101 



capture and grow to appreciable size, but the vast bulk are captured 

 at once by fine woven basket cruives at each drop from field to field. 

 Where fry are found naturally, as in the Tanjore and West Coast 

 fields, it will only be necessary to substitute bamboo gratings for 

 cruives at the exits from the fields so as simply to retain the fry in 

 the field instead of snaring it. When fry are not naturally found it 

 will be part of the hatchery experiments to supply suitable fields with 

 fry to test the feasibility of the Japanese method. Whether small 

 fish thus reared would escape the numerous paddy birds and other 

 enemies, is of course a question. 



209. De minimis relatio, for that is precisely what Japan strongly 

 teaches, viz., that the utilization of trifles, of waste spaces and materials, 

 whether sea shore bottoms or hill-tops, whether ponds "or paddy- 

 fields or back-yards or even roofs, is essential. Not trifles either 

 except individually ; multiply a pound weight by a million and the 

 result is important ; multiply lOU lb. by a million and the product is 

 immense, and the aggregate produce, however individually small, of 

 the village pond, of the irrigation well or gunta, of the paddy-field, 

 may run into many millions of pounds. Moreover it is precisely 

 because these matters are individually small that they are important; 

 a big departure can only be carried out by a large and organized 

 expenditure; a village experiment of the simplest of natures, can be 

 tried in a hundred places at once with a minimum of individual 

 expense. In a vast number of cases the experiment could be tried at 

 absolutely no cost save that of obtaining a few fry ; in many others 

 simply by a small exercise of village co-operative energy which 

 ary intelligent well-wisher of his village could ensure. After all 

 nothing is too small for profit ; a pond ■will produce gratis a hundred 

 ■weight of fish, a tamarind tree in a backyard will pay the kist of a 

 field ; Tamulice " Even the corner of a field will produce (the cost of) 

 a cloth " ; the pond, the tree, and the backyard havo not yet been 

 properly exploited in Madras. 



210. HatcJteries. — The Government share in the stocking of inland 

 waters is the establishment, more japouico, of hatcheries or sources of 

 fry at convenient places. It is proposed, if the Public Works Depart- 

 ment see no objection, to establish the first near Nellore at the Kani- 

 giri reservoir. This is a real lake of about 20 square miles in area 

 and 21*5 feet deep at the sluice at F.T.L. ; at its lowest in the hot 

 weather it has an area of about 2 square miles with about 1 14 million 

 cubic feet of water ; though it contains large fish, such as freshwater 

 sharks, murrel and other predaceous fish, it produces little in the way 

 of food supply, the fish rental for the past three years averaging only 

 Rs. 410 though the netting of the shallow water of the hot weather 

 is very easy. Its cubical contents at F.T.L. are not less than 6,000 

 million cubic feet ; at the minimum rate of 50 cubic yards per pound 



