30-YEAR-OLD CARP.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9119, 11 April 1908, Page 2

30-YEAR-OLD CARP.

The royal and ancient carp placed by George I. in the Long Water at Hampton Court are in lower water than they have been for a century or more. A body of unemployed have been turned on to clean out the mud, and for this purpose the water has been lowered to 3ft or so. A number of the men are working from shallow punts. Recently a keeper in his wanderings found a fine fish, not improbably one of the oldest animals in England. The carp lives for an unknown period—-a hundred years of age is youth to it —and the fish very possibly was one of those salved from the water 130 years ago, when the Long Water was last cleared. The fish was certainly of great age, as could be told from the greyness of the scales—a sure sign of age in the carp.