80 REPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



reservations or habitations, but tbat under no circumstances shall 

 Indians so privileged be allowed to trade or barter the lisih outride of 

 their reservations. 



(5) That special attention be paid to restocking the Canadian 

 waters of the great lakes and of Lake of the Woods with sturgeon. 



(6) That all trading, trafficking in, or shipping of the roes of the 

 sturgeon or whitefish, or of black caviar composed of or secured from the 

 roes of the sturgeon or any other fishes of the Province whatsoever, 

 be prohibited throughout the Province, excepting when such roes or 

 caviar shall have first been secured from a duly authorized Government 

 official and a certificate for the same issued; and that any infringement 

 of this regulation be punishable by a fine of not less than |100 on each 

 of the parties concerned, together with a cancellation of the license, if 

 any, under which either or each of the parties concerned are conducting 

 their business. 



The Carp. 



i 



{Some thirty years ago the German carp was imported to this conti- 

 nent, mainly for the purpose of stocking small ponds and lakes, its 

 vaunted edible qualities being lauded by the press generally, and its 

 peculiar tameness and adaptability to life in show ponds and other 

 restricted waters arousing a veritable storm of enthusiasm for the experi- 

 ment. The fish, however, fell far short of what had been expected of it 

 in almost every respect, for not onl}'- did it fail to find favour as a food 

 in comparison with the more delicately flavoured local varieties of fish, 

 but also chiefly owing to ignorance of the proper methods of handling 

 it on the part of the majority of those into whose ponds it was intro- 

 duced, it appeared at first even to flourish none too well. As a result 

 the enthusiasm for the carp very soon subsided, but little attention was 

 paid to it even where it had been introduced, and its introduction into 

 public waters, either by deliberate plantation or through its escape into 

 them from the ponds in which it was confined at times of flood or freshet, 

 created but little stir or comment. To-day there is, in the fresih waters 

 of this continent at least, no fish against which more scathing or widely 

 divergent indictments have been hurled. 



In the thirty years which have elapsed since its importation the carp 

 has thriven and spread in a most remarkable manner, equally astonish- 

 ing, in fact, as the extraordinary increase and dispersion of the imported 

 English sparrow, until, as in the case of the sparrow, it has become per- 

 fectly apparent that the day has passed when it could be exterminated, 

 and that for better or worse it h^as come to stay. 



The carp has been dubbed the hog of the waters and the simile 

 would not appear to be inapt, for, living as it does in comparatively 

 shallow waters and feeding chiefly on the bottom, almost anything in 

 the shape of vegetable or animal life that will pass into its small mouth 



