THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



149 



•'They eat the highest grades of tohacco 

 only," said he, " aud only the other day I dis- 

 covered two large boxes of natural leaf plug 

 entirely ruined. They have caused me the 

 loss of a good many dollars, and with all my 

 years of experience in the tobacco business I 

 can find no remedy. They are the only species 

 of insects that can live »n tobacco and any- 

 thing that can live on tobacco can't be 

 poisoned. The only way to get rid of them is 

 to crush them, aud you might as well try to 

 kill all the mosquitoes on a Jersey marsh as 

 to do that." The proprietor of the tobacco 

 store on Sixth street, near Chestnut, said that 

 he found without any exaggeration a million 

 bugs in a ten pound bucket of line chewing 

 tobacco. Many other dealers gave similar 

 testimony. The dealers have tried to suppress 

 the existence of these bugs, believing that 

 smokers of cigarettes in particular would cease 

 smoking them if the facts were made public. 

 One dealer estimated that in this city alone 

 the loss by the bugs on manufactured stock 

 in the last six months would amount to more 

 than $25,000. 



Causmg Factories to Close. 

 A tobacco salesman from Richmond, Va., 

 was seen by a Times reporter at the Continen- 

 tal Hotel the other night. He said : 



"As far as I can learn it is impossible to 

 account for the origin of the tobacco weevil. 

 They are ruining the cigarette trade. I do 

 not see why the bugs do not breed as freely 

 in loose tobacco, but the theory advanced is 

 that the cigarette is like a cocoon and the bug 

 feels more safe inside of a cigarette than in a 

 package of loose tobacco while laying its eggs. 

 Two cigarette factories in Richmond recently 

 were obliged to close and move to new quar- 

 ters on account of the old buildings being so 

 infested with the weevill that every particle 

 of stock manufactured was ruined. They 

 are so thick in Richmond now that it is im- 

 possible to ship goods that are perfectly free 

 from them and if one bug gets into a box of 

 tobacco it's not long before there will be a 

 thousand in that box. The tobacco-growers 

 have tried to discover the origin of the weevil, 

 but it battles every eflort to trace it and cause 

 its annihilation." _ 



THE CULTURE OF CARP. 

 AVhile a great many of our readers have 

 heard of the "Lancaster Piscatorial Com- 

 pany " and of their German carp ponds, a 

 short distance north of this city on the Man- 

 helm pike, a comparatively small number are 

 familiar with their location and extent, aud a 

 still smaller number with the fact that they 

 are the largest, best arranged, best kept, and 

 best stocked carp ponds in the United States, 

 not even excepting the Government ponds at 

 Washington. 



The Lancaster Piscatorial Company was 

 organized two years ago and consists of Mr. 

 David M. Mayer, president ; Dr. Miles L. 

 Davis, secretary and director, and Dr. S. T. 

 Davis, treasurer. 



The ponds are located on a five-acre tract 

 of swamp and meadow land belonging to D. 

 L. Mayer, and are supplied with an abundance 

 of water flowing from six large springs, all of 

 them being controlled by means of pipes and 

 stops and drains, so that the water of one or 

 all of the ponds can be raised or lowered at 

 pleasure. The company has secured a twenty 



years lease of these springs and the five acres 

 of land adjoining. 



There are at present four large ponds and 

 several small ones in use— the largest contain- 

 ing two and a half acres of water surface, 

 with an island near the centre, covered with 

 shrubbery, flowers and choice gra-sses. The 

 water in this pond varies in depth from one to 

 six feet, the deeper portions being intended as 

 winter quarters for the fish, they being thus 

 enabled to get below the frost line, no matter 

 how severe the weather may be, and there 

 doze away in torpor the long winter months. 

 The Fish House. 

 Adjoining this pond is the fish house, a 

 frame building 20 feet in width ^nd 100 feet 

 long. It is provided with a large pool con- 

 structed of boards and extending the full 

 length of the room in which are placed the 

 " stockers " or young fish that have attained 

 a length of 1^ to 4 inches. The pool is so ar- 

 ranged that the water can at any time be 

 drained off, so that the hsh may be easily 

 taken from it for transportation to other 

 ponds. The fish house contains also a large 

 boiler or steamer for heating the water in cold 

 weather. The fish instinctively seek the 

 warmer water and assembling in numbers in 

 the warmer part of the pool, they are easily 

 caught in nets and placed in large cans in 

 which they are transported to other pools in 

 distant parts of the country. The steamer is 

 also used for cooking food for the fish in the 

 several ponds in summer time. 



