. 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