SIZE AND WEIGHT OF THE CARP. 625 



even more favorable in a warm year, or if only a few fishes have been placed in a pond, as we 

 shall see farther on, in the chapter treating of poud-culture and the operations of the culturist. 1 



Carps may reach a very advanced age, as specimens are to be found iii Austria over one 

 hundred and forty years old. The increase in length only continues up to a certain age, but its 

 circumference will increase up to its thirty-fifth year. 



I have seen some common Carp in the southern parts of Europe in the lowlands of Hungary, 

 Servia, Croatia, Wallachia, as also in Moldavia and the Buckowina which weighed from thirty to 

 forty pounds and more, measuring nearly three and one-half feet in length by two and three-fourths 

 feet in circumference. 



Old men, whose credibility and truthfulness could not be doubted, assured me and gave the 

 most detailed accounts of the capture of this species of fish in former years, giants, which weighed 

 from fifty to sixty pounds, and which they had seen themselves. During the Crimean war in 1853, 

 a French engineer officer, stationed at Widdin, on the Danube, in Turkey, killed a Carp by a bullet - 

 shot, some distance below the city ; this fish weighed sixty-seven pounds. 1 had some of its scales 

 in my possession, of which each had a diameter of two and one half inches. Their structure indi- 

 cated to a certainty that the age of this fish could be no more than twenty-four years at the most. 

 It is a well-known fact that two large Carps, weighing from forty-two to fifty-five pounds, were 

 taken several years ago on one of the Grand Duke of Oldenburg's domains in Northern Germany. 

 They have been kept in some particularly favorable water, productive of plentiful food, and had 

 been used as breeding fishes. These two specimens might, from their size, be calculated to be 

 comparatively very aged fishes; it was proved that they were only fifteen years old. If we may 

 credit the chronicles kept centuries ago by old families, and especially by the monks, who had 

 taken possession of all the best localities along the banks of the beautiful blue Danube, then still 

 greater giants had been caught, and that in the waters of the Danube itself. A chronicle of the 

 monastery of Molk, in Austria, refers to a Carp weighing seventy-eight pounds, which had been 

 captured on Ascension Day in 1520. Another record speaks of a Carp which had been taken in 

 the third decenniuin of the present century in the lake of Zug, in Switzerland, and which weighed 

 ninety pounds. These giants are certainly only wonderful exceptions, and have become celebrated 

 through the scarcity of such occurrences, but still these facts are encouraging illustrations that it 

 is possible for such large specimens to grow up in favorable waters. All the countries where 

 these large fishes have been found, and which are .situated between the Black, the North, and the 

 Baltic Seas, are pretty nearly such as have a late spring and a long, cold winter. Near Widdiu 

 the Danube has been frozen lepeatedly. There the Carp passes from five to seven months in its 

 winter sleep, during which it does not grow. If this fish thrives so well in the countries which 

 have such a very cold winter (on an average they have the same winter temperature as Boston, 

 Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore and Saint Louis), where the 

 rivers have not enough food for these fishes by far, their level being regulated by dams, which are 

 a subject of constant complaint to the fishermen, how much more would they thrive in the waters 

 of this country with their great riches of food? But if we take into account the rivers of the mild 

 South and Southwest of the United States, what success may not be expected for this fish in those 

 regions? 



If the Carp finds food in superfluity it will grow much more rapidly than the above statement 

 indicates. This gives an increase of from three to three and one-fourth pounds in one year and six 

 mouths ; but this is only the normal one, the food consumed being of an average amount. If the 

 fish obtain food very plentifully it will grow more rapidly. In this case, again, it is to be consid- 



1 Report of the United States Fish Comraision, pt. iv, p. 876 tt seq. 

 40 F 



