THE CARP. 177 



Certain it is that carps rarely take a bait till the warm weather 

 has set in ; though Walton observes, some have been so curious as 

 to say the 10th of April is a fatal day for carps ; but this I am 

 inclined to think is far too early in the season, unless the spring 

 be an unusually mild one, though if there is any truth in the asser- 

 tion we so often hear made by old people that the seasons are 

 much later than they used to be, the elapse of a couple of centuries 

 which has taken place since honest Izaak's time, may have 

 effected this difference. We find the poets of not more than a 

 century since speaking of the rose, " as the glory of April and 

 May," though now, " the rose in June,*' fills up the burden of 

 their song. Still poets are not always the best authorities, being 

 notorious for the licenses they take ; too frequently sacrificing 

 truth for the sake of language, and reason for the sake of 

 rhyme. 



This by the way brings to my recollection two lines extracted 

 from Baker's Chronicle, which worthy Izaak offers in evidence to 

 show that no carps were in existence in this country above a hun- 

 dred or a few more years before his time, having been first intro- 

 duced by one Mr. Mascall, a gentleman who then lived at Plum- 

 sted, in Sussex : a county that abounds more with this fish than 

 any other in the nation. The lines are as follows, 



" Hops and turkies, carps and beer, 

 Came into England all in a year.'* 



Mr Yarrell, however, to whose deep researches into this, as well 

 as every other branch of Natural History every lover of science 

 must stand indebted, shows beyond all doubt that carps were in 

 existence in this country nearly a hundred years before Mascall 

 could have been born, as appears by the " boke of St. Albans," by 

 Dame Juliana Berners, or Barnes, Prioress of the nunnery of 

 Sopewell near St. Albans, entitled " The Treatyse of Fysshinge 

 with an angle,''* enprinted at Westminster by Wynkyn de Worde 



*An extract of this work to show the style in which it was written may 

 not be uripleasing to ray readers. Treating of the pleasures an angler en- 

 joys in pursuing his recreation she proceeds ' Atte the leest his holsom 

 walke, and mery at his ease, a swete ayre of the swetesavoure of the meede 



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