East of and adjoining the main pond, is the 

 spawning pond. This is 130 feet in length 

 by 1(0 feet in width. In it have been placed 

 only fifteen large fish male and female, aver- 

 aging about 7 pounds weight each. They 

 breed so rapidly that there are already many 

 thousands of small fry in the pond, which by 

 next summer may be utilized as "stockers." 

 The water in the pond is in general from 12 

 to 15 inches in depth, and in it are growing 

 considerable quantities of swamp willow aud 

 other shrubbery, on which the fish feed and 

 among which tliey spawn and shed their milt. 

 There is a deep hole in this pond for the fish 

 to winter in. 



A third i)oud adjoining the above, is in a 

 more natural condition than either of the 

 others, being in good part merely swamp 

 land, overflowed by a low damming of the 

 springs. The bottom of the pond is full of 

 rushes, aquatic grasses and small shrubs of 

 various kinds, on which the carp delights to 

 feed. The pond is perhaps 400 feet long and 

 20C feet wide. It contains not less than 

 10,000 carp from two to four years old, be- 

 sides many thousand of small fry. Some of 

 the larger fish are 27 inches in length and 

 weigh from 6 to 7 pounds. 



How the Fish are Captured. 

 During the past few days the company has 

 had a number of men employed in draining 

 off the water of the two larger ponds, for the 

 purpose of catching and assorting the fish ac- 

 cording to their size. As the water is very 

 gradually drained off the fish seek the deep 

 holes, above referred to, where they are easily 

 caught in drag nets, the meshes of which are 

 sutticiently large to allow all the small fry to 

 escape, very few less than two inches in length 

 being taken. From the two acre pond, Dr. 

 Davis states, there were taken 6,100 carp of 



all sizes, while thousands upon thousands of 

 small fry escaped through the meshes of the 

 net. 



A representative of the Intelligencer visited 

 the i)remise8 some time ago, at which time 

 half a dozen men were engaged in draining 

 the upper pond. Nearly all the water had 

 been drained off except in the deeper part 

 near the lower corner, and in another deep 

 place which had been dug out around a spring 

 that rises from the bottom of the pond. The 

 men were fishing this spring when our reporter 

 was there. They used a drag net ten or 

 twelve feet long and about half as wide. At 

 every haul they caught from one to two 

 buckets full of fish, from two inches to 

 eighteen inches in length. In two hours' time 

 there must have been ten bushels of fish taken 

 in the net. These were carried out upon the 

 bank and assorted, the smaller ones or 

 "stockers" being thrown into large tin cans 

 containing water, and carried thence to the 

 fish house, into which they were dumped to 

 have them handy when the time comes for 

 shipping them to other ponds. The two-year 

 olds, or "spawners" were placed in one of 

 the small ponds, and the large fish intended 

 for market, and weighing from three to seven 

 pounds, were placed in a perfectly clear pool 

 of spring water adjacent to the fish house. 

 This pool is 50 feet long by 13 feet wide. It 

 is built of brick and has a depth of not more 

 than 3 feet. The brick floor and wall are laid 

 in cement, so that it is perfectly clean and 

 water-tight. It is fed with pure water from 

 a two-inch spring that boils up from a walled 

 well four feet deep near one end of the pool. 

 This water has a regular temperature of 52 

 degrees. 



The object in placing the marketable fish in 

 this pool is to cleanse and purify their flesh 

 from the taint of mud or the vegetables on 

 which they feed while in the natural pools. It 

 is well known that milk and butter and even 

 flesh of animals taste of the food upon which 

 they feed ; and hence an objection urged 

 against carp is that as they inhabit muddy 

 places and feed on aquatic plants their flesh 

 is unpleasantly tainted with them. It is be- 

 lieved that by placing them in the purifyiujg 

 pool and feeding them on bread, boiled pota- 

 toes and other pure food, their flesh may be 

 made as sweet as that of pond trout. 

 The Three Varieties of Carp. 

 There are three well known varieties of 

 German carp : the "scale" carp, with regular 

 concentrically arranged scales ; the "mirror" 

 carp, so called on account of the large mirror 

 like scales which run along the sides of the 

 body in a few rows, leaving the rest of the 

 body bare ; and the "leather" carp, which 

 has no scales at all, or only a very few on the 

 back. 



There is not much difference in the merit 

 of these three varieties of fish, though the 

 mirror carp, or Spiegelkarpf, sells at a higher 

 price than the others. Stockers sell at from 

 g;5 to $15 per hundred ; and spawners of two 

 years old at $2 per pair. The larger and 

 older fish at still higher figures. 



The draining of the water from the pond 

 gives the visitor an opportunity to see the 

 manner of their construction. The walls or 

 banks of them are built of peat cut from the 

 meadow in which the ponds are located. The 



