NOTES ON THE FRESH-WATER FISHES OF INDIA. 467 
The fixed engines employed in India and Burma are mainly 
divisible into two forms—(1) those manufactured of cotton, hemp, 
aloe-fibre, coir, or some such material; and (2) those constructed 
of split bamboo, rattan, reed, grass, or some more or less inelastic 
substance. Those which are manufactured of elastic substances 
include all stake-nets, but when the meshes are of a fair size they 
are a legitimate means, when properly employed, for the capture 
of fish, but are occasionally to be deprecated, especially when used 
solely to take such as are breeding. But in some of these imple- 
ments the size of the mesh is so minute that no fish is able to pass. 
There it stands, immovably fixed across an entire water-way, 
capturing everything, the water being literally strained through it. 
The meshes have been described as so minute that a large black 
ant could not pass, or that they would arrest a tamarind or 
a mustard-seed; or else they resemble the size of mosquito 
curtain-nets. In one instance, in the Punjab, a whole drove of 
Mahaseer were observed to be captured by natives fixing a net 
across a river, and then dragging another down to it, thus occa- 
sioning wholesale destruction, and ruining the rod-fishing for 
the succeeding season. This plan is a very common procedure 
throughout India, as is also the construction of earthen dams across 
streams, leaving a channel or opening through their centre, where 
a purse-net is fixed, and arrests every descending fish. The largest 
numbers are taken towards the end of the rainy season, for as the 
waters fall, countless lakes and pools of all sizes are formed on 
the low lands in the vicinity of rivers. These, which during the 
floods were lateral extensions of the stream, now become lakes 
having one or more narrow outlets into the river; across each 
opening nets are stretched, or a weir of grass constructed, and 
every fish which has wandered up becomes a certain prey to the 
fisherman. 
Fixed engines constructed of non-elastic substances are still 
more destructive to fish than are such as are made of net, and 
which are more liable to be rent. Their forms are exceedingly 
numerous, their sizes infinite, while that of the interstices between 
the substances of which the weirs or traps are composed appear 
everywhere much the same, whether examined in the ghats of 
Canara, the Yomas of Pegu, the Himalayas, or on the plains 
of India or Burma. Still, local influences must occasion some 
modifications. In hilly districts, as the monsoon floods subside 
