App. E. Fertility of the sea. 299 



Report of Sea Fisher- It has been computed that an acre of 

 ies Commission. uncultivated sea bottom yields every 



week a larger supply of food than an equal extent of 

 good land carefully tilled will produce in a year. The 

 weight of fish and of beef annually consumed in London is 

 in no great disproportion. In Canara, 



Para. 26. » i , I ., , „ , 



nsn are almost the sole meat food of 

 the people. 



122. There are marshes by the riverside that are 

 flooded by every high tide. The fry of sea-fish frequent- 

 ing the estuaries are in the habit of coasting along the 

 very edge of the rivers, and running into all shallow 

 places. When the tide rises over these marshes the fry 

 go in with it, probably finding more insect food amongst 

 the swamp grass, and on the freshly inundated land. 

 But when they think to return with the ebbing tide, they 

 are met by long lines of close wattle and fine leaf basket 

 work, that allows the water to pass, but not the fry. At 

 every tide in the day time the fry are thus waylaid, and 

 left high and dry, thickly strewn in long lines, whence 

 they are carried away in basket loads. The mullet suffer 

 much in this way. They are a desirable sea-fish, and the 

 wholesale destruction of their fry in this manner should 

 be prevented. 



123. It has been thought in England that the num- 

 bers of sea-fish frequenting a shore were greatly affected 

 by the overfishing of their natural food, the shrimp. 

 The mullet lives largely on shrimps and sand-worms. A 

 small plot of some four or five acres in the Mangalore 



38* 



