BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 239 



infusoria and parasitic animals, causing fish to become emaciated. The 

 remedy is found in throwing- in some pine leaves, which will cause tin- 

 parasites to disappear. 



There is a distemper which causes fish to float helplessly on the sur- 

 face of the water. It is caused by their eating the droppings of pig- 

 eons, or by washing grass-cloth plant (Ninea) near to the pond, which 

 causes them to float in the same manner. Treatment: night-soil. Eat- 

 ing their own secretious too freely induces a like disorder ; subject them 

 to the same remedial agent. When fishes are found floating on their 

 backs they will soon die. 



A curious statement is made respecting an olden-time direction to 

 quicken the hatching of bream. " Open a bream with a bamboo knife, 

 place in its abdomen some brassica pounded with water and a minute 

 portion of quicksilver, roll up the fish in the same vegetable and sus- 

 pend it forty-nine days, then reopen and deposit the fish in water, and 

 almost immediately the ova will become fish." That member of the carp 

 family, like certain GTiondroptergii, must have been impregnated before 

 secreting ova. 



The rocky creeks of the Chientang prove fatal to young carp, bream, 

 and tench, from colliding with stones, which suggested the construction 

 of ponds on the banks for preserving them. The minnows perish unless 

 the pond is emptied and fresh water let in, with some bruised banana 

 leaves, which will restore them to health. Fishes that as small fry have 

 been nutured on the yelk of eggs are sterile. In supplying ponds with 

 duck- weed or other aquatic plants, be careful lest the ova of mullet, and 

 the like, should be adherent ; those fishes are destructive to all mem- 

 bers of the carp family. To protect ponds from pigeons' droppings, 

 grape-vines should be grown on trellis-work over ponds. 



When ponds are too deep fish suffer from cold, and also in wiuter 

 when confined to ponds that are too small. When the frontal foramina 

 of Cyprinidce do not freely open when young, their growth is arrested, 

 and if that obstruction should continue for a year or so they will die; 

 such are to be sent to market. 



Decoying male fish of the carp family by imprisoned females is well 

 known to be a common practice in this country; on the other hand, in 

 the shallow, clear mountain streams of Chehkiang, males are used to 

 entrap females, one being tied to a string and dropped into a brook, 

 when he is seized by a large number of the other sex. Seizing him by 

 their mouths their tenacious hold enables the Chinese fisherman to 

 grasp with his hand as many as ten at a time. 



The foregoing relates mainly to the marshy coast regiou; inland, 

 carp culture commences by netting carp minnows in the Yangtse. In 

 the spring that great river is the resort of many thousand carp-catchers, 

 who come from distant regions to pursue their vocation ; coming from the 

 head of tide-water at Kiukiang, nearly as far up as thegorges or rapids at 

 Ichang, a distance of COO miles. So important is that commercial fish- 



