THE COMPLETE ANGLER 157 



assured me he had seen a necklace or collar of tadpoles, 

 hang like a "chain or necklace of beads about a pike's 

 neck, and to kill him ; whether it were for meat or 

 malice, must be to me a question. 



But I am fallen into this discourse by accident, of 

 which I might say more, but it has proved longer than 

 I intended, and possibly may not to you be considerable : 

 I shall therefore give you three or four more short observa- 

 tions of the carp, and then fall upon some directions 

 how you shall fish for him. 



The age of carps is by Sir Francis Bacon, in his History of 

 Life and Death, observed to be but ten years ; yet others 

 think they live longer. Gesner says, a carp has been 

 known to live in the Palatinate above a hundred years : * 

 but most conclude that, contrary to the pike or luce, 

 all carps are the better for age and bigness. The tongues 

 of carps are noted to be choice and costly meat, especially 

 to them that buy them : but Gesner says, carps have 

 no tongue like other fish, but a piece of flesh-like fish 

 in their mouth like to a tongue, and should be called 

 a palate : but it is certain it is choicely good : and 

 that the carp is to be reckoned amongst those leather- 

 mouthed fish, which I told you have their teeth in their 

 throat, and for that reason he is very seldom lost by 

 breaking his hold, if your hook be once stuck into his 

 chaps. 



I told you that Sir Francis Bacon thinks that the carp 

 lives but ten years : but Janus Dubravius has writ 

 a book Of Fish and Fish-ponds, in which he says, that 

 carps begin to spawn at the age of three years, and 

 continue to do so till thirty : he says also, that in the 

 time of their breeding, which is in summer, when the 



* Lately, viz., in one of the daily papers for the month of August, 

 1782, an article appeared, purporting that in the basin at Emanuel 

 College, Cambridge, a carp was then living that had been in that 

 water thirty-six years ; which, though it had lost one eye, knew, and 

 would constantly approach, its feeder. H. 



