Page:Across the Zodiac (Volume 1).djvu/250

 the pelican, were seeking for prey. They were watched and directed by a master on the shore, and carried to a square tank, fixed on a wheeled frame not unlike that of the ordinary carriage, which accompanied him, each fish they took. I observed that the latter were carefully seized, with the least possible violence or injury, placed by a jerk head-downmost in the throat-bag, which, though when empty it was scarcely perceptible, would contain prey of very considerable size and weight, and as carefully disgorged into the tank. In one of the most extensive pools, too deep for these birds, a couple of men had spread a sort of net, not unlike those used on Earth, but formed of twisted metal threads with very narrow meshes, enclosing the whole pool, a space of perhaps some 400 square yards. In the centre of this an electric lamp was let down into the water, some feet below the surface. The fish crowded towards it, and a sudden shock of electricity transmitted through the meshes of the net, as well as from the wires of the lamp circuit, stunned for a few minutes all life within the enclosure. The fish then floated on the surface, the net was drawn together, and they were collected and sorted; some which, as I afterwards learned, were required for breeding, being carefully and separately preserved in a smaller tank, those fit for food cast into the larger one, those too small for the one purpose and not needed for the other being thrown back into the water. I noted, however, that many fish apparently valuable were among those thus rejected. I spoke to one of the fishermen, who, regarding me with great surprise and curiosity, at last answered briefly that a stringent law forbids the catching of spawning fish except for