ccxl 



416. A great deal has been written and said about the natives of 



T r, , e , India preferring small fish to large ones ; 



Large fish of much more * f . 5 7°' 



value, weight for weight, than therefore the destruction ot try ought not to 

 small ones, which putrefy rapid- be put a stop to, or the poorer classes might 

 v" suffer. There is no exception throughout the 



British possessions in India and Burma where small fresh-water fishes 

 obtain so great a value as large ones, taking weight for weight — one 

 maund of large fish realising from 30 to 50 and sometimes 100 per 

 cent, above what a maund of small fish does. The latter have to be sold 

 quickly, because, being usually immature, decomposition sets in rapidly. 



417. Fish as food is employed in many ways in Asia, which it is 

 _. , f , unnecessary to specify in detail. Fish roes are 



either salted or dried. Coarse isinglass is 

 prepared from various marine forms, and exported to China from Bombay : 

 towards the Arabian Sea mostly from the percoid forms : in Malabar 

 chiefly from the siluroids : and at the months of the Ganges and down 

 the Burmese coasts from both siluroids, polynemi and other genera. 

 Salt and dried fish is largely consumed in the Madras and Bombay Presi- 

 dencies ; also in Sind ; but far inland, where the Hindu element is strong, 

 it does not find such a ready sale. Oils of two kinds are obtained — the 

 " medicinal" from the livers of sharks and other chondropterygious or carti- 

 laginous fishes: and the " simple" from either marine or fresh-water species. 



418. Fish employed as food may act injuriously on the system, 



_,. , . occasioning poisonous symptoms, and this 



Fish eaten may occasion . . ° \, ,, . n -, f . x . \. , 



poisonous symptoms more or irrespective ol their flesh being diseased or 



less severe, and due to several undergoing putrefactive changes. There may 

 causes - be gastro-intestiual irritation, or great ner- 



vous depression, with coldness of the body and extremities. Fish may 

 occasion indigestible or poisonous symptoms if eaten, which may be due 

 to their age : thus some, which are eatable when young, have been found 

 to set up irritable or poisonous effects as they become large, as Caranx 

 fallax, ahorse mackerel, which it is illegal to sell in some places should it 

 weigh above 2 jibs. Sometimes these results are attributed to the breeding 

 season ; thus, on the Indus, in the Central Provinces, and elsewhere such 

 causes have been adduced by local observers in the foregoing reports, and in 

 Europe it has been observed that the eggs and milt act as great irritants. 

 Occasionally some fish in Europe have been found to be unwholesome just 

 before the breeding season, and they have been considered unfit for food. 

 But this is not the case in all ; thus the mackerel and other marine fishes 

 are extensively eaten at this season, and in Asia the shad, Clupea palasak, 

 and the raangoe fish, Polynemus paradisevs, are excellent up to the period 

 they have deposited their eggs, after which they become thin, flabby and 

 positively unwholesome. Thus the unwholesomeness of kelts, or female 

 salmon, which have spawned, but not yet gone to the sea so as to have 

 recovered and become fit for food, has been known from ancient times. 

 Dr. Gerard Boate, Doctor of Medicine to the State in Ireland, observed 

 (1645) — " of the leprosie, which in former times used to be very common, 

 especially in the province of Minister, which was filled with hospitals 

 expressly built for to receive and keep the leprous persons. This horri- 

 ble and loathsome disease was caused through the fault and foul gluttony 

 of the inhabitants, in the unwholesome devouring of foul salmons 



