144 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



be no Pikes nor Perch to devour their spawn, when it is cast 

 upon grass, or flags, or weeds, where it lies ten or twelve days 

 before it be enlivened. 



The Carp, if he have water room and good feed, will grow to 

 a very great bigness and length ; I have heard, to be much above 

 a yard long.* It is said by Jovius,f who hath writ of fishes, 

 that in the lake Lurian, in Italy, Carps have thriven to be more 

 than fifty pounds weight : which is the more probable, for as 

 the bear is conceived and born suddenly, and being born is but 

 short-lived ; so, on the contrary, the elephant is said to be two 

 years in his dam's belly, some think he is ten years in it, and 

 being born, grows in bigness twenty years ; and it is observed, 

 too, that he lives to the age of a hundred years. And it is also 

 observed, that the Crocodile is very long-lived ; and more than 

 that, that all that long life he thrives in bigness ; and so I think 

 some Carps do, especially in some places, though I never saw 

 one above twenty-three inches, which was a great and a goodly 

 fish ; but have been assured there are of a far greater size, and 

 in England too.J 



Now, as the increase of Carps is wonderful for their number, 

 so there is not a reason found out, I think, by any, why they 

 should breed in some ponds, and not in others, of the same 

 nature for soil and all other circumstances. And as their 

 breeding, so are their decays also very mysterious : I have both 

 read it, and been told by a gentleman of tried honesty, that he 

 has known sixty or more large Carps put into several ponds 

 near to a house, where, by reason of the stakes in the ponds, 

 and the owner's constant being near to them, it was impossible 

 they should be stolen away from him ; and that when he has, 

 after three or four years, emptied the pond, and expected an 

 increase from them by breeding young ones, (for that they 

 might do so he had, as the rule is, put in three melters for one 

 spawner,) he has, I say, after three or four years, found neither 

 a young nor old Carp remaining. And the like I have known 

 of one that had almost watched the pond, and at a like distance 

 of time, at the fishing of a pond, found, of seventy or eighty 

 large Carps, not above five or six : and that he had forborne 

 longer to fish the said pond, but that he saw, in a hot day in 

 summer, a large Carp swim near the top of the water with a 



* The widow of the late Mr David Garrirk, of Drury Lane theatre, once 

 told me, that in her native country, Germany, she had seen the head of a 

 Carp served up at lable, liig- enntK'h to fill a ianre dish. 



f Paujus Jovius, an Italian historian of very doubtful authority. Relived 

 in the sixteenth century, and wrote a small tract, De Romania Piscibui. 

 He died at Florence, 1552. 



J The author of the Angler's Sure Guide says, that he has taken Carp 

 above twenty-six inches lon-r, in rivers; and adds, that they are often seen 

 in England above thirty inches long. 



