ACCLIMATIZATION OF FISH IN THE PACIFIC STATES. 
399 
(7) Ability to populate waters to their greatest extent. 
(8) Good table qualities. 
These properties still exist and no amount of unreasoning prejudice can alter or reduce them. 
When we are told that the carp is a kind of sucker and “sucks the roots out of the banks of the 
ditches, causing the banks to wash out,” we are bound to reply that California is noted for the variety 
and size of its suckers, but the carp is not one of them. The habit referred to is not observed in the 
carp, and the real culprit must be sought in some other direction. It is gravely asserted also that the 
food of the ducks and other wild fowl is consumed by the carp and the game birds are deserting the 
marshes in consequence. Again, it is charged that the salmon and trout waters art*, being invaded 
and the eggs devoured on the spawning beds. Carp in water having a summer temperature of 54 J 
would be about as untimely as oranges on the tundra at Point Barrow. We shall next hear that 
the carp has utterly destroyed the salmon industry of Alaska and driven the seals out of Bering Sea. 
As a matter of fact, California has many native fishes of the carp or minnow family, some of which 
swarm in the irrigating ditches, while others inhabit trout waters, and certain of these are known 
to be very destructive of eggs. In the Pit and McCloud, for example, may be found a large species 
of PtyvhochiluSj known as the Sacramento “pike,” which is really a giant minnow, growing to a 
length of 5 feet. This, or something like it, is probably the fish for whose sins the carp is now 
suffering in the estimation of many good people of California. Before passing final judgment on the 
subject, send, some of the cold-water carp and the burrowing nuisance to some one who knows the 
fishes of the State for identification. Dr. Jordan, at the Leland Stanford Junior University, will settle 
all doubts for you, and Forest and Stream will take pleasure in aiding investigations of any sort into 
the habits of fishes. 
Iii a letter dated September 25, 1891, Mr. Ramon E. Wilson, at that time secretary 
of the California fish commission, called the attention of the United States Fish Com- 
missioner to the fact that carp had been taken at the McCloud River station of the 
United States Fish Commission, and that Pitt River and Squaw Creek, in the vicinity, 
were swarming with the fish. Mr. Wilson expressed the fear that this raid of carp in 
the upper waters of the most important salmon river of the State, the Sacramento, 
was a serious matter. In reply, the United States Fish Commissioner stated that it 
did not seem possible that the carp could injure the salmon, whose spawning beds are 
located in the cold upper portions of the streams, and that it would be contrary to all 
experience to find carp thriving in such situations. The Commissioner suggested that 
the fish reported in such numbers in the Pitt River might not all be carp, but some 
other members of the carp family, such as Orthodon, Lavinia , Pogonichthys , Mylocheilus , 
Ptychocheilus, etc. 
In attributing to the carp the scarcity of canvasback and other ducks in a given 
region, tliere should be proof that the carp does and other fish do not eat and uproot 
large quantities of Vallisneria ; and the influence of market hunters and indiscrimi- 
nate killing by sportsmen must not be overlooked. The scarcity of canvasback ducks 
in most streams probably antedates the advent of the carp in noteworthy numbers, 
and, as in the Potomac, was coincident with spring shooting aud with the activity of 
pot-hunters using swivel guns. Mr. John P. Babcock, chief deputy of the California 
fish commission, states that he thinks ducks in that State have changed their feeding- 
grounds; miles of lands in the San Joaquin Yalley are now covered wi th ditches aud 
miles of alfalfa now grow where a few years ago there was a desert; and the main 
market supply of ducks comes from that region instead of the Suisun Marshes. He 
thinks, however, that the carp have proved very objectionable in this region, and in a 
letter communicates his observations, as follows : 
The carp have destroyed almost all the wild celery of the lower Sacramento and Suisun Marshes. 
They reach all the ponds during high water, and, as soon as celery comes up, they eat the shoots, and, 
in many of the best ponds on the shooting preserves, have taken roots and all of the celery. They 
have not destroyed the tule grass to any noticeable extent, if at all. The damage has been to the 
