Carp
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Carp. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a fresh-water fish, Cyprinus cyprio (Linn.), the type of the family Cyprinidæ. It is a native of Asia, but has been extensively introduced into Europe and the United States, especially in the latter, where it has been widely distributed by the Federal fish commissioners. It is often bred in ponds. CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS (German, Karpathen), a range of mountains in southern Europe, mostly in former Rouk, Ponapé (Ascension), and Kusari Austria-Hungary, forming a semicircular belt of nearly 800 miles in length. As a result of the peace treaty between the Entente Powers and Austria-Hungary, they belong now chiefly to the republics of Czecho-Slovakia and Poland, forming part of the new frontiers of these two states. The most southern portion, located in Bukowina, belongs to Rumania. The Carpathian chain may be divided into two great sections-the West Carpathians, to the N. W., and the East Carpathians, to the S. E., with lower ranges stretching between. To the Western Carpathians belongs the remarkable group of the Tátra. The greatest height of the East Carpathians is Ruska-Poyana, 9,909 feet; of the West Carpathians, the Eisthalerspitze, 8,521 feet; many other peaks have an elevation of over 8,000 feet. The only important rivers which actually rise in the chain are the Vistula, the Dniester, and the Theiss. The Carpathian range is rich in minerals, including gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, and iron. Salt occurs in beds, which have sometimes a thickness of 600 or 700 feet. On the plateaux corn and fruit are grown to the height of 1,500 feet. Higher up the mountain steeps are covered with forests of pine. Numerous passes cross the range, and there is much remarkable scenery. Much of the most severe fighting during the World War between the Russian and Austro-German armies occurred in the Carpathian Mountains. See WORLD WAR.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 complaint that the carp's importation "has proved entirely too successful" turned out to be the lasting verdict: the common carp (correctly Cyprinus carpio, not the "cyprio" of Collier's) is now treated as an invasive nuisance across North America rather than a fish commission triumph, and states spend heavily to control it. The bigger reversal came after the 1970s, when Asian carps — bighead, silver, grass and black — were brought in for pond and sewage-lagoon work, escaped into the Mississippi basin, and provoked electric barriers on the Chicago canal system to keep them out of the Great Lakes; in 2022 Illinois began marketing the flesh as "copi" to make the "insipid" fish sell. Globally, though, carp is no minor fish: it is among the most farmed food fishes on earth, with China producing millions of tonnes a year, and wild Danube-basin stock of the original species is now considered threatened even as the introduced fish thrives. The claim that carp live "upward of 150 years" is not supported; documented lifespans run to a few decades.
Written for this edition, 2026.