SCOTTISH GAEDENS 



in appearance, forest and crag making way for 

 closely packed dwellings and factories: the Clyde 

 and its lower tributaries were allowed to become so 

 foully polluted that a lifeless, evil-smelling current 

 flows where once the silvery salmon thronged up 

 from the firth and innumerable water-fowl flocked 

 for food. That is in process of being remedied by 

 a painstaking municipality ; but who shall purge the 

 sky of the smoke rising from the hearths of 780,000 

 inhabitants and the reek belched from a thousand 

 factory chimneys and gas-works? 



Nor is that all that must be reckoned. In a wide 

 circle round Glasgow have arisen police-burghs 

 Kinning Park, Govan, Partick, Pollokshaws, Cathcart, 

 etc. each with a population exceeding that of many 

 a mediaeval city, each with its smoke-producing 

 industries, and only a little further afield is Paisley 

 with 87,000 inhabitants, Johnstone with 12,000, 

 Port-Glasgow with 18,000, Greenock with 68,000, 

 all combining to darken the air; and, as though 

 that were not enough to discourage horticulture, 

 all the land unbuilt on is threaded with railways, 

 honeycombed with coal-pits, studded with smelting 

 furnaces, pouring forth volumes of smoke night and 

 day. So it has come to pass that from whatever 

 quarter the wind sets, it is charged with the 

 products of combustion in other words, with coal 

 smoke. 



This, as every forester, gardener and amateur 

 can testify, is a relentless foe to almost every kind 



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