Introducing Something New 113 



although there would be considerable mortality among the 

 new arrivals, enough of them would survive to leave a com- 

 fortable margin. As they grew older, the young would seek 

 deeper water and begin to compete with the varieties which 

 the anglers consider more desirable. 



I must here confess that the carp is one of the few fish 

 against which I am prejudiced. This is not a scientific judg- 

 ment but a personal one. They are not a native fish, nor are 

 they native to Europe from where they came to us, but 

 originated in Asia. There is usually some appealing attribute 

 in almost every living creature: courage, beauty, graceful- 

 ness, gaminess, or the like. But I find all of these lacking in 

 the carp. I think my early experience had something to do 

 with it. I first saw carp in the East where newly arrived 

 immigrants used to cut pieces of potato for bait and fish for, 

 and catch, many carp where foul sewers entered into streams. 

 The fishermen were glad to catch the fish and apparently 

 esteemed them highly. And although the fish may have been 

 excellent I have never seen even a picture of a carp without 

 visualizing the sewer at the foot of State Street in the little 

 town I used to visit and the sight of these fish as they were 

 pulled from the filth below. Aside from my distaste for what 

 was apparently one of their preferred habitats, I did not like 

 their coarse dirty appearance or the fact that, as compared 

 with the perch, bass, trout, pickerel, and other middle west- 

 ern fish we considered desirable, they were ugly and shape- 

 less. The carp has always been considered a coarse but popu- 

 lar food and mention of the fare of the Romans and of the 

 Middle Ages seldom excluded this fish. The lakes and the 

 ponds of the noblemen and the monasteries were well stocked 

 with it, and since it is sturdy, easily adaptable, and exceed- 

 ingly tenacious of life, it has probably supplied much highly 

 esteemed food to the people of the world. But in the United 

 States it has been accepted by few as a good table fish. Its 

 introduction therefore has proved to be a mistake because in 



