FISH AND FISHING IN AMERICA. 



BY WM. C. HARRIS. 



(Continued from page 159, Vol. 25). 



I have given, doubtless in the judg- 

 ment of many anglers, unnecessary 

 space to the consideration of the sucker 

 family, but palliation lies in the fact 

 that all these fishes, with probably one 

 or two exceptions, will take a baited 

 hook ; and even a persistent hand-liner, 

 or snood-snatching sucker fisherman, 

 may be developed into a half-fledged 

 angler, or perhaps a stream observer. 

 There is, as we all know, something in 

 the environment of an outing, even for 

 suckers, that leads to self-study and a 

 broader appreciation of nature in all 

 her moods; a closer study of her chil- 

 dren, and a repose of mind which often 

 is a prelude to activity of thought and 

 investigation of the curious and inter- 

 esting objects, animate and inanimate, 

 which she so profusely and generously 

 places under our eyes. With such sur- 

 roundings even a sucker fisher may 

 possibly become a student of nature, 

 and from him we may yet learn many 

 curious life-phases of these generally 

 contemned fish. 



Worthless as American anglers now 

 find the carp {Cypriims carpio) to be 

 on the rod and on the table, it has un- 

 doubted claims that make it worthy 

 to be classed in company with the gray- 

 ling as an historic, in fact, prehistoric 

 fish. Fossil rema ns have been found 

 in the marl slates and carbonaceous 

 shales of Europe, Asia and America, 

 and it has been talked and wri..... 

 about through all the ages of the 

 Christian era, and Aristotle described 

 and gave it prominence 350 B. C. Its 

 nativity is veiled in the misty records 

 of the East, where tradition merges so 



complacently into history, for we are 

 told that the father of Confucius ex- 

 tolled its qualities 2,500 years ago. 

 Oppian described it in the Second Cen- 

 tury under its Greek name, Kuprinos, 

 significance unknown, but from which 

 the present generic name of the carp 

 [Cyprinns) is derived. It was known 

 on the Danube as early as the Sixth 

 Century; was cultivated in France and 

 Austria in the Thirteenth, and was cer- 

 tainly in England during the Fifteenth, 

 for Dame Juliana Benners wrote, in 

 1496, that it was " a daynteus fish, but 

 there ben few in Englonde. " The old 

 monks of that country fattened and 

 protected it in their monastery waters, 

 and doubtless fished for it, as only such 

 unctuous anglers could, to the refrain 

 of the rollicking old song, accentuated 

 now and then by the grassing of a fat 

 specimen : 



The sun was setting and vespers done, the 



monks came one by one, 

 And down through the garden trim, in cassock 



and cowl to the river's brim ; 

 Every brother his rod he took, every rod had 



a line and hook, 

 Every hook had a bait •so fine, and thus they 



sang in the even-shine: 

 "To-morrow will be Friday, so we'll fish the 



stream to-day, 

 To-morrow will be Friday, so we'll fish the 



stream to-day, benedictte." 



The carp is not only a fish with an 

 ancient history, but rivals the pike in 

 its records of individual longevity and 

 weight, and far surpasses the tribe of 

 Lucius in its tenacity of life under the 

 most trying conditions. Buffon wrote, 

 in 1750, that he saw carp in the fosse at 

 Ponchartrain, France, that had been 



