338 Spawning. CHAP. xxm. 



The Mahseer and many other fish breed in the same way, with this 

 difference, that the Mahseer appears, as already shown (p. 42), to lay 

 its eggs not all at one time, but in several batches. The Mahseer might, 

 therefore, be artificially multiplied in the same way as the salmon and 

 the trout. 



In India, however, we have another means of culture in the rice- 

 fields, which are filled at times with the fry of all sorts of fish, the 

 Mahseer, amongst others. As it is the instinct of some mature fish to 

 ascend the rivers for the purpose of spawning in small waters calculated 

 to.suit the puny strength of their tiny fry, and by their shallowness to 

 afford them protection from predatory fish, so is it the instinct of their 

 fry to descend, as they grow, to deeper, wider waters. In India, more- 

 over, they are compelled to do this by the decreasing in the hot weather 

 of the rivers. Down the river these fry dawdle, therefore, feeding as 

 they go. But as the rivers are frequently dammed up and turned off 

 for irrigation purposes, they naturally go with the stream down the 

 irrigation channel, and consequently find themselves in a rice-field. 

 In the shallow water of the rice-field, and under the shadow of the 

 growing rice, they would do very well, were it not that death awaits 

 them at every turn, in basket traps placed at every drop from rice-field 

 to rice-field, into which they fall by still following their natural instinct 

 of descending the stream. It is hoped the day is coming when these 

 rice-fields will, some of them, be utilized for the preservation, instead of 

 the destruction of fry, and others have their connection with the river 

 guarded with gratings. Some further remarks on the subject will be 

 found in " Tank Angling in India." 



While some fish, like the Salmon, the Trout, and the Mahseer, lay 

 ^their eggs in hollows worked out in the gravel, others lay them in the 

 sand, where it is pretty to see the tiny fry still nestled together after 

 birth, so closely that they look like one black spot, in a hollow like an 

 inverted cone of one or two inches in diameter, with their umbilical 

 sacs still unabsorbed. Other fish, again, like the perch; lay their eggs 

 in long strings like beads, and adhering by a glutinous matter to bushes. 

 The stickleback builds a nest among the reeds and keeps fierce guard 

 over it. It is the male stickleback that builds the nest, and that 

 unaided by the female, for in due conformity to the rules of modern 

 society he makes no matrimonial overtures till he has provided for the 

 becoming maintenance of a wife, and no girl stickleback with any 



