THE CARP IOI 
life, water area, and food supply bear immutable proportion 
to each other; in a country like ours, where the rivers are 
not of great volume, and many have been polluted beyond 
redemption, where also the total area of lake and pond is 
but a moderate one, it behoves us to exercise extreme 
caution in the introduction of exotic species. The carp, it 
is true, is not destructively predaceous, but as a food fish 
it takes a low rank, and its excretal discharges sully the 
purity of many ponds, otherwise well suited for a stock of 
valuable Salmonide. It is a fact seldom realised by owners 
of land that the presence of carp in their waters often exer- 
cises an important and deleterious effect upon the landscape. 
There is no more charming feature in park scenery than 
limpid pools ; yet I know of many instances where the water 
in ornamental ponds is rendered permanently turbid in the 
summer months, solely by the unlovely habits of the carp 
which inhabit them. It does not diminish one’s dissatisfaction 
to remember that the carp is peculiarly subject to the presence 
of large internal parasites ; wherefore the water thus polluted 
is not only unpleasant to the eye, but charged in an indefinite 
degree with organisms hurtful to other forms of life. From 
the windows of the romantic chateau of Azay-le-Rideau, in 
Touraine, I have watched enormous carp rolling lazily in 
the sunshine in the moat surrounding that enchanted palace. 
From time to time one of these great creatures would dis- 
charge a volume of impurity, sullying still more the already 
turbid water, so that the lazy form of the fish became obscured 
in a veil of its own filth. How much better, methought, it 
had been if, instead of these great Asiatic fish, the unpolluted 
waters of the moat had been made the home of companies 
of gaily-striped perch or lusty trout. 
Howbeit, in personal appearance the carp is far from 
unattractive, and has an aristocratic air, partly native, partly 
from association with dignified, affluent pleasure-grounds. It 
is a fish subject to considerable variation in different waters, 
