instituted by Archbishop Longley in 1867, and known as the Lambeth Conferences (q.v.), though even for the Anglican communion they have not the authority of an ecumenical synod, and their decisions are rather of the Pan-Anglican Congress.nature of counsels than commands, have done much to promote the harmony and co-operation of the various branches of the Church. An even more imposing manifestation of this common life was given by the great pan-Anglican congress held in London between the 12th and 24th of June 1908, which preceded the Lambeth conference opened on the 5th of July. The idea of this originated with Bishop Montgomery, secretary to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and was endorsed by a resolution of the United Boards of Mission in 1903. As the result of negotiations and preparations extending over five years, 250 bishops, together with delegates, clerical and lay, from every diocese in the Anglican communion, met in London, the opening service of intercession being held in Westminster Abbey. In its general character, the meeting was but a Church congress on an enlarged scale, and the subjects discussed, e.g. the attitude of churchmen towards the question of the marriage laws or that of socialism, followed much the same lines. The congress, of course, had no power to decide or to legislate for the Church, its main value being in drawing its scattered members closer together, in bringing the newer and more isolated branches into consciousness of their contact with the parent stem, and in opening the eyes of the Church of England to the point of view and the peculiar problems of the daughter-churches.
The Anglican communion consists of the following:—(1) The Church of England, 2 provinces, Canterbury and York, with 24 and 11 dioceses respectively. (2) The Church of Ireland, 2 provinces, Armagh and Dublin, with 7 and 6 dioceses respectively. (3) The Scottish Episcopal Church, with 7 dioceses. (4) The Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States, with 89 dioceses and missionary jurisdictions, including North Tokyo, Kyoto, Shanghai, Cape Palmas, and the independent dioceses of Hayti and Brazil. (5) The Canadian Church, consisting of (a) the province of Canada, with 10 dioceses; (b) the province of Rupert’s Land, with 8 dioceses. (6) The Church in India and Ceylon, 1 province of 11 dioceses. (7) The Church of the West Indies, 1 province of 8 dioceses, of which Barbados and the Windward Islands are at present united. (8) The Australian Church, consisting of (a) the province of New South Wales, with 10 dioceses; (b) the province of Queensland, with 5 dioceses; (c) the province of Victoria, with 5 dioceses. (9) The Church of New Zealand, 1 province of 7 dioceses, together with the missionary jurisdiction of Melanesia. (10) The South African Church, 1 province of 10 dioceses, with the 2 missionary jurisdictions of Mashonaland and Lebombo. (11) Nearly 30 isolated dioceses and missionary jurisdictions holding mission from the see of Canterbury.
Authorities.—Official Year-book of the Church of England; Phillimore, Ecclesiastical Law, vol. ii. (London, 1895); Digest of S.P.G. Records (London, 1893); E. Stock, History of the Church Missionary Society, 3 vols. (London, 1899); H. W. Tucker, The English Church in Other Lands (London, 1886); A. T. Wirgman, The Church and the Civil Power (London, 1893).
ANGLING, the art or practice of the sport of catching fish by means of a baited hook or “angle” (from the Indo-European root ank-, meaning “bend”).[1] It is among the most ancient of human activities, and may be said to date from the time when man was in the infancy of the Stone Age, eking out a precarious existence by the slaughter of any living thing which he could reach with the rude weapons at his command. It is probable that attack on fishes was at first much the same as attack on animals, a matter of force rather than of guile, and conducted by means of a rude spear with a flint head. It is probable, too, that the primitive harpooners were not signally successful in their efforts, and so set their wits to work to devise other means of getting at the abundant food which waited for them in every piece of water near their caves. Observation would soon show them that fish fed greedily on each other and on other inhabitants of the water or living things that fell into it, and so, no doubt, arose the idea of entangling the prey by means of its appetite. Hence came the notion of the first hook, which, it seems certain, was not a hook at all but a “gorge,” a piece of flint or stone which the fish could swallow with the bait but which it could not eject afterwards. From remains found in cave-dwellings and their neighbourhood in different parts of the world it is obvious that these gorges varied in shape, but in general the idea was the same, a narrow strip of stone or flake of flint, either straight or slightly curved at the ends, with a groove in the middle round which the line could be fastened. Buried in the bait it would be swallowed end first; then the tightening of the line would fix it cross-wise in the quarry’s stomach or gullet and so the capture would be assured. The device still lingers in France and in a few remote parts of England in the method of catching eels which is known as “sniggling.” In this a needle buried in a worm plays the part of the prehistoric gorge.
The evolution of the fish-hook from the slightly curved gorge is easily intelligible. The ends became more and more curved, until eventually an object not unlike a double hook was attained. This development would be materially assisted by man’s discovery of the uses of bronze and its adaptability to his requirements. The single hook, of the pattern more or less familiar to us, was possibly a concession of the lake-dweller to what may even then have been a problem—the “education” of fish, and to a recognition of the fact that sport with the crude old methods was falling off. But it is also not improbable that in some parts of the world the single hook developed pari passu with the double, and that, on the sea-shore for instance, where man was able to employ so adaptable a substance as shell, the first hook was a curved fragment of shell lashed with fibre to a piece of wood or bone, in such a way that the shell formed the bend of the hook while the wood or bone formed the shank. Both early remains and recent hooks from the Fiji Islands bear out this supposition. It is also likely that flint, horn and bone were pressed into service in a similar manner. The nature of the line or the rod that may have been used with these early hooks is largely a matter of conjecture. The first line was perhaps the tendril of a plant, the first rod possibly a sapling tree. But it is fairly obvious that the rod must have been suggested by the necessity of getting the bait out over obstacles which lay between the fisherman and the water, and that it was a device for increasing both the reach of the arm and the length of the line. It seems not improbable that the rod very early formed a part of the fisherman’s equipment.
Literary History.— From prehistoric times down to comparatively late in the days of chronicles, angling appears to have remained a practice; its development into an art or sport is a modern idea. In the earliest literature references to angling are not very numerous, but there are passages in the Old Testament which show that fish-taking with hook as well as net was one of the common industries in the East, and that fish, where it was obtainable, formed an important article of diet. In Numbers (xi. 5) the children of Israel mourn for the fish which they “did eat in Egypt freely.” So much too is proved by the monuments of Egypt; indeed more, for the figures found in some of the Egyptian fishing pictures using short rods and stout lines are sometimes attired after the manner of those who were great in the land. This indicates that angling had already, in a highly civilized country, taken its place among the methods of diversion at the disposal of the wealthy, though from the uncompromising nature of the tackle depicted and the apparent simplicity of the fish it would scarcely be safe to assume that in Egypt angling arrived at the dignity of becoming an “art.” In Europe it took very much longer for the taking of fish to be regarded even as an
- ↑ As to whether “angling” necessarily implies a rod as well as a line and hook, see the discussion in the law case of Barnard v. Roberts (Times L.R., April 13, 1907), when the question arose as to the use of night-lines being angling; but the decision against night-lines went on the ground of the absence of the personal element rather than on the absence of a rod. The various dictionaries are blind guides on this point, and the authorities cited are inconclusive; but, broadly speaking, angling now implies three necessary factors—a personal angler, the sporting element, and the use of recognized fishing-tackle.
