INDIAN FISH AND FISHING.
One great purpose which many persons have anticipated from the International Fisheries Exhibition is a full investigation into the condition of fisheries in general; the causes which have conduced to their prosperity or deterioration, with the suggestion of rules for their future administration. At present British fish economists are divided into two schools, which may be thus defined :—
I. That Government should permit our marine fisheries to be untrammelled by legislative restrictions, everyone should be permitted to help himself to fish as he pleases under the belief that the stock in the sea is inexhaustible.
II. That Government regulations in the working of sea fisheries is advisable in order to prevent undue destruction of the spawn and young fish, on the supposition that our inshore fisheries, as well as those of some trawled forms, are being unduly depleted.
The following pages on the "Fisheries of India," mainly relate to the condition they were in a few years since as ascertained by personal investigations. Some of the obstacles under which they laboured have been removed, while others, it is hoped, are shortly to be remedied; but the result of the incidence of the salt-tax on marine fisheries, and the want of restrictions on fresh-water ones, are well demonstrated.
The length of the sea-board of India and Burmah has been
