242 Moderq Pishculture in Fresh and Salt WaieY. 



the carp. It roots up the water plants, muddies the 

 ponds and renders them unfit for other fish, and the 

 carp are worthless for the table. They are in the class 

 of the soft buffalo fish of the Mississippi, and the 

 suckers. 



Great carp of fifteen to twenty pounds come to Ful- 

 ton Market, New York, and some Germans, with old 

 country memories, buy them; a lot are sold by push 

 cart men among the tenements on the East Side, but 

 there is little sale for them outside of this. I have eaten 

 the carp in Germany, cooked in beer and served with 

 a brown beer sauce, but never when I could help it. 



The carp spawn in early summer, the eggs adhering 

 to water plants. The fish grow fast, under favorable 

 circumstances reaching a weight of ten pounds in three 

 years. The Government carp ponds at Washington, 

 D. C, overflowed some years ago and let a lot of these 

 fish into the Potomac, and the shad fishers and anglers 

 are cursing them to-day for a nuisance that can never 

 be abated, like our European sparrow. 



It is a significant fact that the United States Fish 

 Commission published "A Manual of Fish Culture" in 

 1897 and did not mention the carp. 



CASTRATING CARP. 



Here is a curious bit of fish lore translated from the 

 "Deustche Fischerei Zeitung, Stettin, of May 16, 1882, 

 under the above heading: "Concerning the question 

 asked by Count Gessler about the castration of carp, I 

 will quote from an old German fish book entitled 

 "Pond and Fishery Husbandry," by Johann Andreas 

 Guenther, 18-10, pages 142-144. To bring the*carp to 



