1126 EEPORT OF OOMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [26] 



and it remains to be seen whether they will everywhere retain their 

 much talked of excellence. 



11. The yield of the carp-ponds. 



The question whether carp-raising will pay is of course of great im- 

 portance to landed proprietors. It has often been said that a carp-pond 

 will yield more revenue than the same area planted with wheat. This 

 assertion does not seem to be borne out by the fact that, in many places 

 where formerly there were numerous carp-ponds, they have been laid 

 dry and abandoned in course of time. In the north of Germany and 

 many parts of Central Germany this circumstance is easily explained 

 by Luther's Eeformation, and the very imperfect means of communica- 

 tion in those days. The abolition of the numerous fast days observed 

 in the Soman Catholic Church, which necessitated the maintenance of 

 regular and extensive pond-farms in connection with the convents, 

 greately diminished the demand for fish, and as matters stood in those 

 days, the transportation of fish to any considerable distance was not 

 thought of. Under these circumstances it was of course more profitable 

 to drain the ponds and use them for agricultural purposes. To-day all 

 this is changed; on the one hand the price of grain has been lowered by 

 foreign competition, and on the other hand our improved means of com- 

 munication make it possible to send all those fish whPich are not needed 

 or home consumption to other places, and thus derive some profit there- 

 from. 



In judging of the revenue to be obtained from carp-culture, it should be 

 taken into consideration that it requires less labor than agriculture, and 

 is much less dependent on changes of the weather. 



The production of fish of course depends on the quality of the ponds, 

 and it would be a mistake to compare worthless ponds with good fields, 

 and good ponds with poor fields. Unfortunately it is hardly possible 

 to give exact data as to the average quantity of fish-flesh produced per 

 are or acre, by good, medium, and poor ponds. An exact system of 

 book-keeping, which is necessary for this purpose, may be in force on 

 large pond farms whose pond area amounts to hundreds and thousands 

 of hectares, but' it is rarely found on small farms, whose proprietors often 

 do not know the size of their ponds, nor the cost of labor, nor the weight 

 and number of the fish placed in the ponds and taken out during the 

 fisheries. C. Mcklas, in his admirable Manual of Pond-culture (Stettin, 

 1880), gives very valuable hints how to keep the books of a ^ond farm. 



It is generally presumed that good carp-ponds, if properly managed, 

 produce annually 70 to 90 kilograms of carp-flesh per hectare; and in fol- 

 lowing Dubisch's method the yield would be 130 kilograms per hectare. 

 In poor ponds the yield is of course much smaller. On an average the 

 kilogram of carp-flesh when sold to dealers will realize 1 mark (23.8 

 cents), whilst when sold at retail the same quantity will frequently fetch 



