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It would not seem that the ancients held the flesh of the 

 carp in any very high estimation ; none of their authors appear 

 to have celebrated its good qualities : it is in some of the 

 writers of the sixteenth century that we find it first ranked 

 among aliments. In the present day we need not say that it 

 is highly prized, but more especially so in France. 



With the eggs of the carp, as with those of the sturgeon, a 

 caviar is prepared which is highly esteemed. In the time of 

 Belon, this preparation was in great request among the 

 Jews of Constantinople, and of the environs of the Black Sea : 

 their religious laws forbad them to eat of the caviar of the 

 sturgeon. 



The art of cookery is not the only one for which the carps 

 find employment. The bile of these fishes is employed by 

 painters as a green colour, and was formerly used in me- 

 dicine. 



Monstrous individuals are frequently observed among carps. 

 In the Museum of Paris one is preserved, the mouth of which 

 has no other external orifice than the holes of the gills. Ano- 

 ther sort, of extraordinary conformation, which greatly strikes 

 the vulgar, is a particular cut of the muzzle, of which Ron- 

 delet, Gesner, and Aldrovandus have given figures, and de- 

 scriptions and specimens are to be seen in many cabinets. 

 Bloch tells us that he has opened carps which were her- 

 maphrodites, that is, which had eggs in one ovary and milt 

 in the other. 



In Gei'many, according to a great number of ichthyologists, 

 mules of the carp and characinus (one of the salmonides) are 

 frequently met with. Fishermen give them different names. 

 They are recognized by their scales, which are smaller, more 

 attached to the skin than those of the carps, and the head is 

 thicker, shorter, and without barbels. 



The Cyprinus auratus, Gold-Jish, or Golden carp, appears 

 to have been originally a native of a lake near the mountain 



