing it with other ingredients, in a paste they called lateragna which is either then thrown in lumps from a boat, or enclosed in a bag, and thrust by means of a long pole among the rocks, when, if any fish are within smell, the crew are sure of a good haul; it was found they said, particularly successful in the capture of cephali and generally of low swimming fish, whose nostrils come in more immediate contact with it on the ground." A paragraph in Cavaliere Tenore's "Neapolitan Flora," quite confirms the correctness of the above statements. The ancient anglers never appeared to entertain a doubt but that fish were as particular in their diet and would be as much charmed by its variety as any other class of animated nature. One of the oldest works upon the subject of angling has this passagea passage for its atmosphere of goût equal to anything in Ude, Francatelli or Soyer. "Pastes are a Species of artificial Baits, to be angled with at ground, or within the Water. There are, or may be, many distinct Sorts of them as the Luxuriancy of every Fancy will suggest." Lucullian-is it not? Could a Belgravian Gunter, throwing open his doors to the aristocratic lovers of all that is gustatory, have expressed himself in a more comprehensive or enticing manner? Then follows the query-did the fish of the period appreciate this "Luxuriance of Fancy?"-and have they, just in an inverse ratio to the civilization of man, eschewed the high feeding of a past age to content themselves with the simple fare of plain bread and water in this? It would seem so, if we are to believe the modern fisherman, who may be here inclined to deny that these piscatorial desires ever had an existence, excepting in the imagination of men living in a benighted ageinsinuating that even modern cooks have been known to ask for champagne as an addendum to stewed kidneys but which never reached beyond the neck of the bottle (unless it was to run down the throat of the chef), and would hint at a cuisine whose sauce was encouraged by burnt brandies obtained under the excuse of requirements of mince pies and plum puddings. Those cynics who are inclined to take this view of the great masters of pisciculture, must be prepared to back their slanders with something better than mere assertion, because, if they would insinuate that the variety of preparations of "rabbit, roasted bacon, white bread, mutton kidney, butter and cheese," followed with a constitutional nip of "aniseed," was but to serve as a sly dinner for the biped and not for the fish, they must be prepared to shew that men in that time were equally disposed to refect upon "the flesh of whelps," turmeric, mixed with bean or wheat-flour, with a dash of assafoetida, the whole washed down with a full draught of Venice turpentine in place of the present Barclay and Perkins, or Ind Coope. "I make but little boast," writes one who fished in the 15th century, "of my unguents, for there are those about who would steal of my secrets and lie in wait, abounding like a robber for that which I use, that they the whereof could take to the man of cunning and set aside each of its components, and thus become master of that which is none of theirs, but this I will venture, for none such purloiners of man's goods is there even the most simple of pastes left, for that being made of white bread and milk needeth clean hands." Another angler tells us that "assafoetida, oil of polipody of the oak, oil of ivy, oil of Peter, and gum ivy mixed up as a paste will wonderfully increase your sport." Now of all the abominable stinks assafoetida is the worst. But if the fish like it, the credit due to the angler in providing it for them, in spite of all objections is great. It is produced from a -species of ferula, in the dry stalk of which we are told Prometheus brought fire from heaven. Polipody-almost as filthy in smell as the preceding-will be found under the class cryptogamia, amongst the last and lowest of vegetables. It is of the fern tribe. The oil of ivy is the tear which exudes from the stem of that parasite when the limb is wounded. We are not sufficient chemists to determine what is oil of Peter, unless it was some preparation, secret or otherwise, of a medieval "Peter of the Pool," or that of St. Peter's wort. This reference occasionally to the flesh of whelps in combination with oils as a lure for fish recalls a passage in the life of the great French chirurgeon, Ambrose Paré, in which he dwells upon the difficulties he had to encounter during two whole years of selfimposed retirement from his business, to obtain from a professional cotemporary at Turin (temp. 1536) his secret of curing wounds made by gunshot. He writes "It fell out that the Marshall of Montejan, the King's lieutenant-general, then in Piedmont, died; wherefore I went unto my chirurgeon, and told him that I could take no pleasure in living there, the favourer and Maecenas of my studies being taken away; and that I intended forthwith to return to Paris, and that it would neither hinder nor discredit him to teach his remedy to me, who should be so far remote from him. When he heard this he made no delay, but presently wished me to provide two whelps, one pound of earth worms, two pounds of oil of lillies, six ounces of Venice turpentine, and one ounce of aqua vitæ. In my presence he boiled the whelps, put alive into that oil, until the flesh came from the bones, then presently he put in the worms which he had first killed in white wine, that they might be so cleansed from the earthly dross with which they are usually replete; and then he boiled them in the same oil so long til they became dry, and had spent all their juice therein; then he strained it through a towel without much pressing; and added the turpentine to it, and lastly aqua vitæ. Calling God to witness that he had no other balsam wherewith to cure wounds made with gunshot and bring them to suppuration. Thus he sent me away as rewarded with a most precious gift, requesting me to keep it as a great secret and not to reveal it to any." Ambrose Paré was Surgeon in Ordinary to Henry II. in 1552, a post which he also retained under the three succeeding kings, Francis II., Charles IX., and Henry III. It is therefore not a little curious to find "Monsieur Charras, Apothecary Royal to the late French King, Lewis the Fourteenth," coming out with recipes of a similar nature as 66 unguents for the certain taking of divers kinds of fish." It may be that M. Charras, as apothecary was entirely in ignorance of the original application of "whelp oil," and that finding it probably with the directions for its composition after the death of this surgeon in a peculiar box, for its better transit upon the field of battle amongst the wounded by gun-shot, drew a suggestive influence therefrom, that it was intended for some sporting pursuit, and if so that it would not apply to any other than angling. Or-as even incidents travel in circles-that the hoax played upon Ambrose Paré, probably as a punishment for the excess of his curiosity, by the original compounder, cropped up in the guise of a joke for which the credulity of the anglers of that age had evidently prepared the victims. It is clear, however, that it served to assist the chemists and druggists in disposing of their oils, &c., for at least two centuries, and that the quasi fishermen were pretty handsomely mulct in the purchase thereof. The fact of dipping the earth-worms into white wine to kill them will not escape the notice of the intelligent angler, who will recal Oppian's allusion to the uses of wine lees in fishing, and the several prescriptions of other old writers upon angling, whereof wine is an ingredient for a paste in which to dip or place the worms or gentles for a short time only previous to the use of them. This doubtless to aggravate their writhing and make them more "lively" upon the hook. Of course there is much that is conjectural in what we have written, but the facts are beyond question and the reader may thus deduce his own conclusions. Approaching a literature nearer to our own day (1740), John Richardson, Gent., thus expresses himself "as to ointments or unguents:" VOL. II. F |