which is loaded at intervals with stones or pieces of lead, and this circle "strikes the broad river[1]:" 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)[2].
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[3]."
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.
]
- ↑ The Arabs now employ the casting-net on the shores of the Arabian Gulf. "Its form is round, and loaded at the lower part with small pieces of lead; and, when the fisherman approaches a shoal of fish, his art consists in throwing the net so that it may expand itself in a circular form before it reaches the surface of the water."—Wellsted's Travels in Arabia, vol. ii. p. 148.
- ↑ For a technical account of nets, including the casting-net as now made, the reader is referred to the Hon. and Rev. Charles Bathurst's Notes on Nets; or the Quincunx practically considered, London, 1837, 12mo. Duhamel wrote on the same subject in French.
- ↑ Jaculator corresponds to the Greek [Greek: amphiboleus
