THE ADVANTAGES OF PURE. RIVERS. 63 
a very valuable bone it is; but in the meantime it does no 
one any good, and is the occasion for a vast deal of mis- 
chief. The inquiry now proceeding before the Commission 
on London Sewage has elicited very remarkable testimony 
as to the string of evils occasioned by the pollution of the 
Thames from this source alone. The estuary of the Tyne 
is badly enough polluted, but it is clean compared with the 
Thames. If the Thames were only purified to such an 
extent as to compare with the present state of the Tyne, 
and if its weirs were provided with passes, its ancient 
salmon fisheries might even yet be restored to it. With its 
waters completely purified it would, in its salmon alone, 
produce wealth far exceeding that of the golden sands of 
fabled Pactolus. 
The difficulty of dealing with pollutions is in its legal 
aspect similar to that of the weirs. Prescriptive rights 
have been allowed to grow, and they have a legal claim to 
proper recognition. But when public opinion recognises, 
on the other hand, the full advantages of pure rivers, and 
when it understands that they can be secured without 
undue interference with other interests, it will demand that 
no single industry or group of industries, however impor- 
tant and valuable, shall be allowed unreasonably to over- 
ridethem. To pass alaw that within a reasonable period— 
of, say, ten or a dozen years—all pollutions, solid or liquid, 
shall be diverted from our rivers, might seem at first sight 
an unreasonable proceeding. But, under the influence of 
such pressure, methods similar to those already referred to 
—which have been devised without any incentive beyond 
that of direct profit—would no doubt be found whereby 
the noisome matters now daily and hourly defiling the face 
of Nature could be disposed of, not merely at trifling cost, 
but actually at a profit. 
