470 CARP CYPRINE. Class IV. 



They are also extremely tenacious of life, and 

 will live for a most remarkable time out of 

 water. An experiment has been made by 

 placing a carp in a net, well wrapped up in 

 wet moss, the mouth only remaining out, and 

 then hung up in a cellar, or some cool place, 

 where it is frequently fed with white bread and 

 milk, and is besides often plunged into water. 

 Carp thus managed have been known, not only 

 to have lived above a fortnight, but to grow 

 exceedingly fat, and far superior in taste to 

 those that are immediately killed from the 

 pond.* 

 Fcecun- The carp is a prodigious breeder : its quan- 

 tity of roe has been sometimes found so great, 

 that when taken out and weighed against the 

 fish itself, the former has been found to pre- 

 ponderate. From the spawn of this fish Caviare 

 is made for the Jews, who hold the sturgeon in 

 abhorrence. We have forborn, in this work, to 

 enter into minute calculations of the numbers 

 each fish may produce. It has already been 

 most skilfully performed by Mr. Harmer, and 

 printed in the Philosophical Transactions of the 



* This was told me by a gentleman of the utmost veracity, 

 who had twice made the experiment. The same fact is related 

 by that pious Philosopher Doctor Derham, in his Physico-Theo- 

 logy, edit. gth. 1737. ch. 1. p. 7. n. e. 



DITY. 



