108 FISHES OF ILLINOIS 



cable in this country, where the resources of cultural establishments 

 are lacking, and the sole recourse is to parboiling and spicing and 

 other subterfuges of the cuisine. Experiments recently made in 

 this country in smoking and salting carp have not been very suc- 

 cessful. Carp caviar is known to have been used in former cen- 

 turies by the Jews of Italy, but its red color is objectionable to the 

 American purchaser. Owing to the low price which carp bring in 

 springtime — often not more than a third of a cent per pound — 

 many of these fish in the Great Lake region are used for fertilizing, 

 although the more progressive firms are more and more holding the 

 spring and summer catches for the better winter price — two to two 

 and a half cents cents per pound. 



Among fishermen and anglers in America the carp has both its 

 partisans and its enemies. However, it is coming more and more 

 to be believed that its good qualities more than overbalance the 

 other side of the account, the most serious of the charges against it 

 appearing to rest on uncertain or gratuitously assumed premises. 

 These charges have been, in brief, that carp roil the water and spoil 

 the breeding and feeding grounds of other fish; that they eat the 

 spawn of other fish and prevent the nesting of such species as bass 

 and sunfishes ; that they spoil the feeding grounds of water-birds by 

 eating and rooting up the wild rice and other aquatic plants ; and, 

 that they are of no value either as a food or a game fish. With re- 

 gard to the first charge it appears doubtful if the damage is serious 

 in waters already as muddy as those of the Illinois and Mississippi 

 rivers. Carp do not naturally seek out clear and cold waters to 

 defile them, and they would probably in no case be serious com- 

 petitors of such fish as trout and small-mouthed bass. 



The second charge, if true, is a much more serious one; but few 

 direct observations bearing on this point have been made. The 

 common form of the argument, that "carp eat spawn, as shown by the 

 simultaneous rapid increase of carp and decrease of fine fish," is not 

 supported by the statistics of the fisheries of the Illinois River. 

 These show, on the contrary, that during the five years between 

 1894 and 1899, when the carp catch increased from \ to 8£ million 

 pounds, the black bass, instead of decreasing, increased from 70,000 

 to 102,0001b. The decrease in black bass between 1899 and 1903 

 to 45 ,000 lb was accompanied by a corresponding decrease in carp 

 to 6,000,000 lb. It is shown also that catfish gradually increased 

 from 700,000 to 990,000 lb between 1894 and 1903 ; that crappie 

 increased from 138,000 to 210,000 lb; that sunfish increased from 



