During the breeding season, the males of many species assume a more brilliant livery, or develop excrescences and tubercles on various parts of the head, especially on the snout, or also on the body and fins.
The common Carp of Europe is said to have been introduced from China early in the seventeenth century. The Chinese continue to import Carp into Malaya and to grow them in stock-ponds. The imported Carp are the Tiam (Chinese) (Labeo molitorella), the Ling (Chinese) (Cyprinus carpio), and the Hwan (Chinese) (Ctenopharyngodon idellus).
The ova are shipped from China in large jars full of fresh water and the contents of the jars are regularly and vigorously stirred with a stick or paddle during the voyage, to oxygenize the eggs, and by the time the jars arrive in this country they contain thousands of fry.
These fish are very popular among the Chinese and fetch high prices in the markets. They attain a length of three feet or more and a weight of perhaps 20 to 25 pounds. The utilitarian owners feed them on food of such a disgusting nature, principally excreta, that I can say nothing as to their edible qualities, as I have never felt any wish to taste them.
I imported some many years ago and intended to stock a pond in Kuala Pilah but unfortunately the ship was placed in quarantine and as their period of confinement in jars is limited, all the fry perished. These imported Carp have not, so far as I know, been bred in this country and it is more than likely that they require fresh running streams for the natural development of their ova.
The question of stocking some of our streams may be worth consideration, but I doubt it, as we have so many indigenous Carp. In this connection it is well to remember that these Carp which have been artificially bred for centuries, have yielded numerous examples of hybridism. I have read in an American magazine of a sportsman who for lack of other bait used aquarium gold fish (Carp) very successfully as live bait. He kept a stock of them in a fountain where they interbred with small species of American Carp with the most extraordinary results.
Professors Max Weber and de Beaufort write of the Cyprinus, "Distribution: Fresh water of temperate parts of Asia and Europe, from where introduced in many parts of the world and changed into many varieties."
We have many species of Barbus including the famous sporting fish the Mahseer of India, our Těmoleh (Barbus mosal). The Kěrai (Barbus neilli) is said by Day to attain a weight of 50 or 60 pounds.
