By means of special fish cars, sent literally all over the United States, at a great total expense, live carp, hatched in the ponds near the Washington Monument were distributed to all applicants.  The German carp spread far and wide; but to-day I think the fish has about as many enemies as friends.  In some places, strong objections have been filed to the manner in which carp stir up the mud at the bottom of ponds and small lakes, greatly to the detriment of all the native fishes found therein.

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CHAPTER XXXV

INTRODUCED SPECIES THAT HAVE BECOME PESTS

The man who successfully transplants or “introduces” into a new habitat any persistent species of living thing, assumes a very grave responsibility.  Every introduced species is doubtful gravel until panned out.  The enormous losses that have been inflicted upon the world through the perpetuation of follies with wild vertebrates and insects would, if added together, be enough to purchase a principality.  The most aggravating feature of these follies in transplantation is that never yet have they been made severely punishable.  We are just as careless and easy-going on this point as we were about the government of the Yellowstone Park in the days when Howell and other poachers destroyed our first national bison herd, and when caught red-handed—­as Howell was, skinning seven Park bison cows,—­could not be punished for it, because there was no penalty prescribed by any law.

To-day, there is a way in which any revengeful person could inflict enormous damage on the entire South, at no cost to himself, involve those states in enormous losses and the expenditure of vast sums of money, yet go absolutely unpunished!

THE GYPSY MOTH is a case in point.  This winged calamity was imported at Maiden, Massachusetts, near Boston, by a French entomologist, Mr. Leopold Trouvelot, in 1868 or ’69.  History records the fact that the man of science did not purposely set free the pest.  He was endeavoring with live specimens to find a moth that would produce a cocoon of commercial value to America; and a sudden gust of wind blew out of his study, through an open window, his living and breeding specimens of the gypsy moth.  The moth itself is not bad to look at, but its larvae is a great, overgrown brute, with an appetite like a hog.  Immediately Mr. Trouvelot sought to recover his specimens, and when he failed to find them all. like a man of real honor, he notified the State authorities of the accident.  Every effort was made to recover all the specimens, but enough escaped to produce progeny that soon became a scourge to the trees of Massachusetts.  The method of the big, nasty-looking mottled-brown caterpillar was very simple.  It devoured the entire foliage of every tree that grew in its sphere of influence.

The gypsy moth spread with alarming rapidity and persistence.  In course of time the state authorities of Massachuestts were forced to begin a relentless war upon it, by poisonous sprays and by fire.  It was awful!  Up to this date (1912) the New England states and the United States Government service have expended in fighting this pest about $7,680,000!