298 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HIST. SOCIETY, Vol, XXVI, 



were transferred to their new quarters in July 1904 the largest probably 

 did not exceed 6 oz. certainly not 8 oz. in weight, but with more room and 

 more food they at once began to grow amazingly. So much so that when 

 Lord Minto visited Kashmir in October 1906 a trout of 12^ lbs. in weight 

 was supplied from this lot as a special delicacy for his entertainment. 

 This fish had increased its size quite 25 times in 27 months, 



Upto to 1905 very little public interest was taken in the work though an 

 occasional sportsman visitor who had heard of it drove out to see the new 

 ponds at Harwan. Few believed that any great success was likely to be 

 achieved. In the summer of that year the new Resident Col. Pears and 

 his wife came out on 27th June to see what was doing and lunched with 

 me in the Rukh. The stream was still fairly big with snow water, but 

 after lunch I caught 8 or 9 nice little trout with fly above the old ponds at 

 Panchgam and i also saw a very heavy ti^h jump in the old " Temple " pool 

 there. A few days later Mrs. Pears told me with great amusement how 

 when she had been relating their experiences on their return to Srinagar 

 one gentleman had remarked " Oh ! Mitchell just catches the same trout 

 over and over again to make you think there are a lot of them." 



I told one of my brothers of the big fish I had seen and as he was most 

 anxious to have a try for it I asked him and three or four others to come 

 out and spend the day with me on the 9th of July. I was delayed showing 

 the others the ponds at Harwan and my brother went straight up to the 

 pool where I had told him I had seen the big trout. When I got there it 

 was gasping its last having fallen a victim to the lure of a fly spoon — 

 a perfect cock fish of 5f lbs. We had him cooked at once for lunch and his 

 fame went out into the land. Fishing began from that day and many big 

 fish up to 9 lbs. in weight were killed the following summer when I was in 

 England — nearly all on spinning tackle. 



With the 1904 consignment of ova a small quantity of rainbow ova 

 was shipped, but, being much more delicate than thefatio ova, none hatched 

 out and no further attempt was made to introduce the rainbow trout into 

 Kashmir till 1912 when we succeeded in hatching out nearly 1,000 alevins 

 from a consignment of ova presented by the Bristol Water Works from 

 their head works at Blagdon and shipped by my old Calcutta chum Mr. 

 (now Col.) W. W. Petrie by the P, & O, mail steamer. These dwindled 

 down to a very small number before they reproduced their kind, but a fair 

 stock has now been established at Harwan and with a better understanding 

 of special complaints to which this species is liable, I hope to see them 

 giving fine sport before long in waters which are rather too w^arm for the 

 brown trout. 



In February 1905 the first ova was collected from trout in Kashmir. 

 There were only a few ready to spawn and my men had had 

 no experience in handling them, so I arranged an artificial spawning 

 bed with a wire net trap for the ova and I left the trout to select their 

 own season. About 2,000 ova were collected in the net and of these only 

 some 900 proved fertile and hatched out. Unfortunately a Himalayan 

 Water Shrew got into the box one night and ate all but one of the little 

 alevins. Having done this he found he could not get out again and next 

 morning he was floating on the water drowned. The following season we 

 began stripping the trout and fertilizing the ova and in 1908 a proper 

 hatchery was built from which eyed ova up to a maximum of 1,000,000 

 have been issued yearly since that time. These have been distributed to 

 fry ponds and spring streams all over Kashmir including Gilgit and have 

 been hatched out chiefly in Pahari boxes well described in Mr. Howell's 

 article on " The making of a Himalayan Trout Stream." Ova have been 



