NOTES ON THE WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA. !>7 



NOTES ON THE WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA, 



Part I.—" British Deccan and Khandesh." 

 By a Member of the Society. 



The following rough notes on the waters of Western India are 

 written " gryphonibus puerisque," and I do not suppose them to 

 contain much original matter of any scientific value. It is hardly 

 necessary to say that I have drawn freely upon the standard 

 works of Drs. Jerdon, Nicholson, Day, and Gunther, but more special 

 acknowledgment is due to later and less known local writers, 

 Mr. Wendon, C.E., Dr. Fairbank, Captain Butler, and ether 

 officers who contributed to the Bombay Gazetteer and the Reports 

 attached to the Bombay contributions to the Fisheries Exhibition. 

 Even of my own observations, the memoranda used in these notes 

 have mostly been put at the service of the officers who compiled 

 these last-named publications, or used in a lecture delivered before 

 the Royal Asiatic Society. For the Indian angler, Mr. Thomas's 

 u Rod in India" stands by itself ; and whoever wants to catch fish 

 in this country ought to read it, and not depend on my incomplete 

 remarks. 



As but few Europeans on this side of India are much in the 

 way of sea fishing, I shall begin by describing the fresh waters 

 of the Presidency, which are divided between four very well- 

 marked regions. 



The first of these is that of the Deccan and Khandesh. All along 

 the Western Ghats a number of torrents rising very close to their 

 scarped edge flow eastwards ; generally, at first, with a good deal of 

 southing. Within a very few miles of their sources these unite to form 

 rivers, the beds of which a good deal resemble those of salmon rivers 

 in Northern Europe ; but their streams differ from these in an 

 important particular. Instead of the alternate rise and fall which 

 make European angling a speculative pursuit, we have here three or 

 four months of continual flood, while for the rest of the year each 

 river becomes a chain of pools connected (if at all) by a very insignifi- 

 cant current. Another matter very important to the fish is that this 

 region of torrents and moderate-sized rivers is also one of rice cultiva- 

 tion carried on in small pond-like fields called kasars, through which a 

 great deal of the water from the hill sides must pass before it 

 reaches any definite channel. Below the rice region these rivers 

 generally flow through wide valleys for from 50 to 100 miles 



