THE MAKING OF A HIMALAYAN TROUT WATER. 321 



grudge him a trout or two. But he is commoner than he should be in Kulu, 

 and very reluctantly I pay rewards for his destruction. 



IV. Birds. — Cormorants (NiIiar K.) abound in winter below Sultan- 

 pur. They will spread upstream. It is (alas !) hard to kill them, for the only 

 good cormorant is a dead cormorant, as long as a living one eats his own 

 weight of fish in a day. Kingfishers are I rejoice to say fairly common. So 

 long as they keep away from the nurseries I (for one) grudge them no fish 

 they can eat ! An occasional heron turns up below Sultanpur, but I have 

 never seen one catching anything but frogs. " Dippers " and water Ousels 

 bear one cheerful company on every reach of every stream. I once shot a 

 "dipper" (horesco referens !) accused by a false witness of having that 

 moment swallowed a trout fry. His stomach contained no food of any kind 

 whatsoever ! The rest of the clan may eat their fill of trout (but I am sure 

 they will not!) in expiation of that crime. Caddis worms : dragon fly larvte : 

 beetles : and frogs. All these will do much damage to eggs and larval fish. 

 But the real fact is that in torrents like the Be as, active fish, like trout, can 

 take care of themselves pretty well against all predatory animals, once they 

 hare gained their poise in the water. 



The Stocking with Trout. 



Into these waters trout were first placed in 1909. The statement below 

 gives the numbers of fish actually released in each year : it will be noticed 

 that of the original 22,862* fish planted (they came from Kashmir as " eyed 

 ova'') a big majority were placed in Reach No. V with a few in Reaches III 

 and VI. The object was to obtain a stock of heavy fish at the lower end of 

 the valley (in Reaches VI and VII) as quickly as possible. It was 

 anticipated that trout would tend to work downstream rather than up- 

 stream, and this anticipation has turned out to have been correct. By 

 1913 it became clear that Reaches V, VI and VII held a very fair stock of 

 brown trout. We had meanwhile held up a stock of brood fish — 29 females 

 and 20 males. These have spawned in our Stock Ponds ever since 1912 : 

 and the plants from their progeny have been 110, 9,600, 41,253 and 51,406 

 fish in four successive years — a not unsatisfactory rate of progression. 



* For a photograph of a large Kashmir Brown Trout from which probably 

 some of these ova came, see Miscellaneous Note pagre 371. 

 16 



