396 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [14] 



fishes which commence descending, trying to regain their low country 

 rivers ? I omit in this place how spearing, snatching, or snagging, net- 

 ting, and angling arecarried on, only referring to how fixed engines are 

 employed. Weirs are now erected every few miles, through which the 

 waters of the hill streams are literally strained, while each is fitted with 

 a cruive or fishing trap. The probabilities are that the great majority of 

 the mahaseer which reach the rivers of the plains are the last year's fry 

 that have fortunately escaped destruction during the dry months, and 

 with the first floods have obtained a free highway by the standing weirs 

 being swept away. Wicker traps are likewise constructed across con- 

 venient rapids ; here few fish can pass without entering, while these are 

 examined twice daily. Or should there be no rapids, such are artificially 

 formed by laying large stones in a Y-shape across a stream, while at the 

 apex of this is a trap. Or a mountain stream is conducted down a slope 

 over a large concave basket, so that all descending fish are pitched into 

 it, and speedily suffocated by the rushing water or other falling fish, 

 which act like a succession of blows, preventing their ever rising again. 



In addition to the larger weirs and traps, there are minor sorts most 

 extensively employed, especially in the plains ; some to capture breed- 

 ing fish ascending up the smaller watercourse during the rain to deposit 

 their spawn, others to arrest them and their fry attempting to descend 

 the stream as the flood waters recede; and there is not a district, except 

 perhaps in Sind, in which this mode of capture is not carried" on. And 

 some ofBcials now speak of the use of these contrivances as communal 

 and prescriptive rights, and their prohibition as an interference with 

 private property. 



Movable -fishing apparatus.-^'KoY?kh\e, fishing implements are of two 

 varieties: (1), Those manufactured of cotton, hemp, aloe-fiber, coir, or of 

 some such material; and (2) others made of split bamboo, rattan, reed^ 

 grass, or other more or less elastic substances. Large drag-nets, having 

 fair-sized meshes, are used mostly during the dry months, and employed 

 for the purpose of obtaining fish from pools in rivers into which they 

 have retired awaiting the next year's floods. But the movable nets which 

 occasion the most damage are those with small meshes, and principally 

 employed for taking the fry of the fish as they are first moving about; 

 they may be cast-nets with fine meshes, wall-nets dragging up some 

 small watercourses, purse-nets similarly used, and even sheets may be 

 thus employed. In some places several cast-nets are joined together, to 

 stop up all passage of fish along a stream, while others are employed 

 above this obstacle; or several fishermen surround a pool, each armed 

 with a cast-net, and these they throw altogether, giving the fish but lit- 

 tle chance of escaping. In Sind the fishermen float down the Indus, in 

 certain suitable localities, upon a gourd or hollow earthen pot, while the 

 net is let down below them; as a hilsa fish, Clupea ilisJia, ascends up the 

 muddy and rapid stream, it strikes against the dependent net, which is 



