cultivating various aquatic products in novel and highly successful 

 ways, and of scientifically using such products in manufactures. 



The conclusions are necessarily of the highest importance in India. 

 For, in Japan — and it was for this reason that it has been studied — we 

 see a very aucient and gcucral industi-y of paiamount importance to 

 the h'fe ot the pcoplOj but pui-sued till the Restoration of 1867 only in 

 primitive and customary methods ; subsequent to that date we can 

 watch tlie ap})lioation to that industry of scientific foresight, the doH- 

 berate grafting thereon by far-sighted authority and by keen-minded 

 business men, of all that western knowledge and experience could 

 teach, together with large additions suited to or needed by the condi- 

 tions of the people and of the industry, such as experimental stations, 

 fishery schools, associations, etc., which are not required or are not 

 general in Europe or the United States of America, where private 

 enterprise and capital, the advanced condition of the correlated fishing 

 industries, the habit of forming private syndicates or companies, 

 render Government initiative useless, and intervention unwelcome, 

 save in exceptional cases. In India we have an industry equally 

 primitive with that of the Japanese before 18G7, a fishing population 

 less numerous, less hardy, less adventurous, less adaptive, and more 

 readily content with that which is ; infinitely suspicious of Govern- 

 ment interference yet almost incapable of initiative or of serious new 

 departures without such intervention. Hitherto little has been done 

 save in the grant of cheap salt in the fish-curing yards and in a 

 general improvement o£ communications ; Can Japan give us hints as 

 to the wisest methods of further progress ? The present note is a first 

 attempt to answer this question- 



The note is in no way intended as a history or as a description ; 

 it discusses solely such points as seem of importance in dealing 

 with the final object of enquiry, viz., the development of Madras 

 fisheries ; only so much of a general nature is eritered as is necessary 

 for a proper understanding of the subject. 



GimERAL. 



2. Statistics. — The nutriment of the Japanese is practically con- 

 fined to vegetable food and fish, since meat and dairy products are 

 in general unknown ; hence the necessary complement of agriculture 

 is the fish supply, and the fishing industry has been universally prac- 

 tised from time immemorial on the 13,O00 or 11,000 miles which, 

 including estuaries and other indentations, but excluding Formosa 

 and many minor islands, form the coast line of 116 main and connected 

 islands. The fisher folk in 1904 numbered 907,132 households with 

 a population of about 5 million, of whom 939,893 were fishermen — 

 including boys actually at work — whose solo business is fishing, while 

 about 1*4 million combine fisJiiug with some other business such as 



