212 Thirty-fourth Annual Meeting. 
proof offered that they eat spawn. In fact no later than yester- 
day, one of the members here made the statement in his paper, 
that all charges that carp eat spawn were mere pipe dreams. 
It must have been a pipe dream on my part then, for I have seen 
them eat spawn, I have written about it, I have stated it in the 
newspapers, in the fishing magazines and spoken of it to the 
people ; and almost invariably the reply would be: “Well, this is 
the first time that any regular out and out proof has been given 
of the fact, but you must remember that other fish are cannibals, 
too.” The trouble is, however, that 1n a few days we will find 
the very same people get up again and say, “There is no proof 
that these fish eat spawn.” So I say it is practically idle to dis- 
cuss the matter. 
In Pennsylvania the carp do eat spawn, and the majority of 
the people of Pennsylvania believe that they live entirely on 
spawn. I do not agree with that, nor do I agree with the ma- 
jority of the people in Pennsylvania in the statement that the 
carp is a principal factor in the decrease of the number of black 
bass. They are decreasing, but I do not believe carp is the 
principal factor. I think we must look for other causes. But 
we claim that carp is a nuisance in our streams; that it is one 
of the factors in some of the localities of the depletion of black 
bass and other valuable food and game fishes (and by valuable 
I mean not merely from a sporting standpoint, but from a food 
standpoint) ; and that it 1s therefore not a desirable fish in our 
waters. 
I can very well understand how Dr. Bartlett could be a 
great friend of the carp in [linois, from a money standpoint. 
Pennsylvania pays a great deal of money to Illinois for carp. 
The state of Illinois may sell from 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 
pounds of carp to Pennsylvania, the bulk of which goes to Pitts- 
burg and Philadelphia. Nevertheless, it is regarded by us in 
Pennsylvania, and is undoubtedly, a very inferior food fish. 
While we sell a great deal of carp in Pennsylvania, it is only 
sold to two classes of people, one a very estimable class, who 
buy the fish alive in order that they may kill them according to 
their religious rites; the bulk of the fish are, however, sold to 
what we consider largely a very undesirable class of people, the 
Italians. The price is high, running sometimes as high as 16 
