Our Fish Immigrants 



397 



whatever credit or blame is due. In his 

 1878 report to Congress, Professor Baird 

 said: 



"The carJD has been domesticated in 

 Europe from time immemorial, and rep- 

 resents among the finny tribe the place 

 occupied by poultry. among birds. It is a 

 fish adapted to the farmer's ponds and to 

 mill-dams, less so to clear, gravelly rivers 

 with a strong current. Where there is 

 quiet water, with muddy bottom and 

 abundant vegetation, there is the home of 

 the carp ; there it will grow with great 

 rapidity, sometimes attaining a weight of 

 three to four pounds in as many years. 

 It is a vegetable feeder and not depend- 

 ent upon man for its sustenance. As an 

 article of food, the better varieties rank 

 in Europe with the trout, and bring the 

 same price per pound." 



The limitations of the carp, as thus 

 defined and as recognized and acknowl- 

 edged at the time of its introduction, have 

 been to a great extent overlooked or ig- 

 nored, and to this is to be attributed 

 much of the carp's disrepute. It has been 

 planted under conditions as inappropri- 

 ate as would be the stocking of a game- 

 bird preserve with foxes or the raising 

 of rabbits in a meadow overrun with 

 hounds. 



The indictment against the carp in 

 America is long and formidable. It is 

 charged with being unfit for human food, 

 Avith being very injurious to other and 

 better fishes, and with being very de- 

 structive to ducks and other wild fowl 

 by uprooting the wild celery on which 

 the}^ feed, to say nothing of various minor 

 accusations. 



It is not necessary to discuss these 

 points, and it will suffice to say (i) that 

 special investigation has shown the carp 

 does exceedingly little harm to any other 

 fish, as any one would expect from its 

 known habits and anatomical peculiari- 

 ties ; (2) that the injury done to the feed- 

 ing grounds of wild fowl has been grossly 

 exaggerated ; on one hand, a scarcity of 

 ducks ma}^ occur entirely independently 

 of the presence of carp, and, on the other, 

 a great abundance of carp may be coex- 



istent with an undiminished growth of 

 wild celery; and (3) that the carp is a 

 food fish of very great importance, and 

 to say anything to the contrary is to 

 ignore facts. 



We may profitably dwell a little on this 

 last point, because a few people are 

 aware of the economic value of this fish 

 at the present time or appreciate the role 

 it must inevitably continue to play in this 

 country, for the carp is already the most 

 widely distributed American fish; it can 

 no longer be regarded as an alien ; and it 

 is here to stay. 



As a food fish the carp has many su- 

 periors. I do not eat it and see no reason 

 why people so favorably situated as are 

 those who live on the seaboards, the 

 Great Lakes, and the various interior 

 waters should eat carp ; but there are 

 millions of our people who can not ob- 

 tain the delicious trout, shad, salmon, 

 black bass, striped bass, halibut, mack- 

 erel, or smelt; or who, if they ever see 

 these fish, find them, like the peas por- 

 ridge of the nursery rhyme, "nine days 

 old" or more and nine times inferior to a 

 fresh carp. It is to the many people who 

 must eat carp or no fish, or no better 

 fish, that this food comes as a special 

 boon, although the consumption, even 

 in many of the eastern seacoast towns, is 

 surprisingly large. 



"The proof of the pudding is the eat- 

 ing" — one of the proofs of a fish is the 

 price people are willing to pay in order to 

 eat it. Jtidged by this standard, the carp 

 is to be reckoned among the leading 

 fishes of the United States. It is regu- 

 larly exposed for sale in every large city 

 and in innumerable small towns ; and the 

 fishermen find such ready sale for it at 

 such good prices that in at least 15 states 

 special carp fisheries are carried on, and in 

 35 states it is regularly taken for market. 

 At this time the annual carp catch 

 amounts to about 20 million pounds, for 

 which the fishermen receive $500,000. 



Illinois is not only the "sucker state" ; 

 it is preeminently the "carp state", and 

 is not ashamed of the fact. It produces 

 twice as many carp as any other state, 



