whether it be the same as that of which Dorion speaks, cannot be determined. It is certain that the Nile contains carp still; for Norden saw them caught at the waterfall near Essuane, which is the ancient Syene. Did we know that the modern Greeks at present call carp cyprini, this would prove more; for it is an undoubted fact that the ancient names have for the most part been retained in Greece. We are assured by Massarius', that the Greeks still use the name cyprinus; but Gyllius says that it is employed only by a few and this is confirmed by Bellon, who mentions all the names of carp which he heard in Greece, and which are entirely different from the ancient; but he adds, that carp in Ætolia are still called cyprini. Both the before-mentioned circumstances respecting the cyprini agree extremely well with our carp; but as they will suit other kinds equally well, they afford no complete proof, but only a probability which amounts to this, that among the large-scaled fish, carp in particular have a fleshy palate; and it is readily admitted that the ancients were acquainted with all kinds, and chose names for them with more foundation than is done at present.

In opposition to this probability it may be said that Oppian and Pliny reckon the cyprini among the sea-fish, to which kind our carp do not belong. This reply however, which some have indeed made, is not of great weight. In the first place, both these writers seem to have been in an error; for what Pliny says of the cyprini is evidently taken from Aristotle, and the latter does not tell us that these fish live in the sea, but rather the contrary. The Roman author, as Dalechamp remarks, added the words in mari, if they were not added by some transcriber. Oppian as a poet does not always adhere strictly to truth; and he makes more of the freshwater fish of Aristotle to be inhabitants of the sea. In the second place, I consider the distinction made between sea-fish, freshwater fish and those kept in ponds, to be not always very certain or well founded. Who knows whether the greater part of the last may not have been originally sea-fish? This is the more

1 Fr. Massarii in ix. Plinii. libr. Castigat. Bas. 1537, 4to.

2 A great service would be rendered to the natural history of the ancients, if some able systematic naturalist would collect all the Greek games used at present. Tournefort and others made a beginning.

probable in regard to carp, as Professor Foster says that carp are sometimes caught in the harbour at Dantzic1.

In order to answer the question here proposed, another point may be considered. As all nations at present give these fish the same name, it is probable that it was brought with them from that country where they were first found, and from which they were procured. Cassiodorus, who lived in the sixth century, is the oldest author as yet known in whom that name has been observed2. In a passage where he speaks of the most delicate and costly fish, which at that time were sent to the tables of princes, he says, "Among these is the carpa, which is produced in the Danube." In the earliest Latin translation of Aristotle, the word cyprinus, as Camus says, is expressed by carpra. In the thirteenth century this fish was called by Vincentius de Beauvais carpera, and by Cæsarius carpo; and it is highly probable that both these names allude to our carp. By the above passage of Cassiodorus, the opinion that these fish were the cyprini of the ancients obtains a new, but at the same time a very feeble proof; for the cyprinus was found also in the Danube, as we learn from Ælian1, who among the fish of the Ister, mentions black cyprini; and these, according to the conjecture of Professor Schneider, were the black fish of the Danube which Pliny considers as unhealthful or poisonous, and like which there were some in Armenia. Our carp indeed are not poisonous, but Pliny alludes to a particular variety, and what he says was only report, to which something must have given rise, as also to the idea of carp with a death's head, and the head of a pugdog, as some have been represented by writers of the sixteenth century. The carpo of Cæsarius appears to have been our carp, because its scales had a very great resemblance to those of the latter; for we are told in the work already quoted, that the devil, once indulging in a frolic, appeared in a coat of mail, and had scales like the fish carpo. The carpera of Vincent de Beauvais is still less doubtful, as the same craft in avoiding rakes and nets is ascribed to that fish as is known to be employed by our carp. Sometimes they thrust their heads into the mud and suffer the net to pass over them; 1 Philosophical Transact. vol. Ixi. 1771, part i. 310. 2 Variorum, p. 380. Speculum Naturale. 4 De Nat. Anim. xiv.—Plin. xxxi. sect. 19.-Antig. Car. c. 181.

and sometimes they join the head and tail together, and separating them suddenly, throw themselves towards the surface of the water, and springing often four or five feet above the net, make their escape.

But whence did this name arise? The origin assigned by Vincentius, or the anonymous author of the lost books De Natura Rerum, like another mentioned in ridicule by Gesner, is too silly to be repeated. More learned at any rate is the derivation of Menage, who traces it from cyprinus, which was afterwards transformed into cuprinus, cuprius, cuprus, cupra, curpa, and lastly into carpa. For my part, I am more inclined to derive it from a dialect which was spoken on the banks of the Danube, and to believe that it was brought with the fish from the southern part of Europe; but I am too little acquainted with that dialect to be able to render my conjecture very probable; and the etymologists I consulted, such as Wachter, Ihre, Johnson, &c., afforded me no assistance. Fulda gave me some hopes, as he allows the word to be of German extraction; but I must confess that his derivation is too far-fetched, and like the chemistry of the adepts, to me not perfectly intelligible.

