CHAPTER IX. 



THE ARTIFICIAL FEEDING OF CARP. 



It is not the purpose of this chapter to either establish a standard of 

 food for the carp, or to lay down any scientific rules for the composition of 

 the best food, to give them. Though carp have been fed quite generally 

 by the culturists of this country, yet we know of no scientific experiments 

 having been conducted along this line. The one great difficulty in such 

 an investigation is to gather all the excrements of the fish from the water, 

 for analysis and comparison with the elements of the food given, and 

 only by such a searching and thorough sifting of all the accompanying 

 circumstances, temperature, etc., could a strictly correct rule for the pro- 

 portion of the elements composing the food be arrived at. By analagous 

 reasoning, using such facts as have been gathered by the experiments that 

 have been conducted in Europe, and by the analysis of the natural food of 

 the carp, an approximately correct rule may be arrived at. With such a 

 rule established, and the principal parts of the ingredients to be purchased, 

 while the outlay and the labor would undoubtedly be well rewarded in the 

 harvest, it is a question whether many culturists would make the outlay 

 or perform the labor required. 



Without questioning the motives of our earlier American writers upon 

 this subject, we discard the proposition they laid dow r n, to-wit : That carp 

 were vegetarians and would live and grow fat on the vegetation of the 

 pond, and if placed in a mud hole barren of vegetation you had only to 

 supply them with grass, lettuce, cabbage leaves, potato tops, etc., etc. We 

 are of the opinion that carp rarely, if ever, partake of any vegetation, and 

 if they do it is only when great hunger drives them to it, and that, then, 

 they confine themselves to the tender shoots of some of the water plants. 

 We have never found either the leaves or roots of plants in their stomach. 

 We have watched them 'feeding, by the hour, and have never seen them 

 attacking the vegetation of the pond. Occasionally they would take the 

 leaf of a plant in their mouth, but invariably spew it out again. Whether 

 hunger was compelling and nature resisting, or whether they took 

 the leaf into the mouth to gather the insect life from it, we are una- 

 ble to determine, but think it the latter. The very face of the matter 

 declares against it. A great many of the smaller ponds of America, are 

 very largely overstocked with carp, and yet year after year the vegetation 

 of these ponds increase. You may say the fish in those ponds were arti- 

 ficially fed ; grant it, but if they were vegetarians they would only take 

 the food supplied, after they had exhausted the vegetable supplies of the 

 pond, and instead of the vegetation of the pond increasing it would finally 



