LAKE OF ASTRONI.—BOARS.—FISH. 455

it as soon as dark. Whilst I have been quietly fishing inthe lake, twenty or thirty boars and sows followed by theiryoung, would often collect within fifty yards of me, withoutperceiving me.

The angler will find excellent sport of its kind in thiswater. I have caught above one hundred weight of carpand large roach in one day, many of the former weighingas much as twelve pounds each. One day while I wasangling there, some of the inspectors of the royal gardens,came w'ith nets to take a quantity of fish to be transferredto the waters of Caserta . Their method of conveyance wasby placing the fish in a very large butt full of water mountedon a cart. I assured these people, that they would notsucceed in getting one single carp alive to Caserta , adistance of twenty miles, and it turned out as I had pre-dicted. I offered to shew them how I could convey onehundred carp or tench, or roach to Caserta , or even further,but not in water, which by the speedy exhaustion of theair held in solution becomes unfit for the respiration of thefish, and they are asphyxiated. I provided several shallowbaskets in which I laid the fish with plenty of wet grassunder and over them. One basket served as a cover forthe other resting on the edges, and contained only onelayer of fish tolerably compressed by the grass. In thisway, five, six, or more baskets may be placed one over theother, the top one having a cover. Having packed upthree baskets of carp, tench and roach in this way, I placedthem in a gig and started for Caserta . The great point isto throw a bucket of cold water over the parcel as often aspossible. In the course of the twenty miles journey, Iwatered it four or five times. The inspector of the Chaseof Astroni, who w'as with me w'as quite merry at myexpense, in the conviction of every fish being dead on ourarrival,—but great was his surprise at finding them every