150 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



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 sun hath warmed both the earth and 

 water, and so apted them also for generation, that then three 

 or four male carps will follow a female : and that then, she 

 putting on a seeming coyness, they force her through weeds 

 and flags, where she lets fall her eggs or spawn, which sticks 

 fast to the weeds ; and then they let fall their melt upon it, 

 and so it becomes in a short time to be a living fish : and, as 

 I told you, it is thought that the carp does this several 

 months in the year. And most believe that most fish breed 

 after this manner, except the eel. And it has been observed, 

 that when the spawner has weakened herself by doing that 

 natural office, that two or three melters have helped her from 

 off the weeds, by bearing her up on both sides, and guarding 

 her into the deep. And you may note, that though this 

 may seem a curiosity not worth observing, yet others have 

 judged it worth their time and cost to make glass hives, and 

 order them in such a manner as to see how bees have bred 

 and made their honeycombs, and how they have obeyed their 

 king, and governed their commonwealth. But it is thought 

 that all carps are not bred by generation; but that some 

 breed other ways, as some pikes do. 



The physicians make the galls and stones in the heads of 

 carps to be very medicinable. But it is not to be doubted 

 but that in Italy they make great profit of the spawn of carps 

 by selling it to the Jews, who make it into red caviare ; the 

 Jews not being by their law admitted to eat of caviare made 

 of the sturgeon, that being a fish that wants scales and, as 

 may appear in Lev. xi. 10, by them reputed to be un- 

 clean. 



Much more might be said out of him, and out of Aristotle, 



