PROTECTIVE LEGISLATION FOR INDIAN FISHERIES. 639 



process of wholesale destruction of fish in Indian rivers, but the fact of its 

 having become law means, apparently, that the question is looked upon as 

 closed by responsible authorities, and when this attitude is assumed it is 

 difficult indeed to get anything done. The A.ct has, indeed, been practically 

 inoperative throughout its brief existence. It has proved a mere dead letter. 

 Inquiries recently made elicited the facts that in some provinces of India it had 

 not been adopted at all, that in others it was nominally in force, but that 

 nothing else had been done, in others it was in force, but no sub>idiary rules 

 had been drawn up, while in the one or two cases where rules did exist they 

 were chiefly of a local character, and not of general application to the rivers of 

 the provnce. In many cases district authorities were even ignorant of the 

 existence of a Fisheries Act. 



Such is the position to-day as regards the protective measures so far 

 adopted by the Government of India. It mny be of interest to recount 

 briefly the evils f ro n which Indian fresh water fisheries chiefly suffer and then 

 to indicate the most desirable remedies. Dynamite and poison are apparently 

 deemed the most destructive agencies by the Government, since ihey &lone 

 are expressly prohibited by the Act of 1897. It is very doubtful whether 

 they really come first, but they are, at any rate, most potent causes of the 

 depletion of many Indian rivers. Dynamite is largely used in India, as else- 

 where, in railway construction work, for road making in hilly districts, for 

 clearing sites, and so on. It is unfortunate that the labourers usually employ- 

 ed on work of this sort, and who thus have extensive opportunities for ihe 

 theft of high explosives, should generally be hiil-men whose homes are on the 

 banks of some of the chief spawning and breeding waters in Northern India. 

 There is little doubr, that engineers and others responsible for construction 

 work have been very lax in the past in the matter of safeguarding their ex- 

 plosives, but there is every reason to believe that tho leakage is no longer so 

 great as it was. Still enormous damage has been done in some rivers by the use 

 of explosives, notably in those tributaries of the Indus in the neighbourhood of 

 Attock. Twenty years ago these streams were renowned for the head of 

 fish they contained. To-day, and for years past, they are practically empty. 

 It is probable, though, that poison does far more damage than dynamite and 

 kindred substances in the matter of fish destruction. It is far more easily 

 obtained, in the first place, and requires no skilled knowledge to use. Every 

 bazaar will have on sale substances which can bo used only too successfully 

 for poisoning fish. An enormous amount of damage, indeed, is done in many 

 hill streams by a poison which costs nothing, inasmuch as it grows on the banks 

 of tne streams which are to be operated on. A decoction of the leaves of a 

 certain shrub which is common enough in the Himalayan valleys is very 

 frequently used for poisoning all the fish in an extensive pool. At certain 

 periods of the year the fish ascend the rivers very much in the same manner as 

 salmon. In the event of there being insufficient water to unable them to get past 

 some natural obstruction thousands of fish will congregate in the pool. Such an 



