146 



THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART I. 





tory of Life and Death, observed to be but ten years; yet 

 others think they live longer. Gesner says, a Carp has 

 been known to live in the Palatine above a hundred years. 1 

 But most conclude, that, contrary to the Pike or Luce, all 

 Carps are the better for age and bigness. The tongues 

 of Carps are noted to be choice and costly meat, especi- 

 ally 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 Ofjish 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 fol- 

 low 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 her- 



(I) Lately, viz. in one of the daily papers for the month of August 1?82, an 

 article appeared, purporting, that in the bason at Emanuel College, Cambridge, 

 a Carp was then living that had been in the water thirty six years; which, 

 though, rt <iadlost one eye. knew, and would constantly approach, its feeder. 

 (2) Vide, ante, y. 131, &c. 



