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being costly, was used in greatly insufficient quantity ; 

 they will now use duty-free salt under the Madras rules 

 above mentioned. Boats such as these and work such as 

 they do, appear to show that deep-sea fishing" will pay 

 sailing boats, — possibly with auxiliary motor-power — 

 very well, and a season or two should entirely settle this 

 question ; if the answer is in the affirmative, a large field 

 for increasing the regular supply of fish will be opened 

 out. It is doubtful, however, if, at present prices, steam 

 can possibly pay ; in these Madras waters trawling is out 

 of the question and steam drifting and lining of uncertain 

 success. In any case the natural primary development 

 from the catamaran and canoes is to the small sailing 

 smack, with perhaps auxiliary motor-power and motor 

 carriers to save time when fish must be brought fresh 

 to shore ; from catamaran to steam trawler would, in 

 Madras zvate7'S, be a leap economically unnatural and 

 commercially hazardous. 



A method of increasing the food supply is by 

 pisciculture, but for the present this, with one exception, 

 can only be carried out in inland (fresh) waters. The 

 exception is that of the culture of shell-fish, such as 

 oysters and mussels, as so widely carried out in western 

 countries and Japan ; being non-migratory these animals 

 yield the largest returns to careful culture ; where the 

 oyster is laid there he stays and grows. These shell-fish 

 are very abundant and prolific in India, the backwaters 

 teeming with them, and growing them at rates un- 

 exampled outside of the tropics. The edible oyster is 

 found of good quality in most of the backwaters and can 

 be obtained at nominal rates since it is eaten by Indians 

 only to a small extent ; the water at the spawning season 

 is full of spat, and the simplest of means will ensure 

 abundant crops ; mussels of huge size and clams are also 

 found in great abundance. It has been found by 

 experiment at Ennore that the oyster spawns in the 

 backwater on the stimulus provided by the inrush of 

 fresh water in the rainy season (there the north-east 

 monsoon), and tile collectors put down in October 1908 

 in a somewhat unfavourable corner of the lagoon, were 

 found coverei with spat in the middle of December of 

 the same year, with the astonishing additional fact that 

 some of the young oysters had attained the diameter of 

 if inches in a maximum period of ten weeks, a rate of 



