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subside, earthen banks are constructed across water-courses, 

 each with an artificial opening cut for the current to pass ; 

 here a purse-net with minute meshes is firmly fixed, and all 

 the descending fish are captured ; this is employed in Bombay 

 (p. xxxvii) : in Madras, in the Central Provinces (p. cxxiii-iv), 

 and in fact in every place where such is possible, unless 

 wicker traps are preferred. Or these fine-meshed nets may 

 be fixed to the sluice of a tank (p. Ixxix), so that the 

 water that is let out for irrigation purposes passes through it, 

 all the fish being arrested. Or at the yearly subsidence of the 

 floods which extend miles across the country, the water being 

 stocked with fry, bunds are raised, with an opening for the 

 escape of the water : but here a purse-net prevents any exit for 

 the young fish, consequently, as the waters will be entirely 

 drained off leaving the fields dry, the fry has only to select 

 whether it will be captured in the purse-net, or perish in the 

 drying-up fields. These nets of various forms and many 

 names are likewise fixed in the supply channels (p. xcvii) 

 in irrigated fields, and nothing escapes them, especially as 

 the water is not always flowing, so what is easier, when 

 the channel is full, than to fix a fine net across its entire 

 breadth, so that all the fish which have passed up for breed- 

 ing or feeding purposes are unable to return as the water is 

 being cut off? In the North- Western Provinces, "fish are 

 killed, more or less, throughout the year, but the largest 

 numbers are taken towards the end of the rainy season. As 

 the waters fall, countless lakes or pools of all sizes are formed 

 on the low lands by the rivers. These, which were, during 

 the floods, mere extensions of the streams, now become lakes 

 with one narrow exit to the river. Across this, nets are 

 stretched, or a weir of grass constructed, and every fish that 

 has wandered up becomes a certain prey" (p. clx). 



LXYI. Eixed engines constructed of non-elastic sub- 

 Fishing weirs of non-eiastic stances ^ are, however, still more 

 substances. HOW breeding-fish destructive to fish than those made 

 are destroyed. of netj an d which are more liable to 



rents. The different forms are so numerous, whilst so many 

 are fully described in the appendix, that a reference to them 

 is all that is needed, their general design being only neces- 

 sary to allude to, before commencing which, I may remark 

 on the favour they are held in Europe. Pishing weirs, which 

 prevent fish obtaining a free passage up a river, were pro- 

 nounced by the Lord Chief Justice of England to be " illegal 

 and a public nuisance." The size of the interstices between, 



