Ixxxix 



169. On November 28th, 1868, the Madras Government sanc- 

 tioned Rs. 3,000 (2,000 was only expended) 

 towards carrying out a year's experimental 

 trial of pisciculture in the rivers of South Ca- 

 nara, concerning which the Collector (August 7th, 1870) reported in full. 

 Many of the rivers descend from the Ghats of Mysore and Coorg, and 

 their origins and portions of their course are in foreign territory. The 

 poisoning of fish is popular, and has been lessened with great difficulty, 

 more especially as it is freely resorted to in Mysore and Coorg, and thus, 

 irrespective of the immediate injury they cause, the rivers become tainted 

 for miles below. During the season of the coffee crops the pulpers are 

 always at work, and their refuse runs into the head of the Puiswani 

 river, defiling it for miles and apparently killing the fish, which is said 

 not to be a necessity. It may be doubted whether poisoning rivers or 

 the wholesale destruction of fry is most injurious to fisheries ; and 

 although it was found impossible to obtain exactly accurate information 

 upon the number of small-meshed cruives employed in the districts, suffi- 

 cient data existed for concluding that there were at least 1,050 on the 

 Netravaty river and its affluents, and calculating that every one of the 

 cruives captures on an average 3,000 fish in a day, then there are as 

 many as 94,500,000 tiny fry destroyed for no adequate purpose, in a 

 single month, in one river alone. These closely-woven bamboo cruives 

 were forbidden and vigorously hunted out of the rivers, and the result 

 of these two steps alone, of prohibiting poisoning and the use of these 

 small cruives in the rivers, " has been, that the most ignorant, and there- 

 fore, the most obstinate opponents have been convinced by the testimony 

 of their own senses, and have exclaimed, to use their own words, " truly 

 the river is everywhere bubbling with fry," and what is still more to the 

 point, their practice has not belied their words, for they have taken to 

 fishing on grounds that were before considered profitless. #.-.*# 

 Two years' discouragement of poisoning, and one year's discouragement 

 of fine cruives, has worked such a change, that it has been demonstrated 

 beyond the cavil even of the ignorant and of the interestedly opposing, 

 that marked advantages can be reaped from the adoption of these two 

 simple measures alone. * * * While the south-west monsoon 

 prevails, the ample rainfall on this coast supplies abundant water for irri- 

 gation purposes, and the rivers are the while too turbulent to be diverted. 

 But as the dry season commences, and water is wanted for the irrigation 

 of the second crop of rice, the rivers have settled down to more manageable 

 proportions, and near their sources, it becomes an easy matter for the 

 farmers to collect the boulders in the stream, lay them in a line across 

 it, and after filling in the interstices with shingle from the bed, to stop 

 the whole with clay and bushes from the banks. A temporary and in- 

 expensive, yet effective dam, is thus run up annually by every farmer 

 that has ground conveniently situated for irrigation, though it is com- 

 pletely swept away by the first flood of the next south-west monsoon, 

 it lasts throughout the hot weather, throughout the life- time of the fry, 

 and the river or rivulet being thus completely cut off, is diverted entirely 

 into an irrigation channel." The fry gliding down the stream pass 

 with the water into the irrigation channel and so into the rice " fields 

 that have been carefully levelled by man, and partitioned with narrow and 



