[363] “This idea of rumination,” according to Mr. Lones, _op. cit._, p. 237, “by the parrot wrasse (Scarus cretensis), which is clearly the Skaros of the Ancients, probably arose from its grazing or cropping off marine plants, and grinding them down, assisted by its having a strongly walled stomach” (cf. the functions of the gizzard of a fowl) with which, out of the myriads of fishes, the _scarus_ and his tribe alone are endowed. On p. 162, “The stomach of a skaros is without a cæcum, and appears to be of far simpler form than that of most fishes.” A trout often appears to ruminate, working its jaws quietly for a considerable time—perhaps this is merely to settle its last mouthful comfortably and to its liking. According to Banfield, in Dunk and other islands off Northern Australia, a fish, very similar to only even more brilliant in hues than the _Pseudoscarus rivulatus_, is able by the strength of its teeth (some sixty or seventy, set incisorlike) to pull from the rocks limpets (its chief food), which when steadfast can resist a pulling force of nearly 2000 times their own weight! It swallows molluscs and cockles whole, and by its wonderful gizzard grinds them fine. See _Confessions of a Beachcomber_ (London, 1913), p. 156. [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.