THE CARP. 247 



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 be- 

 lieve 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 bear- 

 ing 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 



