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immemorial supplied themselves with fish in any way they could, I 

 would not recommend that this right £is it a right or a license, see para- 

 graph 129; and is it abused or not so ?] and amusement be interfered 

 with/'' To carry out any rules, lie considers that he should require a 

 large police establishment, the subordinates of which would be beyond 

 all control and of no use whatever. But that poisoning streams which 

 is only done in very little ones should be prohibited, and could be easily 

 carried out. The Officiating Senior Assistant, Commissioner of Kumaon, 

 Major Fisher, remarked (January 29th, 1872), that "both breeding-fish and 

 very young ones are destroyed in this district to a very great extent, so 

 much so that the absence of them as an article of diet in the Almorah 

 and Nynee Tal markets, as compared with former years, is very notice- 

 able, and it is a comparatively rare thing now to see good fish for break- 

 fast, even at a European table. The destiuction of fish and their absence 

 now from some of our large rivers, such as the Surjoo in the Eastern, 

 and the Ramgunga in Western Kumaon, is equally noticeable. In parts 

 of these rivers, where a good angler could take his six or eight fish of a day, 

 averaging from 6 to 12 lbs. each, the same man would not now take 2, 

 although the angler of to-day has many devices in the way of artificial 

 baits, which the sportsman of former days had not/' There are three 

 or four ways of destroying young and large fish : (1) by a heavily leaded 

 cast-net, the fisherman wading waist-deep into the stream to employ it. 

 (2) " By the use of a stout cord, thrown right across a stream ; to one 

 end is attached a short stick for a man to hold, whilst the other 

 end of the cord is held slackly by a man on the opposite bank. Then 

 two men generally stand on commanding rocks, overlooking some deep 

 pool where the current is not rapid. The cord itself is armed with large 

 iron hooks at intervals of two or three feet, being each of them about the 

 size of one Used in a patent weighing machine. The cord, thus armed, 

 is kept about 18 inches or two feet, sometimes deeper, below the sur- 

 face of the stream. Some men now go down below the pool, and with 

 bamboos or poles stir up the fish from below, whilst, at the same time, 

 the water from this process becomes muddy. The half-blinded and 

 frightened fish make for the deep water of the pool above, and as they 

 pass over the cord, the man holding the stick, jerks the cord with great 

 skill and strength, and many a fine fish is hooked by the gills, or the 

 tail, or through the lower portion of the stomach : as to the Kumaon 

 it is immaterial how, so long as the fish is landed. This process not only 

 destroys large numbers of fish, but wounds and injures very many 

 others which go away only to die. (3) By placing at intervals from three 

 to four feet, on a weir used for irrigation purposes, conical-shaped baskets, 

 the point of the cone being below, and the open mouth of the cone on 

 a level with the weir. This device is chiefly successful at night. 

 The baskets are generally placed in portions of the weir where the stream 

 is strongest, and an unwary fish coming too close to the weir finds 

 himself hurled into a basket from which it is quite impossible to 

 escape. It is needless to point out how injurious this process 

 of destruction is to the ascent of fish before the breeding season, 

 and their descent when breeding is over; practically, it requires a very 

 clever fish to go up for breeding purposes, and return to the point start- 

 ed from uninjured, for it has to cross and re-cross several of these 



