466 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
they will assuredly employ the means which give them the least 
amount of trouble, and thus the breeding fish and fry fall victims 
to man’s rapacity, unchecked by wholesome enactments. Nor can 
the fishermen be blamed. The result would be the same in Europe 
as in the East if the like permission existed. 
Free fisheries have been permitted, owing to several causes, 
such as the difficulty in making them sufficiently remunerative to 
bear taxation or the incidence of rent, which may be due to the 
rapidity of the current, the paucity of fish, as in some hill-streams 
and depopulated rivers, the depths of tanks, the presence of 
foreign substances in them, or the poverty of the general popula- 
tion. How general and indiscriminate fishing ruins fisheries, 
without any commensurate benefit accruing to the public I have 
already pointed out. In these deteriorated but public fisheries, 
as soon as the monsoon has set in, and the fry are commencing 
to move about, women and children are daily engaged in searching 
for them in every sheltered spot where they have retired for 
security, for, not being able to face strong currents or live in deep 
waters, they naturally resort to the grassy but inundated borders 
of rivers and tanks. Every device that can be thought of is now 
called into use; nets which will not permit a mosquito to pass 
are employed; even the use of cloths may be frequently observed. 
Neither are the agricultural population idle. They construct traps 
of wicker-work, baskets, and nets; these traps permit nothing but 
water to pass, and a fish once inside is unable to return, as they 
resemble some of our commoner kinds of rat-traps. So soon as 
fish, for the purpose of breeding, commence passing up the small 
watercourses at the sides of rivers and streams, these implements 
of capture come into use; breeding fish are taken, and the few 
which surmount the obstructions find the traps reversed, so that, 
although they have ascended in safety, it is by no means im- 
probable that their return to the river will yet be cut off. In 
Burma a large triangular-shaped basket is employed in places 
where trapping is difficult, and a pair of buffaloes having been 
harnessed to it, it is dragged through the localities inhabited 
by the fry. Even when there are no restrictions, fishermen often 
find it advantageous to ply their occupation in concert. Sometimes 
large bodies of villagers proceed at certain seasons of the year to 
rivers which can be easily bunded, having done which, they kill 
every fish they are able. 
