270 Spawning. Chapt. xxi. 



becomes a fish fit for the table ; whereas man lias learnt by 

 artificial means to bring about three quarters to maturity. 



The Mahseer and many other fish breed in the same way, with 

 this difference, that the Mahseer appears, as already shown (page 

 27), to lay its eggs not all at one time, but in several batches. 

 The Mahseer might, therefore, be artificially multiplied in the same 

 way as the salmon and the trout. 



In India, however, we have another means of culture in the 

 rice-fields, which are filled at times with the fry of all sorts of fish, 

 the Mahseer, I believe, amongst others. As it is the instinct of 

 some mature fish to ascend the rivers for the purpose of spawning 

 in small waters calculated to suit the puny strength of their tiny 

 fry, and by their shallowness to afford them protection from preda- 

 tory fish, so is it the instinct of their fry to descend, as they grow, 

 to deeper, wider waters. In India, moreover, they are compelled 

 to do this by the decreasing in the hot weather of the rivers. 

 Down ^the river these fry dawdle, therefore, feeding as they go. 

 But as the rivers are frequently dammed up and turned off for 

 irrigation purposes, they naturally go with the stream down the 

 irrigation channel, and consequently find themselves in a rice-field. 

 In the shallow water of the rice field, and under the shadow of 

 the growing rice, they would do very well, were it not that death 

 awaits them at every turn, in basket traps placed at every drop 

 from rice-field to rice-field, into which they fall by still following 

 their natural instinct of descending the stream. It is hoped the 

 day is coining when these rice fields will, some of them, be utilized 

 for the preservation, instead of the destruction of fry, and others 

 have their connection with the river guarded with gratings. 



While some fish, like the Salmon, the Trout, and the Mahseer, 

 lay their eggs in hollows worked out in the gravel, others lay them 

 in the sand, where it is pretty to see the tiny fry still nestled 

 together after birth, so closely that they look like one black spot, 

 in a hollow like an inverted cone of one or two nnhcs in diameter, 

 with their umbilical sacks still unabsorbed. Other fish, again, like 

 the perch, lay their eggs in long strings like beads, and adhering 

 by a glutinous matter to bushes. The stickle-back builds a nest 

 among the reeds and keeps tierce guard over it. It is the male, 

 stickle-back that builds the nest, and that unaided by the female, 

 for in due conformity to the rule- of modern society he makes no 



