282 Slocking Ponds. ( Ihapt. xxii. 



there became 4,000 lbs. of fish a year at the very lowest calculation, 

 and more probably 6,000 lbs., or 7,000 lbs., what might not a fair 

 start with some 20 lbs. weight of fry do ? and greater results might 

 also be expected from ponds that are so much larger. 



But any pond well stocked with fish is a standing temptation 

 to professional poachers with nets. Such gentry have a way of 

 coming by night when honest men are in bed. They have ways, 

 too, of intimidating and buying up your watchman, especially in 

 India, where your watchman is of their creed., colour, and lan- 

 guage, not yours at all. I do not see any reliable way of prevent- 

 ing netting in India, but covering old casks or boxes with strong 

 tenter-hooks, and sinking them all over the pond by half filling 

 them with stones. Let it be known that you have done so, and no 

 fishermen will adventure their nets in your ponds. Anglers tackle 

 may sometimes be caught in them, but not often, and it cannot be 

 helped. Pyrimidal stones used in England for keeping nets off the 

 bottom, and thus letting the fish escape, without endangering 

 tackle, would be perfectly useless in India, where the native 

 fishermen are accustomed to dive and follow their nets under 

 water, helping them over every rock and snag. Such tenter-hook 

 armed boxes would, of course, be against your own netting of your 

 own ponds when you wanted to supply fry. But you would have 

 to throw a casting net in the spaces between the boxes, which 

 spaces would in the daylight be well known to you. 



I ought to have mentioned that the Gourami bears transport 

 excellently, and that all fry are best transported when about 4 

 inches long. At night they do not suffer from the sun. The 

 water in which they are should be changed occasionally, and 

 constantly aerated by taking a little water out, and pouring it in 

 from a height, or by blowing air in with a bellows or syringe. 



If you protect your pond against netting it is obvious that you 

 must put in no sorts that are to be caught only with nets, as they 

 will have perfect immunity from capture, and will be likely in the 

 end to outbalance the other sorts. 



I have spoken of fish as predaceous and non-predaceons, whereas 

 almost all Indian carps of any size are, to a certain extent, prone 

 to prey on fish, but they are so only with reference to fry ; they do 

 not destroy the parent fish as do Pike in England, and Freshwater 

 Slunk and Murral in India. The destruction of a few fry more or 



