According to Mr. J. D. Lawson, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge (to whom I am indebted for the account), the natives, eager to recover the coal that ships while coaling dropped into the sea, set out to _fish_ for it. Since the coal could not swallow the bait, they resolved that the bait should grip the coal. Having by means of a rude spy-glass located the position of the mineral, they lowered from a boat a cord to which an octopus—the larger the better—was secured. As the fish detested the sensation of suspension, the moment he touched bottom he clutched with all his tentacles any solid object within reach, and while being drawn up clung to it with might and main. By this method of inverted fishing—whether a survival of “Minoan Culture” or an adaptation from the East, where for many centuries the octopus has been similarly used for catching fish—much coal and much else was retrieved from the sea. NOTE.—Since the above was written Th. Mainage has published at Paris _Les Religions de la préhistoire_. “Rites de Chasse” (ch. viii.) includes a section on magic (pp. 326-342) and on religion (pp. 342-9), both dealing with fishing, etc., ancient and modern. The sermon preached among the Hurons to the fish recalls that of St. Anthony of Padua. Mainage, on p. 344, fig. 188, gives an incised design from Laugerie-Basse, which according to him represents “Pêcheurs armés de filets (?).” The design is as little convincing as the author by his query seems convinced. FOOTNOTES: [1] See _postea_, 48 ff. [2] The recent discovery of the inscribed bone fragments in Honan apparently adds some six hundred years to the history, as apart from the legends of China, for _c._ 1500 B.C. instead of _c._ 900 B.C. seems now our starting point. See _infra_, p. 450. [3] Cf. Dr. J. T. Jehu’s _Lectures before the Royal Society_, 1919. It is noteworthy that whatever be the geological date of Man, the oldest true fish, as we understand the term, seems the Shark family, which, although extremely archaic, has but little altered. Next in seniority comes probably the _Ceradotus_; if now “merely a living fossil” and found only in Queensland, its form, hardly modified, corresponds with remains found all over the world as early as from the Trias. [4] The urination of a mare was thought to weaken her hairs. Plutarch, _De Sol._, 24. [5] Cf. however, _postea_, 315. [6] Oric Bates, _Ancient Egyptian Fishing, Harvard African Studies_, I., 1917, p. 248. With a “running line,” Leintz in U.S.A. cast April, 1921, 437 ft. 7 in.