THE GERMAN CARP IN THE UNITED STATES. 623 



account of their scarcit}^ the market value has risen to a point making 

 their sale profitable. The terms permanent and temporary are thus 

 used here, as it will be observed, not in the sense of the time of dura- 

 tion of the ponds, but as denoting the manner in which they are used. 

 The latter sort correspond more or less closely in their function to 

 the stock ponds on a well-equipped German carp farm. Either sort 

 may be natural or artificial. 



PERMANENT PONDS, 



With a few possible exceptions carp culture has never been attempted 

 in this country after the lines on which it is carried on so extensively 

 in Germany. Most of those persons throughout the United States 

 who aspired to cai*p culture at the time these fish were being dis- 

 tributed by the Government merely dumped the fish into any body of 

 water that was convenient, or into any pond that could be hastily 

 scraped out or constructed by damming some small stream, and there- 

 after left them to shift for themselves, possibly feeding them occa- 

 sionally at first. That such efi^orts were not a success is no more to 

 be wondered at than would be a man's failure if he attempted to estab- 

 lish a successful poultry farm merely by turning a few dozen fowls 

 loose in the neighborhood of his home. Whether extensive and prop- 

 erly conducted carp farms would then, or would now, be profitable 

 and pay a reasonable return on the capital and labor invested, is 

 another matter, and will be considered a little farther on. 



It is not proposed here to enter into an elaborate description of the 

 methods employed by the successful European carp culturist. Ameri- 

 can readers who may be interested in the subject are referred to the 

 excellent paper by Hessel (1881), which has been cited frequently 

 throughout this report, and to the fuller account given in the transla- 

 tion published by the United States Fish Commission of the work by 

 Nicklas (1886). Numerous w^orks on the subject have been published 

 in German, and references to them will be found in the bulletins 

 named above; among the more recent books may be mentioned those 

 by Susta (1888) and Knauthe (1901). 



Some idea of the extent to which carp culture is practiced in Ger- 

 many and the neighboring parts of Europe may be gained from the 

 following extract quoted from Hessel (1881, p. 866): 



A celebrated establishment for carp-culture, with large, extensive ponds, Avas 

 located, as early as the fourteenth centur}^, near the town of Wittingau, in Bohemia, 

 Austria. The lirst beginning of it may be traced back to the year 1367. At that 

 time the lords of Rosenberg called into existence and maintained for centuries tliese 

 establishments on a scale so extensive that to this day they are the admiration of the 

 visitor, the main parts having survived, while the race of the Rosenbergs has long 

 been extinct. 



The manor of Wittingau suffered greatly from the calamities of the Thirty Years' 

 War, and with it, in consequence, its fish-culture. The latter only recovered the 



