The Lantern

Sophist8

SE

Theaetetus: Yes.

Stranger: And animal hunting may be truly said to have two divisions, land-animal hunting, which has many kinds and names, and water-animal hunting, or the hunting after animals who swim?

Theaetetus: True.

Stranger: And of swimming animals, one class lives on the wing and the other in the water?

Theaetetus: Certainly.

Stranger: Fowling is the general term under which the hunting of all birds is included.

Theaetetus: True.

Stranger: The hunting of animals who live in the water has the general name of fishing.

Theaetetus: Yes.

Stranger: And this sort of hunting may be further divided also into two principal kinds?

Theaetetus: What are they?

Stranger: There is one kind which takes them in nets, another which takes them by a blow.

Theaetetus: What do you mean, and how do you distinguish them?

Stranger: As to the first kind⁠—all that surrounds and encloses anything to prevent egress, may be rightly called an enclosure.

Theaetetus: Very true.

Stranger: For which reason twig baskets, casting-nets, nooses, creels, and the like may all be termed “enclosures”?

Theaetetus: True.

Stranger: And therefore this first kind of capture may be called by us capture with enclosures, or something of that sort?

Theaetetus: Yes.

Stranger: The other kind, which is practised by a blow with hooks and three-pronged spears, when summed up under one name, may be called striking, unless you, Theaetetus, can find some better name?

Theaetetus: Never mind the name⁠—what you suggest will do very well.

Stranger: There is one mode of striking, which is done at night, and by the light of a fire, and is by the hunters themselves called firing, or spearing by firelight.

Theaetetus: True.

Stranger: And the fishing by day is called by the general name of barbing, because the spears, too, are barbed at the point.

Theaetetus: Yes, that is the term.