1406 ' BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



the benefits of private fish ponds is increasing at a very rapid rate, and hundreds 

 of thousands of such in all parts of the country, but particularly in the great 

 central region, will find in the carp a fish well adapted to their needs and 

 conditions. 



It is probable that the commercial value of carp is insignificant compared 

 with its importance as a food for other fishes. It is extensively eaten by many 

 of our most highly esteemed food fishes and is the chief pabulum of some of 

 them in some places. In a number of the best black bass streams, like the 

 Potomac and the Illinois, the carp is very abundant and is a favorite food of 

 the young and adult bass, while in California the introduced striped bass has 

 from the outset subsisted largely on carp and may owe its remarkable increase 

 to the presence of this food. 



The consumption of carp is certainly destined to increase greatly; but 

 even if the catch reaches no higher point the introduction of the carp into the 

 United States will remain the leading achievement in fish acclimatization in 

 recent times, and, with the exception of the original introduction of the same 

 fish into Europe from Asia, the most important the world has known. 



Among the acclimatization expei'iments that have not yet been proved 

 successful, but that there is every reason to believe will eventually become so, 

 is the transplanting of the lobster {Homarus americanus) to the Pacific coast. 

 There is probably no food animal of the eastern seaboard whose acclimatiza- 

 tion on the Pacific coast would prove so great a boon as the lobster. As early 

 as 1873 the Bureau made its first move to supply the deficiency, and up to 

 1889 five attempts to establish the species were made, the deposits being at 

 various points from Monterey Bay to Puget Sound. No positive results having 

 appeared, the experiment was renewed in the fall of 1906, when a special carload 

 of brood lobsters, numbering more than all the previous plants combined, was 

 dispatched to Puget Sound, and in 1907 a still more extensive plant, aggregating 

 about 1,000 adult lobsters, was made in the same water. Further consign- 

 ments will be made until the lobster is removed from the list of failures and 

 recorded as a great financial as well as gastronomic success. 



BIOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS AND EXPERIMENTS. 



The long-continued and systematic field and laboratory work of the Bureau 

 has resulted in a most thorough knowledge of the distribution, variation, abun- 

 dance, habits, etc., of the fishes and other creatures of the interior, coastwise, 

 and offshore waters of the United States, Hawaii, and Porto Rico — a knowledge 

 which is indispensable to the Government in its fish-culture work and to the 

 various States and insular authorities in their legislative efforts to preserve 

 their fishery resources. The practical results of this work are apparent in 

 numerous specific instances. 



