100 



liatcTiery sucli as will be suggested below. Ponds of tliis character 

 shaded bj fruit trees thriving on the soakag-e from the ponds and 

 providing fish food by their leaves and by the insects falling from them, 

 would supply a much needed village want in water for cattle, shade, 

 and food ; they are to be found in many of our villages and those by 

 no means in areas where rainfall is heaviest ; they are generally a 

 village inheritance from past energy or charity, and nothing is needed 

 ia thousands of villages except a little present co-operative energy. 



207. Wells. — By these are meant the great irrigation wells of 

 Coimbatore, Salem, and other districts. In Coimbatore, a district of 

 almost minimum rainfall, inland, and far from marine fish sources, 

 there are some 80,000 of these wells averaging probably 10 yards 

 square or 100 square yards, so that 50 equal one acre of water. Here, 

 then, are 1,600 acres of water which in many cases is absolutely 

 permanent, in very many more it is permanent except in unusual 

 years, while in the least permanent there is usually water from July 

 to March. A few of these wells have one or two fish (murrel) in them, 

 but they are in general not used as stock or stew ponds. They 

 naturally contain a certain amount of fisli food in and on the aquatic 

 plants found in them, and in other small life, but it would cost 

 practically nothing to supply food from the fields in the shape of 

 crabs, worms, larvse of sorts, white ants and various insects, leaves 

 and flowers of certain trees, all of which could be gathered by the 

 children ; refuse or surplus food from the house and cattle stall would 

 be both cheap and useful. The return in fish would be astonishing ; 

 those who know the weights of fish grown and maintained in small 

 ponds in trout and other hatcheries or in stew ponds of large or small 

 size in Europe, still more those who have seen small bathing tanks, a 

 few yards square, attached to mosques on the West Coast, absolutely 

 alive with hundreds of pounds of fish, will know that the two or three 

 hundred cubic yards of water in these wells will maintain a large 

 weight of fish if food be supplied as suggested. If each well provided 

 an annual weight of only 28 lb., 80,000 wells would furnish 1,000 tons 

 of fish worth from 1'5 to 2 lakhs of rupees, no mean addition to the 

 food supply and income of a district. tSince carp or murrel can be 

 readily transported it would be easy for the villagers to obtain a few 

 reproductors or a few chatties of fry from neighbouring sources, 

 especially it' either a river or one of the hatcheries to be presently 

 mentioned, is at hand. 



208. Paddy-fields. — The growth of fish in the fields in Japanese 

 fashion will be a matter of pure experiment ; nothing can be predicted 

 save this, that in fields producing a single long crop of rice and well 

 supplied, as in the deltas, with practically unfailing water, carp 

 should succeed at least as well as in Japan; fry may be seen even 

 uow in quantity in the fields and some of these escape immediate 



