148 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



brought hither by one Mr. Mascal, a gentleman that then lived 

 at Plumsted in Sussex, a county that abounds more with this fish 

 than any in this nation. 



Nay, not content with this, she oft will dive 

 Beneath the net, and not alone contrive 

 Means for her own escape, but pity take 

 On all her hapless brethren of the lake ; 

 For rising, with her back she lifts the snare, 

 And frees the captives with officious care. 

 No other fish to the same age attain 

 For the same carp, which from the wat'ry plain, 

 The Valois seated on the throne surveyed. 

 Now sees the sceptre by the Bourbons swayed. 

 Though age has whitened o'er the scaly backs 

 Of the old carps which swim the royal lakes ; 

 They neither barren nor inactive grow. 

 But still in sport the waves around them throw ; 

 Here safe, the depths no longer they explore, 

 But their huge bulks extending near the shore, 

 Take freely from our hands what we bestow, 

 And grace the royal streams at Fountainbleau." 



We have already shown that Walton has misquoted the couplet from 

 Baker, and that the statements in it are incorrect. The carp is spoken of 

 in the Berners' Treatyse thus: "The carpe is a deyntous fysshe ; but 

 there ben but fewe in England. And therfore I wryte the lasse of hym. 

 He is an euyll fysshe to take." The cunning of the carp as regards taking 

 the hook is, perhaps, exaggerated, from his indisposition except at parti- 

 cular seasons to the bait, as he is the least carnivorous of all fishes. The 

 fecundity of this fish is very great in favorable circumstances, 700,000 

 ova having been found in a single carp ; but the notion that it spawns 

 frequently in a year is erroneous, its season for that operation being the 

 months of May and June. Its tenacity of life is also very great ; in Holland 

 they sometimes suspend them in a damp cellar in nets full of moss, which 

 are* moistened with milk, and the fish not only live but grow fat. All 

 writers agree in attributing to them great longevity, even to a hundred 

 and fifty or two hundred years, though, as Vaniere says, they become white 

 with a^'e. They have been known to attain the weight of eighteen or 

 twenty pounds in England, and on the Continent grow much larger. The 

 carp is esteemed very highly as an article of food, and they are preserved 

 with great care, and fed in ponds for the table. 



The carp was brought to this country from France in 1831-2, by Henry 

 Robinson, Esq., of Newburgh, Orange Co., New York, and in his ponds do 

 pretty well. Some have been put by him into the Hudson River, where 



