If the pond be supplied with a white fat water upon great rains, you may put into it at first three hundred carps per acre, in case there be three or four acres, else not so many. And it will be expedient to put in forty or fifty tenches for a trial, because this sort of water is most proper for carp; but being laid dry, sometimes may prove well for tenches also, which, when thriven, are a very good fish; but this proof by trial must determine. You may add perches to any number, and not hurt the water: I propose six hundred; for though they are great breeders, being also fishes of prey, they devour their own species as much, if not more than any other; and by destroying the fry of bred fish, they preserve the food for the maintenance of their feeders, which the fry would intercept; so do good rather than harm. I took once out of a perch’s belly of ten inches, ten other perches. This is esteemed one of the best sorts of fresh-water fish, and therefore deservedly to be encouraged. Have a great care of putting bream in this sort of waters; for they will grow up very slowly, though at last they will be great; but in the mean time they breed so infinitely, and such a slimy nasty fry, as both robs and fouls the water, making it unfit for the other fish. But when a water is ten or twelve acres, and fed with some brook, winter and summer, they will do very well; otherwise not to be made use of. As for pike, which are inferior to no fresh-water fish, and now more esteemed than ever, being less plentiful upon draining the fens, and so harm more; they are dangerous guests in the great waters; for if grown large, they will devour and destroy the best fish, and depopulate the water. But thus far you may trust them; if you can procure one hundred jacks once in two years not exceeding nine inches, you may put them with the carps into your great waters, so as your carps are not under nine or ten inches; but take care that they stay not above two years, and then send them to their peculiar ponds, and feed them as I shall hereafter discourse, and so they will grow to be very large and fine fish, which you would not want. I cannot advise the stocking great standing waters with eels, for they grow slow, and being of an indifferent size, will be lean and dry; but in moats, which have the sinks of an house drain into it, is proper enough for them, and they will thrive in it. It is a sort of fish, as I noted, that belongs to a springy water.