The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous ... - Cd3wd.com

458 MANUFACTURE AND USE OF
viii. 12. § I ; and by Pliny, H. N. xvi. 8. s. 13, wlieie, in reci-
ting the various uses of cork, he says it was employed " piscantium
traguhs." Sidonius ApoUinaris, describing his own
villa, says :
—
Hinc jam spectabis, ut promoveat alnum piscator in pelagus, ut Btataria retia
suberinis corticibus exlendat.
—
Epist. ii. 2.
" Hence you will see how the fisherman moves forward his boat into the deep
water, that he may extend his stationary nets by means of corks."
Alciphron, in his account of a fishing excursion near the
Promontory of Phalerum, says, " The draught of fishes was
so great as almost to submerge the corks*," The earnest de-
sire of a posterity, founded on the wish for posthumous remem-
brance, which was a very strong and prevailing sentiment
among the ancients, is illustrated by the language of Electra
in the Choephoroe of ^schylus, where she entreats her father
upon this consideration to attend to her prayer, and likens his
memory to a net, which his children, like corks, would save
from disappearing :— " Do not extinguish the race of the Pe-
lopidcB. For thus you ivill live after you are dead. For a
tnan^s children are the j^reservers of his fame when dead^
and., like corks in dragging the net, they save the flaxen
string from the abyss." The use of the corks is mentioned
in several of the epigrams of the Greek Anthology, already re-
ferred to, and in the following passage of Plutarch :
"flffTTEp Tov; Ta i'lKTva Jiatrrj/miVoiros bv ttj OuXdo-ai; (^cXXovj opd^icv eni(pepoitevovs,—De
Genio Socratis, p. 1050, ed Staph.
Passages have been already produced from Plutarch, Artemidorus,
and the Alexandrine version of Isaiah and Habakkuk,
in which the sean is mentioned by its Greek name crayrv.?, in
contradistinction^ to other kinds of nets. Also the passage
above cited from Virgil's Georgics (" pelagoque alius traiiit humida
lina"), indicates the use of the sean in deep water, and
the practice of dragging it out of the water by means of ropes,
which gave origin both to its English name, the Drag-net,
and to its Latin appellations, tragula, used by Pliny {I. c),
* MiKfov Kdi TOis (pcWoii iScriae Karaaipai vfaXov rd Siktvov ifoy/cov/itvov.
—
—
Epist. 1. 1.