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 alpinus_[124].