12 CARP. 



danger, as in submitting to become tame and familiar when 

 it is safe to be so. Thus sings the poem of the anglers: — 



Fish have their various characters assign'd, 

 Not more by form and colour than by mind. 

 The wary Trout but few temptations hit; 

 The Perch an idiot, and the Carp a wit. 



and another writer informs us, as quoted by Daniel in his 

 "Rural Sports,"— 



Of all the fish that swim the watery mead, 

 Not one in cunning can the Carp exceed; 



■which latter portion of its character is displayed in that, when 

 encircled by a net, if no crevice can be found through which 

 to pass, it will lower itself into some channel which it forms 

 in the bottom, that the net may pass over it; or if that 

 cannot be, then it throws itself over the head-rope, much in 

 the same manner as the Grey Mullet in like circumstances. 

 And again: — 



Learn what of late my wond'ring eyes beheld 

 Near the green margin of the war-famed Scheld; 

 Thick with enormous Carp, I saw them roll, 

 Called by a practised brother of the cowl. 

 His well-known whistle they obeyed, they sped, 

 In wallowing heaps and hope the promised bread. 

 Carp shouldering Carp, th' injected morsel snap: — 



And the intelligence thus ascribed to this fish is borne out by 

 the great development of the brain, in connection also with 

 peculiarities in the structure of the organs of perception. 

 According to Professor Owen, the average proportion of the 

 size of the brain to that of the body in fishes is one in three 

 thousand; but in the Carp, according to Elumenbach, it amounts 

 to one in five hundred; which is the same as is found in "half- 

 reasoning" elephant; this extraordinary development in the Carp 

 existing also in the portion of that centre of intelligence termed 

 the prosencephalon, or which most nearly answers to the 

 cerebrum or seat of understanding in the higher animals. And 

 although the bulk of the brain taken alone may not afford 

 a just criterion of the amount of understanding in any creature, 

 since it is known that in the proportion as the nerves of sense 

 are large compared with the brain, the particular feeling to 



