866 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 



the large rivers. In some parts of Europe, principally in Bohemia, 

 Austria, Southern, Central, and Northern Germany, it has become do- 

 mesticated. 



The carp is alleged to have been imported into England in the year 

 1504. In Austria, which possesses the most extensive carp-fisheries in 

 Europe, the culture of the carp can be traced as far back as the year 

 1227. The Emperor Charles IV of Germany, by granting sundry priv- 

 ileges, favored the establishment of ponds in his dominions, and the 

 monks were especially assiduous in the culture of fish in ponds. As 

 early as the first half of the fourteenth century, Bohemia had its first 

 large carp-pond, and the culture of this fish progressed in that country, 

 as also in Poland and that district which now comprises German Aus- 

 tria ; also in Upper Lusoatia, Saxony, Silesia, and Bavaria. A cele- 

 brated establishment for carp-culture, with large, extensive ponds, was 

 located, as early as the fourteenth century, near the town of Wittingau, 

 in Bohemia, Austria. The first beginning of it may be traced back to 

 the year 1367. At that time the Lords of Rosenberg called into exist- 

 ence and maintained for centuries these establishments on a scale so 

 extensive that to this day they are the admiration of the visitor, the 

 main parts having survived, while the race of the Rosenbergs has long 

 been extinct. 



The manor of Wittingau suffered greatly from the calamities of the 

 Thirty Years' War, and with it, in consequence, its fish-culture. The 

 latter only recovered the effects of it after passing, together with the 

 large estate of a rich monastery of the same name, in the year 1670, into 

 possession of the Princes of Schwarzenberg, their present owners. The 

 extent which carp culture has reached on these princely domains will be 

 seen from the circumstance that their artificial ponds comprise an area of 

 no less than 20,000 acres. The proceeds amount to about 500,000 pounds 

 of carp per annum. The ponds of the Princes of Schwarzenberg are prob- 

 ably the most extensive of the kind on the globe. They are usually sit- 

 uated in some undulating-lowland country, where small valleys have 

 been closed in by gigantic dams for the purpose of forming reservoirs. 

 Similar establishments, though not equally extensive, are found in the 

 provinces of Silesia and Brandenburg: as, for instance, near Breslau and 

 Cottbus, in Peitz and Pleitz, which I visited last year. In Hesse-Cassel, 

 Hanover, Oldenburg, Mecklenburg, and Holstein there are also many 

 hundreds of ponds, none of them covering more than a few acres, but 

 almost every large farm possessing at least one of them. 



It will be easily understood that after such an exclusive culture in 

 ponds, continued through centuries, as also an existence in open water, 

 where the Cyprinidce were left more to themselves, a number of varieties 

 or rather genuine species Cyprinus carpio, showing striking differences 

 from the races were developed: these races, though derived directly 

 from the original type, just as with our domestic animals. They are 

 divided into three chief groups : 



