336 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



5. Economic results. — The cultivation of fish is destined to be 

 come as important among the American farmers and planters as the 

 cultivation of cattle, sheep, swine, poultry, or of grains, fruits, and 

 berries. They have long since ceased to leave the latter to shift for 

 themselves and to cope with their enemies, knowing that in such a strug- 

 gle live stock, grains, and fruits come off second best or succumb. 

 Fish should receive the same care and attention, both as to improv- 

 ing varieties, artificial propagation and growth. The practice which 

 fanners will obtain in carp culture will probably open the way to the 

 successful culture of various other kinds offish. The hardiness and 

 wide range of diet and the rapid growth of carp especially fit it to be 

 the precursor in fish farming. Every rural community is destined to 

 have its fish ponds in the same abundance that it has its pig pens or 

 its poultry yards. This will enable every farmer, however remote from 

 market, to introduce fresh fish into his bill of fare at a very trifling cost. 

 The carp may be made a pleasurable pet, learning to come to its food 

 at call, if habitually fed in one place, and in shallow water, or upon a 

 plank submerged a few inches. From these places, by reason of its 

 tameuess, it can be taken even with the hands. Finally, there is no 

 more tasteful and economic means of decorating a plantation or a coun- 

 try seat than by a carp pond neatly prepared and protected. If, how- 

 ever, any persons should imagine that these good results are to be at- 

 tained merely by filing an application for carp and upon the receipt of 

 the fish leaving them to shift for themselves, and unaided to cope with 

 their enemies, it is well that their minds be disabused at the first, for 

 there is no provision of nature anywhere whereby a man shall obtain his 

 daily bread except by the sweat of his brow. 



United States Fish Commission, August 21, 1883. 



55.— PROCESS OF PRESERVING FISH. 



By RALPH S. JENNINGS. 



[Patent No. 273,094, granted February 27, 1883.] 



Claim. — The process, substantially as described, of treating salted fish 

 for the destruction or killing of the alga germs contained in the salt of 

 such fish, such process consisting in rapidly passing, at or about at a 

 speed as hereinbefore mentioned, the fish over a sufficiently heated sur- 

 face, or through or in contact witli heated air or superheated steam, at 

 or about a temperature of 400° Fahrenheit, so as to superficially heat 

 the fish to an extent required to kill the said germs, without heating the 

 interior of the fish to the injury thereof. 



Baltimoke, Md., August 10, 1882. 



