Carp

fresh-water fishes of the family to which the club, goldfish, dace, sucker, red-eye, shiner, and the minnow also belong. The common carp is from ten to forty inches long, and weighs from one to four pounds. It may, in extreme cases, weigh fifty pounds. It has been kept in fish ponds for centuries in southern Europe and is still reared in the carp ponds of Germany and Great Britain. About 1872 efforts were made to establish the German carp in American waters. The streams of the Colorado and the Illinois River are full of them. About 7,000,000 pounds of carp are sold in New York City. The markets of Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis are supplied with carp, sold usually, however, as buffalo fish. As compared with our native fishes, the carp is decidedly inferior. Its importation, like that of the English sparrow, has proved entirely too successful. The carp is too insipid to be prized as a table fish, and, although Walton has something to say of the skill requisite to take carp in English waters, it is too logy to be a favorite with fishermen. Carp have been known to live, it is said, upward of 150 years. See Fish