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trapping is not employed. In Mysor and Coorg, the native 

 officials consider that fish, irrespective of time or condition, 

 are captured in every conceivable manner. In Madras, 

 trapping breeding- fish and young ones appears to be the rule. 

 Fishing weirs are permitted to extend across whole rivers, 

 not allowing even fry to pass ; there is no close time what- 

 ever anywhere. Damming and lading out and poisoning 

 waters are freely resorted to for fishing purposes. At Midnapur 

 (p. clxxxii), breeding-fish are said to be destroyed to a great 

 extent ; in Burdwan (p. clxxxiii), they are largely taken for 

 consumption ; in fact, they are killed, it appears from the 

 answers, throughout Bengal, whether in Orissa or in Assam. 

 The parent fish being thus shown to be slaughtered when- 

 ever and wherever procurable, it is necessary to enquire 

 whether the fry fare any better. In the Panjab, prior to 

 the introduction of the present rules regulating the mini- 

 mum size of the mesh at \\ inches between each knot, large 

 numbers of young fish were sold as chilwas ; the destruc- 

 tion is considered to be now diminishing. In Oudh, it is 

 asserted that in twenty districts fry are captured in large quan- 

 tities, but that this does not take place in two ; the reports 

 from four native officials give 68,300 maunds of fry as yearly 

 killed in their districts alone. If fry are calculated at 

 one grain each, a destruction in four districts of up- 

 wards of 14,000,000,000 grains of young fish, which, 

 in less than a year, would, taking an average of the sorts, 

 weigh as many pounds — so the opinion that nothing need be 

 done may be open to dispute. In Bombay, the fry of fish 

 appear to be almost universally captured throughout the 

 rains. In the Haidarabad Assigned Districts the same uni- 

 versal destruction is reported, as is it also in Mysor and 

 Coorg. In the Madras Presidency, the fry are wastefully 

 destroyed whenever and wherever they can be obtained ; nets 

 that will catch a " black-ant," or detain a mosquito, or even 

 the eggs of fish are recorded, whilst the interspace of the 

 substances forming traps is said to be less. In Bengal, fry 

 are stated not to be wastefully destroyed, but only to be cap- 

 tured whenever they can be caught, either for eating or 

 storing tanks with (p. clxxxi) ; as observes the Commissioner 

 of Bajshahye (p. clxxxvi), bamboo contrivances for fish- 

 catching are in use in every paddy-field ; in Assam 

 (p. ccxxix), " many of the river fish, some of which attain a 

 large size, come annually up the smaller streams and deposit 

 their spawn, and the young ones of these are during the 



