The most notable would, could we trace it, be “an old MS. treatise on fishing, found among the remains of the valuable library belonging to the Abbey of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. A paper on this was read, a few years before 1855, at a society of antiquaries at Arras. From its style, the MS. was supposed to have been written about 1000 A.D., and to have been divided into twenty-two chapters. The author’s main object was to prove that fishers had been singularly favoured by Divine approbation; but appended to the MS. was a full list of all _river_ fish, the baits used for taking them, and the suitable seasons for angling for each sort of fish.” For the existence of this work, vanished now for over sixty years, we have only the authority of Robert Blakey.[103] But this, if it do pass muster with Dr. Turrell, fails to satisfy Westwood and Satchell, who describe his book on Angling as “a slipshod and negligent work, devoid of all utility, a farrago of quotations incorrectly given, and of so-called original passages, the vagueness and uncertainty of which rob them of all weight and value. Mr. Blakey’s volume, it is but fair to add, is redeemed from utter worthlessness by the excellent bibliographical catalogue appended to it by the _publisher_!”[104] The _Geoponika_, whether written or redacted by Cassianus Bassus or Cassius Dionysius, or merely translated from a treatise by an ancient Carthaginian author, treats generally of agriculture. The twentieth book, however, deals with fish-ponds, fishing, and baits: unlike the Roman writers on _vivaria_, who tell us nothing as to the capture of the fish in them, the writer gives us instructive tips on baits. One infallible recipe in chap. xviii. for collecting the fish—on the lines of Baiting the Swim—from its superstitious _naïveté_ compels quotation: “Get three limpets, and having taken out the fish therein, inscribe on the shell the words, Ἰαώ Σαβαώθ, or ‘Jehovah, Lord of Hosts’; you will immediately see the fish come to the same place in a surprising manner.”[105] The two Greek words formed the so-called Gnostic formula and occur frequently on amulets, etc. The _Geoponika_ adds immediately, “this name the Ichthyophagi use.” About the fourteenth century a poem entitled _De Vetula_, attributed to R. de Fournival, got translated or imitated by Jean Lefevre. The fishing portion (68 lines) awakes our interest, as it shows that “more than six hundred years ago, and probably two hundred years before the date of _The Boke of St. Albans_, most of the modern modes of fishing were practised; for instance, the worm, the fly, the torch and spear, the night line, the eel-basket and fork,” etc.