lxxxviii 



man paid a tax on his profession, and could exercise it without hin- 

 drance." " As regards the necessity for the measure, the opinion of the 

 District Officers does not coincide with that of Dr. Day," and this Sub- 

 Collector (for only one opinion is forwarded) is averse to the fisheries 

 being- let. No further legislation is necessary respecting poisoning 

 waters. He doubts if leasing fisheries would tend to their conservation, 

 and, if carried out, will be most unpopular and give rise to great dis- 

 content. 



168. The Acting Collector of South Canara (March 5th, 1869), 



observed, " every contrivance that the inge- 



Sout P htnaf thG C0UeCt ° r ° f *»% of ma * can suggest is so actively 



employed against the fishes of the district, 

 that one is driven to the unavoidable conclusion that the poorer classes 

 are eagerly aiming, with one accord, to accomplish at an early date the 

 extermination of the species. * ■ * * The large still pools in 

 the rivers are annually poisoned with a mash made of croton oil seeds, 

 soap nut, cocculus Indicus, chillies, fowl's dung, and other deleterious 

 substances, which destroy not only the larger fish preserved for food, but 

 also a multitude of small fry, only killed to be thrown away. * * 

 The pools in which, when the rivers are at their lowest, the fish are 

 chiefly congregated, are thus thoroughly depopulated, and the stream is 

 tainted for some w T ay down, and thus rendered unwholesome, not only to 

 fishes and insects, but also to men, beasts, and birds that unwarily drink 

 of it. A regular time is fixed, and the villagers unite to dam the stream, 

 collect poisons, and gather the fish. Then there are wall-nets, and cast- 

 nets, and stake-nets, and Chinese-nets, and purse-nets, and trawl-nets, 

 and drum-nets, and shrimp-nets, nets with large meshes, and nets with 

 very small meshes. There are bamboo labyrinth weirs to entrap fishes 

 going up stream, and bamboo labyrinth weirs to entrap them going down 

 stream, and these are set in every tempting run, all other ways being 

 stopped. Their name is legion. Smooth paths are made for little fish 

 to glide into pleasant places, which end in a purse-net, or are dammed 

 up and baled out. The myriads of small fry that are thus destroyed is 

 beyond all computation. I saw one day some thousands as fine as a 

 straw, within the compass of one earthen-pot ; they were to form one 

 meal for a labouring man, whereas they might have sufficed to stock a 

 lake and feed a town. I have also seen basket-loads of fish about the 

 size of a man's thumb, — fish of a sort which I know grow to the size of 

 a man's thigh. Small fry of many sorts is sold by the seer. * 



Even the crocodile, with its cruel eye, is wiser, less suicidal, and less 

 wantonly destructive than man ; it is not so short-sighted as to commit 

 wholesale massacre of the small fry. * * * I cannot but think 

 that the time has arrived when intelligence should interfere between 

 ignorance and waste. It is so obvious that the beneficent arrangements 

 of Nature have been ordered, with the express view of the intelligent 

 interference of the Lords of Creation, that it really seems nothing but 

 indolence of thought, or indolence of action, that prevents us from reap- 

 ing the intended advantage, more especially as the almost incredible 

 reproductive powers of fish place it in our power to redeem in the course 

 of four or five years the folly of a century." 



