ÆLIAN—THE MACEDONIAN INVENTION, OR THE FIRST MENTION OF AN ARTIFICIAL FLY “They knew ’e stole; ’e knew they knowed; They did not tell, or make a fuss, But winked at Ælian down the road, And ’e winked back—the same as us!”[426] Ælian (170-230 A.D.), who, though born in Italy and brought up in the Latin tongue, acquired so complete a command of Greek that he could speak it as well as an Athenian gentleman (hence his sobriquet μελίγλωττος), composed his works in Greek. His _Natural History_[427] soon became a standard work on Zoology, although in arrangement it is very defective: for instance, he skips from elephants (XI. 15) to dragons in the very next chapter, and from the livers of mice in II. 56 to the uses of oxen in II. 57. This treatment of things, ποικίλα ποικίλως, is asserted by the author to be intentional, so as to avoid boring the reader. For his part he avows that he prefers observing the habits of animals and fish, listening to the nightingale, or studying the migration of cranes, to heaping up riches![428] [Illustration: (_a_) FISHERMAN AND SON. (_b_) SON SALUTING WAYSIDE HERMES. From a Greek vase in Vienna. R. Schneider, _Arch. epig. Mitth._, iii., Pl. 3.] Whether as a Naturalist Ælian possesses any value, whether his work is “scrappy and gossiping, and largely collected from older and more logical writers,”[429] or “from the industry displayed, despite deficiency in arrangement, a valuable collection in Natural History,” to us fishermen matters little, for unto him has been ascribed the great glory of being the first author of all ages and of all countries specifically to mention and roughly describe an Artificial Fly. And not only is he the first, but also (with possibly one exception) the only author during fourteen hundred years, who makes any reference to any such fly.[430] From Ælian until the _Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle_ we find no mention of, or allusion to, the Artificial Fly, but that it was well known as a method of angling is easily deduced from the authoress’s abrupt introduction of the subject, “There ben the xij flies or dubbes with which ye shall angle.”[431] The usually accurate _Bibliotheca Piscatoria_ of Westwood and Satchell states under heading of ‘Ælian,’ that Stephen Oliver (Mr. Chatto), in his _Scenes and Recollections of Fly Fishing_, _first_ pointed out this remarkable passage. Now the first edition of Oliver’s book is dated 1834; so, if the _Bibliotheca Piscatoria_ be correct, Ælian’s statement apparently remained unknown to Anglers for nearly eighteen centuries. I purposely set out a translation of the whole passage in Ælian, XV. 1, because short extracts are usually given, and because these vary greatly on a very important point. I adopt with some alterations the translation by Mr. O. Lambert in his _Angling Literature in England_ (1881).