to fishing in the sea.  Ascribed to the 13th or 14th century is a Latin poem De Vetula, whose author was apparently Richard de Fournival.  It contains a passage on angling, and was placed to the credit of Ovid when first printed (c. 1470).  A manuscript in the British museum, Comptes des pecheries de l’eglise de Troyes (A.D. 1349-1413), gives a minute account of the fisheries with the weights of fish captured and the expenses of working.  There is, however, practically nothing else of importance till we come to the first printed book on angling (a translation of Oppian, 1478, excepted), and so to the beginning of the literature proper.  This first book was a little volume printed in Antwerp probably in 1492 at the press of Matthias van der Goes.  In size it is little more than a pamphlet, and it treats of birds as well as fish:—­Dit Boecxken leert hoe men mach Voghelen ... ende ... visschen vangen metten kanden.  Ende oeck andersins.... ("This book teaches how one may catch birds ... and ... fish with the hands, and also otherwise").  Only one copy apparently survives, in the Denison library, and a translation privately printed for Mr. Alfred Denison in 1872 was limited to twenty-five copies.  At least two other editions of the book appeared in Flemish, and it also made its way, in 1502, to Germany, where, translated and with certain alterations and additions, it seems to have been re-issued frequently.  Next in date comes the famous Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, printed at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496 as a part of the second edition of The Book of St. Albans.  The treatise is for this reason associated with the name of Dame Juliana Berners, but that somewhat dubious compiler can have had nothing whatever to do with it.  The treatise is almost certainly a compilation from some earlier work on angling ("bokes of credence” are mentioned in its text), possibly from a manuscript of the earlier part of the 15th century, of which a portion is preserved in the Denison collection.  This was published in 1883 by Mr. Thomas Satchell under the title An Older Form of the Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle.  But it is also possible that a still older work was the parent of both books, for it has been held that the manuscript is an independent version.  However this may be, it is certain that the treatise itself has been the parent of many other works.  Many of the instructions contained in it are handed down from generation to generation with little change except in diction.  Especially is this the case with the list of trout-flies, a meagre twelve, which survives in many fishing books until well into the 18th century.

[v.02 p.0023]