26 The Natural History of the Mahseer. Chapt. in. 



" It had a shoulder like a bullock, steeply hanging over. I have 

 " caught about 50 of them, but my next largest was about 90 lbs. 

 " I have no doubt in my own mind that they run over 200 or 250 

 " lbs., as I have seen teeth and bones of them far larger than my 

 " 150-pounder ; they are often caught by the natives." 



S.i huge wire these heads that one of them fully covered the 

 skeleton of an unusually fine sambre's head, and I had arranged 

 it in my hall with the sambres head inside the Mahseer's head, and 

 the grand antlers coming, as if naturally, out of the Mahseer's head, 

 when a friend called. He looked round at the various spoils of 

 bison, sambre, fish, &c, till he cast Iris eyes on this. " Rather a 

 " rare buffalo isn't it ? " said I. " Have you ever shot one like 

 "it?" "Buffalo! Buffalo!! It's not a buffalo," he said, "but 

 " it's something of the cow tribe." I had owed him one. But he 

 was not long before he left me again in Ins debt. 



Dr. Pay, in his "Monograph of Indian Cyprinidse, Part II, 

 miller Barium (barhodes) tor, writes : "A noted sportsman in the 

 " N.W. Provinces writing to me says, his largest fish taken with 

 •' a rod and line was captured in the River I'oonch, 24 miles from 

 " Jheluni; it measured from snout to bifurcation of tail 3 feet 

 "11 inches and weighed 621bs. . . The cube of a fish's length 

 "gives his weight in pounds; fish may vary a pound or two 

 " according to condition, but the test is wonderfully correct." I 

 confess to a lack of confidence in the rule myself, for 1 think that 

 fish of the same species vary much, not only with the condition 

 of the same individual at different seasons and in different rivers 

 and climates, but from individuality of figure, contracted probably 

 from accidents of feeding in earliest youth. Observe the difference 

 in the weights and lengths of the fish contrasted immediately above 

 by Mr. Sanderson. 



Though purely fresh-water fish, Mahseer are more or less 

 migratory in their habits, ascending during the floods considerable 

 heights, two thousand five hundred feet to my knowledge in the 

 I lanara district, ten pound fish being there found half way up the 

 Mereara (Jhat, and travelling long distanees for the sake of spawn- 

 ing. When the streams are swollen by the monsoon rains they 



arc able to ascend to parts of the river till then unapproachable 

 for want of water. There they find fresh feeding grounds that are 

 Mi.i cessible to them at other times. There they linger till the 



