52 INDIAN FISH AND FISHING. 



turn their attention to man and the larger mammals. 

 Every traveller in the East must have seen these logs of 

 wood, as they appear to be, lying for hours at the sides 

 of rivers or on rocks above the surface of the stream, and 

 which sink so noiselessly into the current as almost to 

 make one believe one's eyes had been deceptive, for how 

 could anything so large have so quietly disappeared. In 

 1868, when at Cuttack, the crocodiles' appetites were not 

 appeased by the fish they obtained, so they commenced 

 consuming human beings, horses, and cows, varying their 

 diet with an occasional goat or sheep. Doubtless, in large 

 rivers, as the Ganges, these reptiles have their redeeming 

 qualities, being the natural scavengers and consumers of 

 carrion. Human beings are now no longer permitted to 

 piously place their dying relatives by the side of the sacred 

 stream, fill their mouths with mud, and leave them to be 

 carried away by the waters or adjacent crocodiles ; neither 

 are corpses interred in the current of that holy river. If 

 fish are insufficient, and the crocodiles are not to be 

 destroyed, from whence are these reptiles to obtain their 

 subsistence ? The common law of self-preservation will 

 induce them to feed on the cattle of the neighbouring 

 country, or on such human beings as unwarily approach 

 too near to the waters in which they reside. This is no 

 fancy sketch, but I will merely adduce two instances that 

 came under my notice in 1868. At Cullara exists a hole 

 or pool in the Nuna River to which these monsters resort 

 during the dry season, and a short time prior to my visit, 

 they had succeeded in carrying off five adult human beings, 

 while near the Baropa weir two women and one horse were 

 taken by crocodiles in a single month. 



Otters are likewise very destructive, especially in the 

 hilly districts, and when they have exhausted the fish, they 



