The second (B) where “the human element” is present, as in hand-lining and in its very latest descendant, invented for “big game fishing” off Santa Catalina, viz. a line attached to a kite, which device secures the required “skittering” along the surface and from wave to wave of the flying fish-bait.[76] Even this very up-to-date device is no new invention. In the Malayan Archipelago and many Melanesian islands a kite has long been employed, sometimes as in the Solomon group, with a hookless bait of a spider’s web, which, as wool with eels, gets itself firmly entangled in the small teeth of the Gar fish.[77] Next arose, as snags and obnoxious branches in primitive days abounded, and water bailiffs did not, the further crux, not quite unknown even to-day, how to get the bait over the intervening obstacles which the mere hand line was incapable of clearing, or how to obtain the length necessary to place the bait properly before the fish.[78] The difficulty was in time overcome by attaching the tackle, wythe, gorge, and bait to the hunting Spear. It is at this stage I claim that the hunting Spear with wythe, gorge, and bait so attached became, in fact for all purposes was, the original pole, or at any rate was the immediate sire by a more springy sapling of what in the procession of the ages was to attain unto the “tremendous,” if at times unmastered, “majesty” of our modern Rod. [Illustration: FISHING NET SPUN BY SPIDERS IN NEW GUINEA. See n. 1, p. 43.] _Last of all_, I suggest, though the evidence is conflicting, comes fishing by Net. If Tylor,[79] Calderwood,[80] and others are correct in their conjectures that our primitive _piscator_, when endeavouring to catch by hand fish half stranded or spawning in small pools, blocked any little exit by plaited twigs—wattling, according to C. F. Keary, was one of the earliest prehistoric industries—or stones, that they erected in fact the world’s first barrage, then must this ascendant or Scotch cousin of the Net take precedence of the Spear and every other artificial device. Of the Net’s kith and kin are there not some scores specified in the _Onomasticon_ of Julius Pollux, or depicted in M. Dabry de Thiersant’s _Pisciculture en Chine_? The Net was to beget a _progeniem_ to the Angler at any rate _vitiosiorem_, and (to drag in another tag) almost like κυμάτων ἀνήριθμον γέλασμα. Three of this big family stand out conspicuous by their diversity. (A) The fairy-like Net—perhaps the most interesting because the most incredible—made by _Spiders_ and used by the Papuans.[81] (B) The “Vimineous Weel” of Oppian. (C) The huge steel trawls, which lately encompassed those ravening sharks 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 be put on record as an ingenious and successful species of fishing, employed by the Cretans during the War.