260 PEOSE HALIEUTICS. 



iag to Oppiaiij spawns five, and according to Aristotle, 

 not less than six times a year.* 



The etymology of this ancient word is confessedly 

 obscure, and many conjectures have not thrown much 

 light upon it. Could the lanrpivo^, indeed, be made out 

 to have been, as some suppose, Venus's own fish, we need 

 go no further for a derivation thus made to our hands ; 

 but this being only conjectural, we will for once venture 

 on the perils of etymology, and suggest (though liable, 

 perhaps, to be carped at) whether Kvireipov (a marshy 

 weed), whence KvTTeipl^w (to smell of the feculence of a 

 marsh), may not be the real derivative for mm-plvo^, one 

 of those fish sung by the Greek poet,t whose latitat is 

 amongst reeds, and whose favourite food is in mud? 

 The common vernacular designations, of burbaro, bul- 

 baro, by which carp is at present known at Mantua and 

 in other Italian localities, serve, while they establish the 

 propensity, to give countenance to this conjecture. The 

 ' unde derivatur' of the modern word carp is not less 

 obscure than that of the anci^t cyprinus. Menage 

 (but he was a wag) shows us how we may transmute one 

 into the other, by taking ' French leave^ with the alpha- 

 bet, and changing letters ad libitum, as we may want 

 them, — an ingenious process, by which any word may, 

 by a person who understands the rules of simple addi- 

 tion and subtraction, be prestoed into any other : thus, 

 Kvirplvo's, says he, 'aliter cuprius, aUter cuprus, aliter 

 cupra, aliter carpa ;' and then, without further difficulty, 

 ' carpe, carpione, and carp.' Those who object to Me- 

 nage's etymology have invented another equally strange, 

 viz. from ' carpere, quod semen maris ore carpens 



* HevTc Se KVTrplvoKTi y6vai jiovvoiinv eotri. So also Gianetazzio 

 in his third Halieutic, — 



Stagna lacusque 

 Quino implent partu et numerosa prole oyprini. 

 f '\x6vs TTOTafilovs itrBiovTas popPopov. 



