FISH CULTURE — PROFITS OF. 231 



has few equals, and by many thought to have no superior amoung the fresh-water 

 fishes; but when you undertake to raise them in your pond, you find the cost too 

 great. The food they eat is costly. They are carnivorous, and minnows or fresh 

 meat they must have. The value of these overbalance his yield, for we have never 

 yet been able to feed to any living creature a food, the price of which per pound 

 was equal to the product, and obtain a profit, for the reason that a pound of food 

 will not produce a pound of meat, fowl or fish. Then we must feed that which is 

 much cheaper than the article we desire to produce. Out of nearlv two hundred 

 «pecies of fish, natives of the lakes and rivers of Indiana, who has ever produced 

 a pound of fish by cultivation that did not cost fifty cents per pond, or more? I 

 admit that we may raise some of these fish in ponds without feeding, but not to 

 that extent that will pay interest on the cost of ponds, when the cost is an im- 

 portant factor. 



But we have found a foreign fish that seems to fill that want, in the German 

 carp, and from my short experience, I believe that I can produce a pound of fish 

 from the carp cheaper than I can produce a pound of pork, beef, or mutton. Ac- 

 cording to the experiments of hog raisers, it takes thirty bushels of corn to produce 

 a hog weighing three hundred pounds, or a bushel of corn will produce ten pounds 

 of gross pork, and on an average it takes one acre of land to produce thirty bushels 

 of corn, and that gives you a three hundred pound hog each year from your acre 

 of corn. 



In three years your acre of corn will produce nine hundred pounds gross of 

 pork, which, at five dollars per hundred, amounts to forty-five dollars. Now, take 

 your acre pond, and place two thousand minnow carp in it, and at the end of three 

 years (allowing twenty -five per cent, loss) you will take fifteen hundred carp, aver- 

 aging three pounds each, equal to forty-five hundred pounds, which, at ten cents 

 per pound, will be four hundred and fifty dollars. [Or at five cents, same price as 

 pork, will yield $225, five times the value of the pork. — Ed.] Deduct one hundred 

 dollars for food, and you have three hundred and fifty dollars to compare with your 

 forty-five dollars from your acre of corn fed to the hog ; and I am sure that the 

 labor to care for the fish will not be greater than the care of the hog. I am satis- 

 fied that an acre of water, stocked with carp, will yield its owner a more profitable 

 return, without food, than his acre of corn with all his labor. There are many 

 things that the carp will eat and thrive upon that would be of little benefit to the 

 pig, such as cabbage leaves, lettuce, beet tops, cucumber, potatoe and turnip parings, 

 and parsley ; and they will eat anything that your pig will eat. 



EDIBLE (QUALITY. 



There may be some difference of opinion as to the edible quality of the carp, 

 all may not relish it, for there is no accounting for tastes, except, perhaps, by its 

 cultivation. T have known persons that were good judges of pork, who would dis- 

 card the best iamb-chops and disdain to eat an oyster or a water chicken, and 

 declare that the sucker was the best fish that floats. We have eaten them to a 

 limited extent only, but the family and guests all join in recommending their 

 edible qualities, and I think that they will be preferred by the farmer's family, 

 taken fresh from the water, to any of the stale fish that they can buy on the mar- 



