74 Twciify-iiiiifh Annual Meeting 



Dr. James : I remember some years ago, at the time when 

 the carp was in its glory, everybody was putting carp in their 

 streams. They were a rapidly growing fish, and a large fish, 

 and liad some value in the way of food. I watched some of the 

 carp in a pond and stream on a farm I had along a large stream, 

 the Rancocas creek, New Jersey. I put them in from two or 

 three distributions before I succeeded in growing on account of 

 iocal enemies in the ponds, and about all the people around that 

 neighborhood who had streams of water planted them with carp. 

 I studied up the subject pretty thoroughly and I found that these 

 carp were great spawn-eaters. It was said that they ate nothing 

 but vegetable food. I read a paper on this subject, stating that 

 the}- were great fish spawn eaters, and would eat out the streams 

 of their own spawn besides others, and I was laughed at because 

 I deviated from the view that the}- were anything else but a 

 vegetable eating fish. Well, that was at my expense, and now 

 almost everybody. \\ ith the exception of a limited few, are against 

 the carp. Who brought the original German carp here I don't 

 know, l)ut the Ignited ^States Fish Commission had them and 

 furnished them to lis in large amounts, and I sent quite a large 

 number of them up through New Jersey, and the Commission 

 furnished many persons with them at that time when they were 

 popular. That is my experience with regard to the carp. They 

 do eat material to-flay affecting the fibre, very much like the shad, 

 which oftentimes become contaminated coming up the Dela- 

 ware River, where there are a great many tanks of petroleum on 

 its banks. Xow, when the shad that are caught as they come 

 from the ocean at the Delaware breakwater, down at 

 Cape May — they la}' around there for a while — those shad 

 that come into the market are simply luscious. These shad come 

 up the first of the season, before they get up to the polluted 

 waters of the larger cities like Wilmington and Philadelphia, and 

 there others become contaminated to a certain extent as they 

 lay in waters receiving the sewage from the cities. I have thrown 

 them oft' of my table on account of the petroleum taste, and I 

 have also tasted the mud and sewaije of the citv in their filjre. 



