( 41 ) 



to sudden and violent floods. The population near the river's 

 hanks are small, and sufficient large fish is ohtainable for them 

 without destroying the fry, and thus, during the yearly 

 inundations, they are carried into the dhdnds throughout 

 the country. 



LVI. Before entering upon the various modes of cap- 

 Breeding-fish and fry waste- ture, and omitting the questions of 

 fully destroyed. taking migratory breeding, and the 



poisoning of fish, I propose examining whether fish are allowed 

 to be icastefully destroyed either in the form of breeding 

 ones or as fry. Many fish, as already pointed out (para. 

 XLVI, &c. ), during the seasons of monsoons and inundations, 

 pass up small channels into irrigated fields for the purpose 

 of breeding ; at these times they appear to have lost much 

 of their natural timidity, and are only solicitous to reach a 

 suitable locality to deposit their ova. No portion of this 

 enquiry, as regards the non-migratory forms of fish, is more 

 important than this, and the following are the answers 

 received : — In the Panjab, in a few tehsils the trapping of 

 breeding-fish in the irrigated fields is recorded. In Sind, 

 partly due to its almost absence of rain, this species of fish- 

 ing can scarcely be carried on. In the North-Western Pro- 

 vinces, breeding-fish and the fry are destroyed in every division, 

 in any way in which they can be procured (p. cxlvi) ; 

 even if the simple destruction of fry is not waste, they are 

 also shown to be killed, and in places left to rot (p. cxlix), 

 as in damming hill streams ; or at fishing weirs (p. clxi), 

 where the large fish only are sold, the young left to 

 perish and decay : or standing weirs are permitted to span 

 whole rivers, and as the waters from above become mrwhole- 

 some, fish attempt in vain to descend, but the owners of these 

 weirs allow no passage, and as they die in myriads, cart 

 them off as manure (p. clxii.) Out of 16 answers 

 from native officials as to whether fish are trapped during 

 rains in irrigated fields, 3 state they are not, and 13 that 

 they are. In Oudh, some of the native officials assert 

 that breeding-fish are not trapped during the rains, and 20 

 assert that they are in their districts. In the Bombay 

 Presidency, every Collector who has answered this question 

 (except Kaladghi) considers they are destroyed, and a native 

 official in the Kaladghi Collectorate states they are in his 

 district during the rains. In the Haidarabad Assigned 

 Districts, but one opinion appears to prevail, namely, that 

 they are taken in every possible way, but in some districts 



