Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/503

 which is loaded at intervals with stones or pieces of lead, and this circle "strikes the broad river :" for the casting-net is used either in pools of moderate depth, or in rivers which have, like pools, a broad smooth surface; whereas the sean is employed for fishing in the deep (pelago).

Isidore of Seville, in his account of the different kinds of nets (Orig. xix. 5), thus speaks: "Funda genus est piscatorii retis, dicta ab eo, quod in fundum mittatur. Eadem etiam a jactando jaculum dicitur. Plautus:

Probus quidem antea jaculator eras ."

Besides the passage of Plautus, here quoted by Isidore, there are two others, in which the casting-net is mentioned under the name of rete jaculum, viz. Asinar. l. i. 87, and Truc. l. i. 14. Pareus, as we find from his Lexicon Plautinum, clearly understood the meaning of the term, and the distinction between the casting-net and the sean. Of the Rete jaculum he says, "Sic dicitur ad differentiam verriculi, quod non jacitur, sed trahitur et verritur." He adds, that Herodotus calls it [Greek: amphiblêstron], and the Germans Wurffgarn.

The word occurs twice in Herodotus, and both places throw light upon its meaning. In Book i. c. 141. he says: "The.

Ausonius, in the following lines, which refer to the methods of fishing in the vicinity of the Garonne, appears to distinguish between the jaculum and the funda.

Piscandi traheris studio? nam tota supellex Dumnotoni tales solita est ostendere gazas: Nodosas vestes animantum Nerinorum, Et jacula, et fundas, et nomina villica lini, Colaque, et indutos terrenis vermibus hamos.

Epist. iv. 51-55. ]