That our carp were first found in the southern parts of Europe, and conveyed thence to other countries, is undoubtedly certain. Even at present they do not thrive in the northern regions, and the further north they are carried the smaller they become[125]. 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[126]. 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 Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of Ælfric, who in 1051 died archbishop of York[127]. 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[128]. 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 well as cray-fish, and other objects for the table. He died in the year 1575.