588 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 



misers also convene to determine the price that shall be asked for carp. 

 It is stated that from 200,000 to 300,000 fish are sold at Cottbus in a 

 season, representing an aggregate weight of 800,000 to 1,000,000 

 pounds. After being weighed the fish are transferred to perforated 

 boats — what we would call live cars — and are transported down the 

 canals and rivers to the large cities, where the} T are to be consumed. 

 This is a slow and laborious journey, the cars often having to be car- 

 ried over shallow places on rollers, and a week is required to get the 

 fish to Berlin, while to reach Hamburg and Madgeburg takes four or 

 five weeks. This is in striking contrast to our method of packing the 

 fish in ice and shipping them 500 miles or more to market in a couple 

 of days. The German method has the advantage of getting them there 

 alive. 



Just when and whence the carp came into England is not known. 

 It is generalby conceded to have reached there, however, between 1051 5 

 when it was not mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of iElfric, 

 and I486, the date of first publication of the "Boke of St. Albans," 

 where it is spoken of as '*a deyntous fysshe: but there ben but 

 fewe in Englonde" (see p. 529). Linnaeus puts the date of intro- 

 duction into England as 1600, and it is sometimes attributed to Mas- 

 call in loll; but probably he is responsible onby for "the extension of 

 the range into Sussex (Day, 1880-1884, p. 103). In the privy purse 

 expenses of King Henry VIII, in 1532, various entries are made of 

 rewards to persons for bringing ''carpes to the king" (Yarrell, 1836, 

 vol. i, p. 306, from Pickering's edition of Walton, p. 2UT, note). All 

 recent writers agree that the of t-quoted " doggerel lines of — 



' Turkies, carp, hop, pickerel, and beer 

 Came into England all in one year' 



may be considered interesting as verses, but not faithful representa- 

 tions of facts." 



Day (1880-1884, p. 163) gives the date of the introduction of carp 

 into Sweden as 1.360 s and into Denmark as 1660; but de Broca (1876, 

 p. 270, footnote) says they were taken to Denmark more than a hun- 

 dred years earlier, in 1550, by Pierre Oxe. Malmgren (1883), in an 

 address to the bureau of agriculture of the imperial senate of Finland, 

 advises against any attempt to raise carp in that country, as he thinks 

 that on account of the climatic conditions it would not pay. They 

 were introduced into Finland in 1861, when Chamberlain Baron v. 

 Linder placed some in the ponds of his estate of Svarta, but they are 

 said to have died out after a few years. Some attempts were made 

 prior to 1861, but they were all failures. Malmgren sa\'s that Hol- 

 stein and Courland are the most northerly countries where carp culture 



a Sometimes written " Marshall." 



6 In his " Fishes of Malabar, " Day (1865, p. xii) remarks: " Block observes that in his time, 1732, 

 owing to the degeneration of the species in the north, due to the coldness of the climate, several 

 vessels were yearly dispatched from Prussia to Stockholm with further supplies of live carp." 



