638 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL H ISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVII. 



is to be shelved until such time as some future Viceroy may care to take it up 

 there is no saying what immense permanent injury may not be done to Indian 

 fisheries. T he qut-stion, indeed, is one which no longer admits of further 

 delay, and it is particularly desirable that it be dealt with by Lord Curzon 

 himself, for the present Viceroy's splendid administration in the East has 

 been largely due to his unique power of getting things done, of pushing papers 

 through the secretariats and of inspiring even the most routine ridden of 

 subordinates with something of his own strenuous enthusiasm. There is reason 

 to believe that, once Lord Curzon took the matter in hand, a few practical and 

 cornmonsense measures would take the place of thirty years of apathy and 

 indecision. 



So long ago as 1869 Dr. Day, the author of the standard work on Indian 

 fishes, was placed on special duty for the purpose of drawing up a scheme for 

 the better protection of Indian fisheries. Two years later he issued a report 

 dealing with the protection of fish in the Nort-West Provinces, in which he 

 strongly advocated the introduction of a Fisheries Act. But this report and 

 recommendation shared the fate which so frequently befalls similar documents 

 in India, and for years nothing whatever was done in the matter. By 1888 the 

 question had again forced its way to the front, and was considered by the 

 agricultural conference assembled at Delhi in that year. Various proposals, 

 including one or two draft schemes of legislation, had been put forward by 

 local administrations in the years immediately preceding, and these were duly 

 considered by the Delhi conference. The members unanimously recommended 

 that — (a) the use of dynamite or other explosives for the destruction of fish 

 should be prohibited ; (6) poison should also be prohibited ; (c) fish ladders 

 should ba providsd on weirs or other river works ; (rf) fixed obstructions and 

 engines in rivers should be regulated ; (V) stock pools should be protected. The 

 m3m'o3rs of the conference differed as to the expediency of regulating the size 

 of the mesh of nets, and ateo as to prohibiting or regulating the baling out of 

 rivers or streams for the purpose of catching fish. But the labours of this 

 conference were, for the time at least, largely in vain. Five years elapsed 

 before even a draft Fisheries Bill was prepared by the Government of India, 

 and it was nine years after the conference and twenty-eight years after Govern- 

 ment had deputed Dr. Day to report on the matter before a Fisheries Act was 

 eventually passed into law. This Act was very far from being what ali com- 

 petent experts would have liked to see it. It prohibited the use of poison and 

 dynamite in rivers, but practically left everything else to local administrations, 

 to whom power was given to frame such minor rules under the Act as might 

 seem necessary. No machinery was introduced for the proper working 

 of the Act. It was nobody's business in particular to see that its pro- 

 visions, scanty as they were, were carried out. It was even left to the 

 discretion of local governments whether they should adopt it at all. 

 The result of legislation of this sort may be imagined. It was something 

 rather worse than useless. It has not stayed in the slightest degree the 



