3."2 A Plea for River Fish ru s. Chapt. XXV. 



identified. How deeper wider waters. Down they glide there- 

 many more there .,.,,., 

 may' be that enter fore, day by day a little way, feeding as they 



the riee-fields eannot , ,i ,1 i j • 



be as yet said. §°> anc * unconscious that they are already in 



an irrigation channel which can end only in a 

 rice-field ; and thus it is that the channel-fed rice fields swarm 

 with fry of apparently all descriptions. 



34. This would be no misfortune if even here the fry were 

 left to themselves. The rice grows in fields which have been 

 carefully levelled by man, and partitioned with narrow and shallow 

 embankments, so as to economise the water, and spread it over the 

 largest possible area. From a piscicultural point of view the 

 whole stretch of rice-fields has the appearance of a vast and 

 admirably constructed nursery. A whole river or rivulet has been 

 turned on, a river too which has been stocked with ova, the water 

 has been economised to the utmost, the depth regulated exactly to 

 suit the fry, large predatory fish thoroughly excluded, the whole 

 manured, ploughed, and planted, so as to 

 Frogs, however, provide the maximum of insect life, with the 



find their way in in 



great numbers, and desired modicum of varying shade under the 



are destructive. See • , ., ,. ,, 



i> ara . 8i. growing rice; and the area 01 the nursery is 



measured, not by the inch or foot, but by the 

 acre or square mile. In this extensive nursery, therefore, which 

 costs the pisciculturist nothing, the fry thrive admirahly, and 

 still following their instinct go feeding dawdling downwards with 

 the stream. This takes them leisurely from rice-field to rice- 

 field, and in the direction of the waste water; which of itself not 

 unfrequently runs into the river again, or might almost always be 

 contrived so to run. But at each drop from rice-field to rice-field, 

 the cultivator places a basket made of finely split bamboos, having 

 a wide mouth, a narrow neck, and a wide bottom. It lets the 

 water pass but stops every single fry ; and what was an admirable 

 nursery, becomes one vast trap for destroying the majority of the 

 fry in the river. So highly are these juicy morsels appreciated 

 thai no peasant fails to place a basket at every outlet* 



The area irrigated under all the river dams in the district is 



* The fry of thai valuable sea fish, the Hilsa (Clupea THsha), which, after the 

 manner of the Salmon, ascenda Indian rivers to spawn, shares the same fate when 

 seeking in Xanjore to gain the Bea by descending the Cavery. 



