CARP-GOSSIP. 153 
fighting, quite unabashed, jostles with chronology ; 
while grammar and gambling, if so inclined, may pair 
off together. Bricklaying, glass-painting, and wrest- 
ling, philology and surgery, tennis and theology, are 
all there, and all represented by very proper cuts in 
copper. Nor are the technical terms used by hunters 
and fishers forgotten, among which last we may find 
a chapter explaining—“ How every sort of fish are 
named after their age and growth,” where we learn 
that a carp is first “a seizling, then a sprole or 
sprale,” before it arrives at the full growth and dig- 
nity of carphood. 
The well-known Horatian motto, Carpe diem, 
might, without any great violence to the original, be 
rendered, Catch your carp to-day, if you can, for the 
eunning customer may not be inclined to give you a 
chance on the morrow. Its suspicious carefulness is 
almost proverbial among fishers, and it even contrives 
to elude the fatal sweep of the net, as described in 
the Prediwm Rusticwm by Vaniere, who has not 
inappropriately been termed the French Virgil, and 
is thus translated by Duncombe :— 
“ Of all the fish that swim the watery mead, 
Not one in cunning can the carp exceed. 
Sometimes, when nets enclose the stream, she flies 
To hollow rocks, and there in secret lies ; 
Sometimes the surface of the waters skims, 
And springing o’er the net undaunted swims ; 
Now motionless she lies beneath the flood, 