It may perhaps not be superfluous here to observe that one must not confound carpa and carpo, or our carp, with carpio. The latter belongs to the genus of the salmon and trout; and in the Linnæan system is called Salmo carpio. It is found chiefly in the Lago di Garda, the ancient Lacus Benacus, on the confines of Tyrol. The oldest account of this fish is to be found in works of the sixteenth century, such as the poems of Pierius Valerianus, and in Jovius de Piscibus. According to Linnæus, it is found in the rivers of England; but that is false. This celebrated naturalist suffered himself to be misled by Artedi, who gives the char or chare, mentioned by Camden in his description of Lancashire, as the Salmo carpio. Pennant however, by whom it is not mentioned among the English fish, says expressly that the char is not the carpio of the Lago di Garda, but rather a variety of the Salmo alpi

nus1.

That our carp were first found in the southern parts of Europe, and conveyed thence to other countries, is undoubtedly

1 British Zoology, vol. iii. p. 259.

certain. Even at present they do not thrive in the northern regions, and the further north they are carried the smaller they become1. Some accounts of their transportation are still to be found. If it be true that the Latin poem on the expedition of Attila is as old as the fifth or sixth century, and if the fish which Walther gave to the boatman who ferried him over the Rhine, and which the latter carried to the kitchen of Gunther king of the Franks, were carp, this circumstance is a proof that these fish had not been before known in that part of France which bordered on the Rhine. The examination of this conjecture I shall however leave to others. D'Aussy quotes a book never printed, of the thirteenth century, entitled Proverbes, and in which is given an account of the best articles produced at that time by the different parts of the kingdom, and assures us that a great many kinds of fish were mentioned in it, but no carp, though at present they are common all over France.

It appears also that there were no carp in England in the eleventh century, at least they do not occur in the AngloSaxon Dictionary of Elfric, who in 1051 died archbishop of York3. We are assured likewise that they were first brought into the kingdom in the fifth year of the reign of Henry VIII., or in 1514, by Leonard Mascal of Plumsted in Sussex. What we read in the Linnæan System, that these fish were first brought to England about the year 1600, is certainly erroneous. Where that celebrated naturalist, under whom I had the pleasure of studying, acquired this information, I do not know.

Denmark is indebted for these fish to that celebrated statesman Peter Oxe, who introduced them into the kingdom as

1 Pontoppidan, Natürliche Historie von Norwegen, ii. p. 236. 2 De Prima Expedit. Attila, ed. Fischer. Lips. 1780, 4to.

3 Printed at the end of Somneri Dict. Saxonicum.

1 See Anderson's Hist. of Commerce, and Pennant's Zoology, p. 300. Both these authors refer to Fuller's British Worthies. [The carp existed in England before the year 1486: for in Dame Juliana Berners' work on Angling, which was published at St. Albans (hence called the Book of St. Albans) in 1486, we find the following passage: speaking of the carp. she says "That it is a deyntous fysshe, but there ben but few in Englonde. And therefore I wryte the lesse of hym. He is an euyll fysshe to take. For he is so stronge enarmyd in the mouthe, that there maye noo weke harnays hold him."]

well as cray-fish, and other objects for the table. He died in the year 1575.

We are told that these fish were brought from Italy to Prussia, where they are at present very abundant, by a nobleman whose name is not mentioned. This service however may be ascribed with more probability to the upper burggrave, Caspar von Nostiz, who died in 1588, and who in the middle of the sixteenth century first sent carp to Prussia from his estate in Silesia, and caused them to be put into the large pond at Arensberg not far from Creuzburg. As a memorial of this circumstance, the figure of a carp, cut in stone, was shown formerly over a door at the castle of Arensberg. This colony must have been very numerous in the year 1535, for at that period carp were sent from Königsberg to Wilda, where the archduke Albert then resided. At present (1798) a great many carp are transported from Dantzic and Königsberg to Russia, Sweden, and Denmark. It appears to me probable that these fish after that period became everywhere known and esteemed, as eating fish in Lent and on fast-days was among Christians considered to be a religious duty, and that on this account they endeavoured to have ponds stocked with them in every country, because no species can be so easily bred in these reservoirs.

I shall observe in the last place, that the Spiegel-carpen, mirror-carp, distinguished by yellow scales, which are much larger, though fewer in number, and which do not cover the whole body, are not mentioned but by modern writers. Bloch says that they were first described by Johnston under the name of royal carp. The passage where he does so I cannot find; but in plate xxix. there is a bad engraving, with the title Spiegel-karpen, which however have scales all over their bodies, and cannot be the kind alluded to. On the other hand, the Spiegel-karpen are mentioned by Gesner, who, as it appears, never saw them. In my opinion, Balbinus, who wrote in the middle of the sixteenth century, was the first person who gave a true and complete description of them; and according to his account, they seem to have come originally from Bohemia. The first correct figure of them is to be found in Marsigli.