App. E. Fry in rice fields. 289 



bability considerably more, and certainly not less, than 

 283,500,000 of diminutive fry, which are annually des- 

 troyed for a comparatively insignificant number of juicy 

 curries. 



36. This is the destruction of fry under the river 

 dams alone, without taking any account of the numbers 

 which enter the rice fields from hill streams, from the 

 annual overflowings of the river in certain localities, and 

 which enter marshes from the rise of the tide in the estu- 

 aries. The numbers of these two latter there are no 

 means of computing, but they may safely be put down 

 at about the same as in the dam-fed rice fields. These 

 also are destroyed most of them in the same way as the 



fry of the rivers, and some in other 



pa j.q 122 



ways to be described in connexion 

 with sea-fish. 



37. The almost innumerable hosts of fry which enter 

 the rice fields from the hill streams have been excluded 

 from the above calculations, because they are the fry of 

 small fish, for though every rill of a foot in breadth teems 

 in the season with minute fishes, they are apparently only 

 the fry of minnow, loach, and such like small fish, the 

 destruction of which is perhaps not of much consequence, 

 as there are probably enough of them intermixed with 

 the larger sorts of fry from the rivers. Still it is worthy 

 of note that the smaller sorts of fish seek the smallest 

 rills to spawn in, and struggle up them to astonishing 

 heights at the commencement of the monsoon; and it 

 may remain a question whether the larger predatory fish 



37 



