On the Madras (India) side the banks are off Tinnevalli and Madura at Tuticorin. The Indian revenue realized a profit of £13,000 from a fishing here in 1822, and £10,000 from another in 1830. Examinations showed that there were not sufficient oysters for profitable fishing after that until 1860, when the government netted £20,000, and a fishing the following year, 1861, was equally successful. The banks failed in 1862 and there was no fishery until 1874. Pollution of the water from the Indian shores has been detrimental to these banks and they are now of little importance. On the Ceylon side, the banks lie six to eight miles off the west shore and a little south of the island of Manaar. Fishing has been an industry from early times before history began. There are records of these fisheries under the kings of Kandy and later by the Portuguese after they took possession of Ceylon about 1505, to 1655 when the island passed into the hands of the Dutch. In old times they were called the fisheries of Aripo after a fort on the coast. Not until the English gained control were the fisheries so managed that definite knowledge of the results could be obtained. After the Dutch gave way to the English, until 1903, these fisheries had yielded a net income to the government of over £1,000,000. This covered a period of over one hundred years, as the British occupied Ceylon in 1796. In the early years of this period and prior to that, the fishings, or rights to fish, were sold to the highest bidders, usually Hindu merchants. In 1796 the fishing brought £60,000. The year after the British took possession, 1797, it realized £110,000 that amount having been paid by Candappa Chetty, a native of Jaffna for the fishery right, and for that of 1798, the same renter paid £140,000. These fishings, which were prolonged, so exhausted the banks that the fishery of 1799 yielded but £30,000. From 1799 to 1802 the yearly product ranged from £12,000 to £55,000. In 1804 they were leased for £120,000 but from that time on declined so that in 1828 they brought only £30,612. There were no fishings from 1820 to 1827, nor in 1834 and after 1837, until 1855. The supply failed in 1864 and for several succeeding years, and again for a decade, after five successful fishings from 1887 to 1891. The average yearly profit up to 1891 was about £34,000. The Ceylon and Madras fisheries are now in charge of a government officer, who spends a part of each year inspecting the various banks so as to be informed as to the whereabouts of mature oysters, and the location and progress of the young and immature. They keep a record of their condition at different periods, and regulate the fisheries by permitting fishing only when they consider the banks to be ripe for it.