i7t 



been artificially embanked and sluiced in order to tbrnl 

 solar salt-pens ; at Arcachon the farm sites are, in fact, 

 chiefly old salt pans, while at Comacchio the land has, 

 from time im.memorial, been gradually dyked and sluiced 

 till it is a maze of ponds and canals ; the fish farm 

 area of Comacchio is about 90,000 acres, while that at 

 Arcachon is only about 740 acres. 



7. Now these classes of water are precisely paralleled 

 to an enormous extent in this Presidency ; on both coasts 

 there are numerous and very large backwaters, such as 

 Pulicat lake of 180 square miles, Covelong, Dugaraza- 

 pattanam, etc., while the west coast is largely a chain of 

 backwaters. Besides these there are deltaic marshes and 

 even disused salt pans. Numerous areas are capable of 

 beino- reclaimed, such as the small arms or reaches of the 

 west coast backwaters, and marshy areas which need 

 little but embanking and sluicing to form first-class fish- 

 farms. The questions then arise {a) whether the creation 

 of marine fish-farming as an industry is worth while ; {/?) 

 if worth while, whether it is possible ; if so (c) what are 

 the most suitable fish, and (d) what methods should be 

 adopted. 



8. Positive and assured answers cannot at present 

 be given to any of these questions for the simple reason 

 that no such thino- as marine fish-farmino- has ever been 

 attempted or even its possibility examined in this Presi- 

 dency. It is precisely one of the problems for the solu- 

 tion of which dy experiment, " Fisheries " exist and, as 

 will presently be shown, the problem is eminently worth 

 a few years of experiment. For the problem is to render 

 fully prodtictivehj cultivation huge areas of water which 



at present are only semi-productive ; just as wild lands 

 produce a certain small amount which may be enormously 

 increased by proper farming, so these waters if duly 

 farmed should produce much greater yields than at pre- 

 sent. For instance, though Pulicat has oyster beds and 

 a good spat fall, and there is little or no removal of the 

 oysters, there is but a small wild crop of oysters, whereas 

 in the culture experiment now in process there, a small 

 two-acre enclosure is expected to yield, as a first and 

 experimental crop, some 15,000 dozen mature oysters in 

 18 months from beginning the experiment. The exam- 

 ple is perhaps not quite parallel, but it is an example of 

 culture V. nature. 



