144 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [part I. 



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.* ^ 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, especially to them that buy them : but Gesner says, Carps 

 have no tongue like other fish, but a piece of fleshlike 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 "Of Fish and 

 Fish-ponds," f 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 follow 

 a female ; and that then, she putting on a seeming coyness, they 

 force her through weeds and flags, where she lets fall her eggs ol 

 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 



VARIATIONS. 



1 This passage from Gesner does not occur in the Jirst edition : and the following 

 sentence is added in the second, "and it is believed of carps as it is written of crocodiles, 

 that they also thrive in bigness all their lives." 



2 In the_/?rj/ edition is added, "a German as I think." 



* Lately, viz., in one of the daily papers for the month of August 1782, 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 it had lost one 

 eye, knew, and would constantly approach, its feeder, who was Dr Farmer, Master of 

 the College. 



At the seat of the Prince of Cond^ at Chantilly, are, or rather were, immense shoals of 

 very large Carp, " silvered o'er with age," like silver fish, and perfectly tame, so that 

 when any passengers approached their watery habitation, they used to come to the shore 

 in such numbers as to heave each other out of the water, begging for bread, of which a 

 quantity was always kept at_ hand on purpose to feed them. They would even allow 

 themselves to be handled. Sir J. E. Smith's Tour on the Continent, vol. i. 95, ed. rSo?. 

 In the preface to the second edition, it is said the tame Carp at Chantilly were destroyed 

 very early in the Revolution, p. xxx. t Vide antea, p. 133, &c. 



X An anonyanous writer giving instructions to Lord Burleigh for the regulations of 

 his fish-ponds, &c., says : ' Because the carpe will eate his owne spawne, youe must 

 before Marche lay iij or iiij faggotts of osiers or willowe bowes in the ponde wher your 

 spawners be (which would not be above ij or iij in a ponde and iij or v melters withall) 

 and so bynd the said faggotts small in the middle, and laye the toppes verve brode and 

 bushy at eche end, and the spawner will sleke her bellie and spawne thereon, and the 



