THE CARP 10 1 



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 Salmonid<e. 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, 



