INDIAN FISH AND FISHING. 27 



declared free, but a licence fee is charged to the fishermen. 

 Or the general public is permitted to take fish for home 

 consumption, but not for sale. Lastly, no regulations at all 

 may exist, due to the general poverty of the fisheries, 

 peculiar difficulties in their capture, or the general impecu- 

 niosity of the inhabitants. 



When the public have, more or less, depleted fisheries, 

 the fishermen become poorer and poorer, unless they turn 

 to other sources of obtaining money ; at first, no doubt 

 pleased at the remission of rents, and the removal of 

 all restrictions upon fishing, they employ redoubled energy, 

 and thus augment their immediate profits: But soon the 

 general public find that nothing precluded their fishing in 

 any way they please ; the markets become glutted, and the 

 price may fall from the want of purchasers. But after two 

 or three years fish become scarcer; fishing is no longer 

 remunerative ; removing the rents from fisheries and throw- 

 ing them open to the public will not decrease the price of 

 fish. The rates ruling in India are comparative to what 

 obtains for meat and other articles of animal food. Fisher- 

 men, living on free fisheries, do not dispose of their captures 

 below market rate any more than farmers who possess 

 rent-free farms sell the produce at less than their neigh- 

 bours, while perhaps one of the widest spread fallacies 

 of the present day is, that permitting fisheries to be free of 

 rent and unrestricted by regulations, is beneficial to the 

 fishing population. If the fisherman benefits, the purchaser 

 does not, and their misapplied energy eventuates in nothing 

 but small fish remaining. The young have to be raised 

 from ova of such as are merely one or two seasons old, 

 while the younger the parent the smaller the eggs, and this 

 is probably one mode in which races of fish deteriorate. 



The rivers which have Alpine sources, as such which 



