278 Stocking Ponds. Chapt. xxit. 



fish ; the small black one, Tamil, Ummachi,ia the most common and 

 the most useful. They will soon multiply astoundingly, and the 

 minute young snails, smaller than any pin's head, form excellent 

 food for fry, while the full grown ones are taken by the mature 

 fish. If you like to take the opportunity of breeding some in a 

 glass tank, it is very pretty to see how they feed. Crumble some 

 biscuit powder very fine between your fingers, and let it drop 

 quietly on the water, and it will cover the surface like scum. You 

 will then see how the stationary snail feeds itself thereon. 

 Remaining quite stationary on the glass, it creates a current which 

 draws the fine biscuit powder to and past it in a continuous 

 stream; and if yon watch closely, you will observe that there is 

 much less biscuit powder in the stream that leaves it than in the 

 stream that comes to it. I thought to breed snails for my fish, 

 and put some in a large bathing tub in my garden. They did 

 famously, till an observant old Turkey cock went bis rounds one 

 morning and ate them. Similia similibus curantur, sol ate him. 

 I should think it would not be a bad plan if you are preserv- 

 ing fish very closely, so closely that you want to feed them for the 

 table, as in stews, to have a separate very small pond in which 

 to breed snails free from being preyed on when minute, so as 

 to have a constant and large supply of mature ones wherewith to 

 feed your fish. Snails are excellent scavengers, and rapidly clarify 

 water. 



A few water-weeds will help to clarify your water, will give 

 food and harbour to both fish and snails, as well as numerous 

 larva? which make fish food; and some fish will lay their ova 

 on them. But if your pond is frequented by bathers, you must 

 be careful what you put in. I have known a poor fellow 

 drowned by having his legs caughl by weeds, and I had a most 

 narrow escape of it myself, when swimming home after snipe 

 shooting, in preference to walking a long way round a long 

 tank. There is a weed which grows from the bottom by a Ion- 

 stem, about the thickness of your Mahseer running line, with 

 small hairs at long intervals on each side of the stem. It is 

 very brittle, and easily breaks away from the swimmer, and it 

 is belov.d by the fish, and snails, and larvae, and easily remove- 

 able when excessive, and it does not die down and make the 

 water offensive at times, as some other weeds do. In Tamil, it 

 is indifferently called perwnypi&shi, kodipashi, and ilaipishi. 



