3*52 A Pica far River Fisheries. Chapt. XXV. 



in the river as sardines in a tin, scrambling over each other's backs 

 into the air, and up the stone steps, and taking food out of the 

 very hand. One was caught for identification in a saucepan, and 

 inmiediately released again. 



Close Season. 



73. The Board has desired to know whether a close time should 

 1 « enforced. The circumstances of the South Canara rivers differ so 

 widely from those of English streams that it does not seem necessarj 

 to follow the home example in this inspect. The monsoon floods 

 render it practically impossible to net for four months in 'lie twelve, 

 and the body of water still in the river makes it scarcely worth 

 while to net for three months more. Netting is generally delayed 

 till the large fish are driven by the general hiwness of the rivers 

 to congregate in the pools. If a few stuck 

 pools are reserved, and fixed engines prohi- 

 1 '" ril - 72, bited, a close time may, as far as the fisheries 



are concerned, be safely dispensed with. 



Size of Mesh t. 



75. The meshes of the nets now used in the rivers and in the 

 sea are of all sizes, from three-quarters of an inch to twenty -four 



inches in circumference; the Government has 



3,823 dated 2sdi ordered the prohibition of nets with meshes 



Way, 1869, Govt. j less than four inches in circumference: but 

 ( Irder thereon) Both 



June, 1869, No. V crv many sorts of fish, both in the rivers and 



b812. . , 



in the sea, never grow to a size to be entangled 

 in such nets. To prohibit smaller meshes, therefore, is to prohibit 

 netting for these fishes, and to cut off from the people a large per- 

 centage of the food in the waters. Properly to appreciate the 

 effect of this order, it is only necessary to observe how large a 

 fish can escape through a mesh 4 inches in circumference, and 

 how many sorts of fish there are that are seldom or never large 

 enough to he caught in such meshes, and how numerous those sorts 

 of fish are. 



76. The ultimate effect on the fisheries would probably be still 

 more unfortunate. The smaller sorts of fish having immunity 

 from netting must disproportionately increase on the larger netted 



Nature has arranged that the larger predatory fish shall 



