[13] THE FISHERIES OF INDIA. 395 



remainiug seventeen described the smallest size as follows : Size of fin- 

 ger or thumb, five ; of half ring-finger, two ; as big as a broomstick, 

 one; size of half rupee, one; of a four-anna bit, one; of a quarter of 

 an anna, one ; of a two-anna bit, five ; of a pie, one. 



Fixed JisMng cqjparatns. — The fixed engines employed in India and 

 Burma are mainly divisible .into two forms : (1) Those manufactured 

 of cotton, hemp, aloe fiber, coir, or some such material ; and (2) others 

 constructed of split bamboo, rattan, reed, grass, or some more or less 

 inelastic substance. Those which are manufactured of elastic sub- 

 stances 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, bat are occasionally to be deprecated, especially when used 

 solely to take such as are breeding. But in some of these implements 

 the size of the mesh is so minute that no fish are able to pass. There 

 it stands, immovably fixed across an entire waterway, capturing every- 

 thing, the water being literally strained through it. In one instance, 

 in the Panjab, a whole shoal of mahaseer was observed to be cap- 

 tured bj^ natives fixing a net across a river, and then dragging another 

 down to it, thus occasioning wholesale destruction, and ruining the 

 rod-fishing for the succeeding season. This plan is a very common 

 procedure throughout India, as is also constructing earthen dams 

 across streams, leaving a channel or opening through their center, 

 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 

 lowlands 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 fishermen. 



Fixed engines constructed of non-elastic substances are still more de- 

 structive 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 in- 

 finite, while the interstices, between the substances of which the weirs 

 or traps are composed, appear everywhere much the same, whether ex- 

 amined 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 

 and the impetuosity of the mountain torrents has decreased, they can 

 be erected without being liable to be washed away. Up the hill streams 

 (as I have already observed) some of the most valuable of the carp as- 

 cend to breed, and there are now but few which are not w^eired, and the 

 parent fishes have the greatest difficulty in reaching their spawning 

 grounds. Some, however, surmount the difficulties opposing their as- 

 cent; a few deposit their spawn ; this completed, the rains are now pass- 

 ing off, the force of the current lessening; but what now occurs to those 



