24 The Natural History of the Mahseer. Chapt. hi. 



where else it had grown to be the common idea that it was 

 exclusively a Bengal fish, and at the time I wrote rny first edition 

 tlinv was a general impression that there were no Mahseer south 

 of the Nerbuddah. That idea is now exploded. 



People talk of the Mahseer, just as they talk of the carp, as 

 if there was only one of them, whereas the name Mahseer is 

 loosely used for many of the larger carps of India, which differ 

 witli the countries in which they are caught, and when fishermen 

 who have caught Mahseer in the North of India, on the West 

 Coast and on the East Coast of Southern India, get together, and 

 describe the redoubted Mahseer somewhat differently before a 

 circle of eager listeners, and thence come to disputing with each 

 other as to who is most accurate, one is reminded of the old fable 

 of the gold and silver shields which the two knights saw and 

 fought about, and as a fisherman my advice would be, the less 

 carping about it the better. 



The name Mahseer is seemingly derived from the Hindustani 

 words iitalni great and sir (pronounced seer) head, ami as the carps 

 (Fam. Cyprinidu') make up in India a little family of several 

 hundred species, and as the larger carps also are not few in 

 number, it is as well to confine the use of the name Mahseer to 

 the large-headed or large-mouthed carps. The distinction will 

 be found useful to anglers, for large-mouthed and small-mouthed 

 fish of the same family feed differently, and the baits to be 

 tendered to them should in consequence differ accordingly. The 

 want of this simple distinction has led to the Camatic Carp being 

 called a Mahseer, and to some loss of sport thereby, as will be 

 seen in the Chapter on that fish. 



The size of the Mahseer depends much on the size of the river 

 in which it is found, and possibly on other circumstances also with 

 which we are not acquainted, but certainly on the size of the 

 river. The size of salmon at home is similarly found to be not a 

 little dependent on the size of the river they frequent Size in a 

 river affects both the feeding and the life-time of fish, for a huge 

 river a fiords a greater quantity, a greater variety, and in India a 

 more continuous supply of food than a small river does, and it 

 also ordinarily affords greater opportunities for evading capture. 

 The consequence is that there are rivers in which the Mahseer 

 do not run above 10 or 12 lbs; there are others, again, in 



