210 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



the food of the carp. It is well then to encourage in our fish ponds the 

 growth of plants with fibrous roots, like those named above, which, as 

 indicated, will greatly increase their capacity for supplying food to the 

 fish. 



Artificial feeding of carp. — Carp culture in this country has 

 ceased to be an experiment. While many who received the stock 

 allotted to each by the Fish Commission, through ignorance or neglect, 

 failed to turn them to account, many others have entered upon the care of 

 the fish with enthusiasm, and in their hands the result has been most sat- 

 isfactory. While much is yet to be learned, sufficient is already known 

 to assure us of the fact that food carp can be raised in private ponds 

 with profit. In regard to them we can speak more confidently than we 

 can of any other fish the cultivation of which has been attempted in 

 modern times. Give them a warmly -located pond with muddy bottom,  

 well supplied with aquatic plants, and free from all other fish, and from 

 the common small reptiles, protecting them from kingfishers, fish-hawks, 

 and bitterns ; before they are thirty months old they will furnish you 

 with an ample supply of delicious boiling fish, averaging at least 4 pounds 

 in weight. This they will do with little or no artificial feeding. Then 

 if you will arrange a suitable spawning pond, stocked with a few adult 

 fish; and a growing pond, stocked with young fish, at the rate of 1,000 

 to the acre; with your market pond twice as large, so that when the 

 growing fish are transferred to it at the beginning of their third sum- 

 mer, there will be 500 fish to the acre; you will have an establishment 

 which will require some care, it is true, but which will make you ample 

 returns in the shape of an annual supply of about 2,000 pounds of fish 

 to the acre. 



But results far beyond this may be secured by artificial feeding. 

 Possessing, as they do, excellent digestive organs, few animals respond 

 as readily to an abundant supply of food as do carp. Of this I have 

 abundant proof. Take the following illustration: In a spawning pond, 

 in which I had placed 12 adult fish, at the beginning of their third sum- 

 mer, one of them at least spawned during the season, as in the autumn 

 in drawing the pond I found 15 young fish — all that had escaped the 

 numerous enemies with which the pond abounded. Having ample 

 room and an abundance of food, they had grown rapidly, attaining a 

 length of from 7 to 10£ inches, and an average weight of 10J ounces. 

 Having so good a start for their second summer, at its close last Octo- 

 ber their average weight was 2| pounds. This they did, too, with 2,145 

 young carp in the three-quarter acre pond with them. This is about 1 

 pound more than the average weight of their parents at the same age. 

 Doubtless they would have been much larger at the close of their second 

 summer had not the food resources of the pond been drawn upon by 

 the large number of young fish which occupied it with them. 



What their growth will be during the third summer is yet to be de- 

 termined. During the corresponding period in the life of their parents, 



