io6 BRITISH FRESH'WATER FISHES 



years. The bottom is sown with rye grass, of which a heavy 

 crop is cut and the consolidated mud is then dug away. 

 Next, the ground is sown with mixed grasses, and as soon as 

 these have formed a continuous turf, the pond is refilled and 

 stocked with young carp, which feed upon the new pasture like 

 a drove of cattle. When the grass is done, hand-feeding is 

 resorted to. Even the art of castration, used from imme- 

 morial times to hasten the fattening of domestic animals, is 

 applied to carp, and it is said that those fish in which the 

 ovaries have been destroyed are far better on the table than 

 others. But when I read in a recent work of considerable 

 merit * that Sir Hans Sloane demonstrated the process of 

 castrating carp before George IV., I am reminded with what 

 reserve all fishermen's tales should be received. Sir Hans 

 Sloane died in 1753, at the age of ninety-two ; George IV, was 

 born in 1762 ! I will fall back, therefore, and quote Dame 

 Berners once more, who says most discreetly of this very 

 fish : " I haue but lytyll knowlege of it, and me were loth 

 to wryte more than I knowe and haue prouyd." 



Carp usually spawn in May or June, the males becoming 

 very demonstrative at that season. The female esconces 

 herself in a convenient weed-bed, and quietly deposits her 

 spawn, which is greenish in colour. Usually two or more 

 males remain in waiting upon her, giving expression to their 

 impatience by leaping from the water after the manner of a 

 salmon. Von Siebold describes the process of impregnation. 

 When the female has deposited her quota of eggs for the day, 

 and swims away to sun herself or to search for food, one of 

 the attendant males dashes on to the vacant bed and distributes 

 his milt around the ova. The eggs are very small and 

 numerous, being reckoned as amounting to three-quarters 

 of a million in a female weighing 10 lb. But this proportion 

 is far from fixed. Thus, whereas Frank Buckland found the 

 roe of a carp weighing 16J lb. to weigh 5 J lb. (nearly one-third 

 * The Practical Fisherman, by J. H. Keene. London, 1881. 



