CYPRINID^E. 167 



must invoke the contempt and indignation of every gentle sportsman, 

 every reasonable thinking man, upon the heads of that ignorant, 

 motloy, and destructive assemblage, which is entitled the Senate and 

 Assembly of New York. For the last fifteen years not a session has 

 passed without the strenuous and sustained attempts of the most edu- 

 cated and most influential gentlemen of the State, both of the city 

 and the agricultural counties, to induce the faineant demagogues of 

 that assembly to take some measure to prevent the total extinction, 

 within that very county of Orange, of some of the noblest species of 

 game in existence, indigenous to that region, and once abundant, but 

 already scarce, and within twenty years certain to be lost altogether, 

 through the mal-practices of their destroyers, the errors of the ex- 

 isting game-laws, and the difficulty of enforcing them in their present 

 state. 



It is quite unnecessary to state that these efforts were wholly inef- 

 fectual that it was found impossible to induce those learned Thebans 

 to do anything to prevent American Woodcock from being. shot before 

 they are fledged, and American Brook Trout from being caught upon 

 their spawning beds ; but that no sooner is a coarse, watery, foreign 

 fish accidentally thrown into American waters, than it is vigorously 

 and effectively protected, which protection was merely granted, I be- 

 lieve, to enable " a facetious member of the legislature," as he is styled 

 by the learned Doctor Bethune in his fine edition of Walton's Angler, 

 to draw a witty comparison between the naturalization of " scaly 

 foreigners" and Irish voters. I dare say the facetious member was not 

 devoid of hopes that the scaly foreigners would some day or other vote 

 for him. 



It is impossible to feel anything but contempt for such unutterable 

 blockheadism, while it is equally impossible to expect anything better, 

 after their recent exhibitions in the legislatorial line, from such a body 

 as the New York Houses of Assembly. 



Since, however, their wisdom has pronounced that henceforth the 

 Carp is to be a game fish of America, I shall proceed to describe 

 this " scaly foreigner," thus naturalized with a five years' exemption 

 from liability to capture, in the waters of Hudson's river. 



The European Carp is one of the fish which has been the longest 

 known and esteemed, being mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny. 



