GILL] THE FAMILY OF CYPRINIDS 205 
fish-stall alive. ‘‘ Packed in damp moss or ice and with a bit of 
bread dipped in spirits in the mouth, the carp can live at least 
twenty-four hours.” It can also endure deprivation of water for 
quite a long time. Smitt tells of a mirror carp sent to the Royal 
Museum of Stockholm in a bucket. and kept alive for several days. 
“One morning it was found to have leapt out of the tub, and lay 
on its side apparently dead. It was restored to the water, but 
floated belly upwards and did not move a limb. It was then given 
a dessert-spoonful of spirits, and began after some minutes faintly 
to move its pectoral fins. After a quarter of an hour the dose was 
repeated, and within an hour the fish moved about with ease, as if 
nothing had happened.” A judicious admixture of spirits and 
water, it seems, is not to be restricted to man! 
Omnivority has truly been attributed to the carp; it will feed not 
only on fish, flesh and fowl, but on vegetables as well as all kinds 
of small organisms. “ After its first awakening from the long win- 
ter sleep, it seeks most diligently after the contents of the seeds of 
the Nuphar luteum and Nymphea alba, the yellow and white water- 
lily, the Phellandrieum aquaticum, Festuca fluitans, etc.’ 
The faculty of rumination has been claimed for the carp. W. 
‘Houghton (1867) quotes a communication by Richard Owen affirm- 
ing that a carp, “after having fed voraciously on ground bait,” 
when “laid open, shows well and long the peristaltic movements 
of the alimentary canal; and the successive regurgitations of the 
gastric contents produce actions of the pharyngeal jaws as the half- 
bruised grains come in contact with them, and excite the singular 
tumefaction and subsidence of the irritable palate, as portions of 
the regurgitated food are pressed upon it. The shortness and 
width of the cesophagus, the masticatory mechanism at its com- 
mencement, and its direct terminal continuation with the cardiac 
portion of the stomach relate to the combination of an act analogous 
to rumination, with the ordinary processes of digestion, in all fishes 
possessing these concatenated and peculiar structures.” 
It need only to be added that the “analogy” in this case is, at 
best, remote. 
The awakening from their winter sleep is followed not long after 
(about May) by the season for spawning. The female has become 
*The Nuphar and Nymphaea are now called by many botanists Nymphea 
and Castalia; the plant called by Hessel Phellandricum aquaticum is better 
known as CGinanthe phellandrium or fine-leaved CEnanth; it is not a native 
American plant; the Festuca fluitans is popularly known as the floating fescue 
or water grass. 
