We then pass to fishing by Nets, _Mazy Weel_, and Spears or Tridents. A spirited passage, spoilt in the translation by superfluous verbiage, sings of nocturnal fishing with spears and an attracting light. The method probably obtained the world over, certainly in China, Rome, and Greece, where Plato (_Soph._, 220 D.) classes it under the heading πυρευτική next to Angling. In Scotland it prevailed extensively, if illegally, as _Burning the Water_, or _Leistering_, a Norse term, and practice which Thor himself did not disdain. A passage from a lost comedy—_The Trident_—perhaps by Philippides, shows a fisher armed with a three-pronged fork and horn-lantern off a-Tunnying.[412] The lines ring as true to-day as when Oppian[413] penned them. “Erected torches blaze around the Boat, And dart their pitchy Rays ... Admiring shoals the gaudy flames surround, And meet the triple spear’s descending wound,” while if fishing were legally permitted only to those who came up to his ideal of what an angler _should_ be (III. 29-31), “First be the Fisher’s limbs compact and sound, With solid flesh, and well braced sinews bound, Let due proportion every part commend, Nor Leanness shrink too much, or Fat distend,” rents the world over would speedily abate, and many a river would know its tenant no more. For reading “at lairge” Oppian is admirable. At one moment you are enjoying a vivid and passably accurate account (III. 149 ff.) of how the Cramp or Torpedo Fish (νάρκη), like Brer Fox, lies low in the sand and the mud, but on a sudden “ejects his poisoned charms” with such effect that soon “On every joint an Icy Stiffness steals, The flowing spirit binds and blood congeals.”[414] A fish stupefied by the shock is likened (II. 81 ff.) unto a man who in dreams tries to escape from the threatening phantoms, only to find his knees bound and his limbs incapable of flight. At another moment our poet (in I. 217 ff.) is reproving the incredulity of those who doubt the fact that a sucker fish can stop a ship under full sail, by sticking to its keel![415] The peculiar powers of the Torpedo Fish command some comment. Ancient authors galore, to whom, in the absence of the more powerful electric Eel of Central America, the νάρκη must have appeared an amazing creature, have written and differed about it. Aristotle had early noted that it caught its prey by means of a stupefying apparatus in its mouth, or rather at the back of its head. Claudian asks (_Carm. Min. Corp._, XLIV. (XLVI.) 1 f.): “Quis non indomitam miræ Torpedinis artem Audiit et merito signatas nomine vires?” [Illustration: CAMPANIAN FISH-PLATE WITH PATTERN OF TORPEDO FISH. Note the small well in centre for sauces. See n. 2, p. 181.]