Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/499

 *faucon's Supplement, tome iii., is an engraving from a bas-relief, in which a net is represented: but none of these are so instructive as the two bas-reliefs at Ince-Blundell.

Gratius Faliscus recommends that a net should be forty paces long, and full ten knots high:

Et bis vicenos spatium prætendere passus Rete velim, plenisque decem consurgere nodis.—Cyneg. 31, 32.

The necessity of making the nets so high that the animals could not leap over them, is alluded to in the expression [Greek: Ypsos kreisson ekpêdêratos], i. e. "a height too great for the animals to leap out ."

Xenophon, in his treatise on Hunting, gives various directions respecting the making and setting of nets; and Schneider has added to that treatise a dissertation concerning the [Greek: arkys]. It is evident that this kind of net was made with a bag ([Greek: kekryphalos], vi. 7), being the same which is now called the purse-net, or the tunnel-net, and that the aim of the hunter was to drive the animal into the bag; that the watchman ([Greek: arkyôros]) waited to see it caught there; that branches of trees were placed in the bag to keep it expanded, to render it invisible, and thus to decoy quadrupeds into it; that a rope ran round the mouth of the bag ([Greek: peridromos], vi. 9), and was drawn tight by the impulse of the animal rushing in so as to prevent its escape. To this rope was attached another, called [Greek: epidromos], which was used as follows. In fig. 1. of Plate X. we observe, that the upper border of theis well expressed by Seneca, "Arctatque motu vincla:" also the circumstance of the branches used to distend the bag and to make it invisible; "Fluentes undique et cæcos sinus."

Homer (Il. v. 487) seems to allude to the same contrivance, and to apply the term [Greek: achides] to the rope which encircled the entrance of the bag, with the others attached to it.

We find in Brunck's Analecta (ii. 10. No. xx.) the phrase [Greek: ankyla diktya] applied to hunting-nets. It was probably meant to designate the [Greek: arkys], which might be called [Greek: ankyla], i. e. angular, because they were made like bags ending in a point. The term [Greek: nephelê], which occurs in Aristophanes (Aves, 195), and denoted some contrivance for catching birds, is said by the Scholiast on the passage to have meant a kind of hunting-net. But this explanation is evidently good for nothing.]