The free press. (Poplarville, Miss.) 1890-19??, 1892-04-21
QUEER ANGLING.
Some Ingenious Oriental Ruses
to Catch Wary Fish.
The Chinese Have Trained
Cormorants to Assist Them.

.
Cormorants to Assist Them.
"The Chinese have many very Gu
rious ways of catching fish, said
piscicultural sharp. "In winter they
dive for them. A certain species de-
manded in the market seeks shelter
during the cold season under rocks at
a considerable depth. They cannot
be. got with hook and line, and so
the fishermen go down into the water
after them, plunging from a boat.
Three dives are made each hour, and
fire is kept up on board the boat for
the purpose of warming those at work
between whiles. Not infrequently
they come up bleeding from the lungs,
and rheumatism and skin diseases
render them disabled by the time they
are forty years old.
.It was the Chinese who invented
the welI-known plan of capturing
ducks and ether water fowl by wading
toward them with basket over the
head and dragging them under water
before they knew what had caught
them by the legs. Theirs is the idea
of employing cormorants to aid them
in fishing. You have heard, doubt
less, how the birds used for this pur-
pose have collars around their necks
to prevent them from swallowing the
food they capture. At signal given
by their owner they plunge into the
water after the prey. Whatever they
get is taken from them, and they are
rewarded for every success with bit
of fish small enough for them to eat.
They are forced TO work very hard all
day long, but great care is taken of
them and they are nursed most atten-
lively when they are sick. A bird is
usually good for service until it is ten
years old. The cormorant fishermen
arc organized into societies, the birds
belonging to each association having
peculiar mark.
'In India also the natives employ
many methods of fishing which seem
odd to us. There is in the district of
Dude q species of so-called walking
fish with snake-like heads, which are
often seen floating on the water as if
asleep. The people shoot them with
cross bows. Usually they sink when
they are killed, so that they have to be
dived for afterward. In the Indus,
the Ganges and other streams are nu-
merous fish-eating crocodiles which
attain length of more than 20 feet.
Except when near their nest and
anxious to defend their eggs they run
away from human beings. OF fish
they catch an enormous number, and
it has been thought very strange that
the fishermen should not destroy such
rivals in their own business. But they
regard the mere suggestion of such an
idea with horror, saying that the croc-
odiles are brothers in trade.
"The man-eating crocodiles of those
rivers are regarded as sacred and are
never harmed. OF late years they
have destroyed more lives than form
erly, owing to the prohibition by law
of the ancient practice of consigning
corpses to the streams. 1t was the
good old way to fill the mouth of the
defunct respectfully with mud and
leave the cadaver to be swept away by
the current. Upon such supplies of
food the great saurians depended
largely, and, being deprived of them,
they lie in wait to snap up living peo-
pie and cattle. Five persons have
been known to be carried off in one
year at single pool. However, the
country is over-populated, but one
would not think it an agreeable death
to die.
"The Buddhists in India have a
horror of eating the flesh of animals,
believing them to be incarnations of
human beings souls; but they permit
themselves the luxury of fish, usually
getting around the difficulty by saying
that the fishermen take away the
fishes lives and are responsible. On
the walls of their temples are numer-
Gus frescoes vividly depicting the ter
rible tortures which fishermen will