460 CHINESE FISHING 
patiently for air-bubbles, like a destroyer hunting German 
U-boats, to rise to the surface and betray the fishes’ lair in the 
mud, and then plunged home his depth-charge, or rather his 
bident. 
Fishing by cormorant was unique and peculiar to China 
alone, according to Mr. Yen, who adds that “in our country 
it was confined to one family, the Liu.! The fishes thus caught, 
however, are limited to those of small streams, unpalatable, 
and eaten only by very poor people.” 
Few realise how great is the patience necessary for the 
training of an expert cormorant, or how good is the reward. 
These seemingly altruistic piscatores are taught to fish an area 
in flocks, and at a given signal return to their master with 
their prey, made unswallowable by means of a neck-ring. 
One boatman watches twelve to twenty of the birds, each one 
of whom, although hundreds may similarly be hunting the 
same water, knows its own master. If one seize a fish too 
heavy for him, another comes to its aid, and together they 
fetch it to the boat. More generally the ally (not unlike 
certain nations in history) hustles the weaker and despoils 
him of his catch, and of his titbit reward. 
The barndoor fowl, whose hospitable warmth and credulity 
all the world abuses, usually hatches out the young birds, 
whose piscatorial propensities increase and accentuate on a 
diet of fish hash and eel’s blood. 
A curious and vicarious manner of Indian fishing can be 
witnessed on the Brahmaputra. Birds of the cormorant 
family range themselves midstream in line, and advance to- 
wards a bank, making a prodigious pother by flapping the 
water with their wings. The fish, panic-stricken, flee to the 
shallows and even throw themselves on land. The birds, still 
in close array, pursue and gorge themselves on their penned-in 
prey. 
1 Op, cit., but in Japan, especially at Gifu, the cormorant is in common 
use, while D. Ross, The Land of Five Rivers and Sindh (London, 1883), states 
that on the Indus not only the Cormorant (Graculus carbo), but also the 
Pelican and the Otter are similarly employed. Early in the seventeenth 
century an attempt was made to introduce Cormorant fishing into England as 
a sport, but failed (cf. Wright, op. cit., p. 182). There was at one time a 
court official, styled The Master of the Herons, 
