THE CARPS 31 



Group I, which contains the Scanie fish as appear in Group I of 

 the table, is characterised by their liabit of extracting nutrient 

 material from mud. Yarrell gives as the food of the carp the larvae 

 of insects, worms, and the softer parts of aquatic plants. Shrimps 

 are also eaten. Bream swim in slioals feeding on worms and other 

 soft-bodied animals with some vegetable substances (Yarrell). 

 Walton gives as baits for a bream " paste of brown bread and honey, 

 gentles or the brood of wasps that be young." There is at the root 

 of docks or flags or rushes in watery places " a worm like a maggot 

 at Avhich tench will bite freely." But for the carp or bream he 

 recommends " as big a red worm as you can find without a knot " ; 

 but this must be carefully cleaned with moss that must be changed 

 fresh every three or four days. But the dominant characteristic 

 of this group is the power of siftmg mud and extracting nutriment 

 from the organic matter it contains. 



Group II. — This includes besides the fish, the brains of which 

 are figured in Group II of the plate, the minnow. All will take a 

 fly, and the rudd and the dace give good sport to the dry fly fisher- 

 man. The dace feeds on weeds, insects larvae, and flies. The food 

 of roach and rudd is very similar. But the chub is a predacious 

 fish ; he leaps at flies or feeds at the bottom on weeds, slirimps, 

 worms, or young frogs, and also preys on mimiows and gudgeon. 



According to Walton the chub will take a grasshopper. He 

 recommends as baits, " a black with its belly slit to show its white 

 or a piece of short cheese. Nay, sometimes a worm, or any kind of 

 fly as the ant fly, the flesh fly, or wall fly, or the dor or beetle you 

 may find under cow dung ; or a lob which you will find in the same 

 place and in time will be a beetle ; it is a short white worm like to 

 but bigger than a gentle." 



Group III. — The feeding habits of the gudgeon and barbel are 

 well described by Isaac Walton. The gudgeon frequents gravelly 

 bottoms, " the Germans call him the groundling by reason of his 

 feeding on the ground and on the gravel : and he there feasts him- 

 self in sharp streams. He and the barbel both feed so and do not 

 leap for flies at any time as most fishes do. He is easily taken with 

 a smaU red worm. The food of a barbel is partly of an animal and 

 partly of a vegetable nature. He does not disdain any sort of 

 vegetable matter, which he finds by rooting about on the bottom 

 or banks with his snout often turning over stones and using the 

 barbels as tasters in search of food." In general it may be said that 

 their diet is one of shrimps, small mulluscs, insect larvae, worms, 

 and the eggs or fry of other fish. 



