THE DON 129 



Mill Dyke. The lade which supplies water to the tweed mill 

 is nearly a mile long and is well sluiced and hecked. There 

 are five sluices at the intake. One benefit from having so long 

 a lade is that, although in this instance it carries off a consider- 

 able volume of water, it enables the dyke across the river to 

 be comparatively low. As a matter of fact, the dyke is an 

 irregular structure, presenting no great difficulty to fish, and 

 having a " slap " in it. Woodside paper or rag work, above 

 Grandholm Dyke, is situated at an angle of the river, where 

 the lade is made, as it were, to cut the corner. Owing to the 

 natural configuration of the river bed, there is but slight 

 obstruction here. 



The next structure is Mugiemoss Paper Mill Dyke, already 

 referred to as just above the last netting station. The structure 

 originally had an elliptical form, the downstream face sloping 

 from each side towards the centre of the river. Here a huge 

 flat apron, covered with cement, had been formed, filling up 

 the space between the extremities of the curved dyke, and 

 measuring about 60 feet in length. It ended quite abruptly 

 above the very deep water of the pool immediately below. 

 This pool I very nearly examined more closely than I wished 

 to ; for at my first visit, when wading about on the flat apron, 

 the water being dirty, as, alas, it always is in this much-abused 

 river, I pretty nearly waded plump into the foul depths of the 

 pool below. I am sorry for salmon that cannot get out of that 

 pool. 



Down the central line of the sloping downstream face a 

 so-called fish pass had been formed. It was quite simple, 

 being an unbroken chute 45 feet long, with a gradient of 1 in 5. 

 When the flat surface of the apron had insufficient water to 

 allow a fish to swim over it, the water in the chute was not very 

 formidable for good strong fish. Unfortunately, however, the 

 shallowness of the water on the apron quite prevented a fish 

 getting to the pass under these conditions. When the water 

 on the apron had become deep enough for fish to move along 

 it without difficulty, the water in the chute had become a 

 raging torrent, which washed the fish back into the pool again. 



Salmon congregated in the pool below in great numbers 

 both in the spring and towards the end of the season. I have 

 known of 700 fish being netted on the opening day. The 



