546 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH' AND FISHERIES. 



flow out of or into a great river ricli in fish is absolutely prohibited 

 during six months of the year, from March to September, in order to se- 

 cure the fishes against the rapacity of their pursuers and to insure 

 propagation. The maintenance of these provisions and political inspec- 

 tion of the waters is presided over by specially selected mandarins and 

 Ijrivate citizens, to which last the state leases fishing privileges by can- 

 tonments. These general lessees, called konau-ho, pay a yearly tax to 

 the state, and are i^ledged, 1, to appoint times for planting a quantity 

 of young fish in the waters leased by them, corresi)onding with the ex- 

 tent of these waters ; 2, to see that communication between their waters 

 and the rivers rich in fish is always open at the spawning season, so 

 that the fish may come into them to spawn ; 3, with a stringent watch- 

 fulness to see that no one fishes during the time from March to Septem- 

 ber, and that nothing is done which can work injury to the thriving of 

 the fish. In comj)ensation, no one is allowed to fish in their canton- 

 ments without written permission, which they furnish to companies who 

 carry on fishing according to the regulations created by the lessees. In 

 rivers of medium size the close season is reduced to three months, and 

 in the largest rivers which empty into the sea every one is allowed to 

 fish during the whole year. 



Owing to these provisions and the universal household fish-culture, 

 fresh-water fish constitute a very large part of the accustomed food of 

 the people, and so it has been from time immemorial without this source 

 of nourishment ever having threatened to be exhausted.* The ancient 

 Eomans likewise carried on systematic fish-culture to a considerable ex- 

 tent, and their methods have not in the flight of time gone entirely into 

 oblivion ; but this cultivation was in the main only the enterprise of 

 private individuals in inclosed fish-ponds. Universal legal provisions 

 having in view the preservation of the abundance of fish in the open, 

 generally accessible and pubhc waters, scarcely existed ; because if this 

 had been the case it would, like the rest of the Eoman laws, without 

 doubt have been observed, at least to some extent, through the lapse of 

 time, and would also doubtless have prevented the universal diminution 

 of the abundance of fish, which in all the most civilized countries of 

 Europe exists even down to the present time. The practice of the Eo- 

 mans is, however, as remarked, not entirely forgotten ; they have in most 

 countries continued to a greater or less extent to maintain fish-ponds, 

 and to supi^ly them with young in a manner which may be called artifi- 

 cial, in so far as this supplying goes on under direct human sui)ervision, 

 and is not left entirely to nature's care. It has similarly also been prose- 

 cuted here in Norway, at one time or another, by certain rich men ; they 

 say, also, that the monks at Storhammer have attemi)ted it. It is pre- 

 sumably this circumstance alone which explains the occurrence, in a 

 coui)le of places of a species of fish, the carp, which does not belong to 

 vOur northern fauna, and of another which is indigenous in the eastern 



* Dabry de Thiersant, French consul-general in China, 1871. 



