THE DEVERON 145 



Duke of Fife. It is now an establishment for the medical treat- 

 ment of special complaints. 



The direct entrance of the river is, I am persuaded, of great 

 moment, if only to prevent the wastage of water, by nitration 

 through the beach, and the consequent dissipating of attraction 

 to fish in the sea. If nature is simply allowed to take its 

 course, there is no doubt that before long the mouth will again 

 be at Low Shore, and the lagoon re-established. An engineer 

 was consulted as to the possibility of preventing the westward 

 shifting of gravel, and made proposals for works of enormous 

 strength and cost. He no doubt understands engineering 

 necessities much better than I do, but I have seen no reason 

 to change the opinion which I then ventured to express, that 

 a simple row of stakes at right angles to the beach, and running 

 down to low- water mark, placed some distance to the east of 

 the direct mouth, would cause the gravel to accumulate there, 

 so that a bank would be formed which would at any rate shed 

 its superfluous stones at a much slower rate than this gravel is 

 moved along the beach at present ; and such stones as were 

 washed over would be not too numerous to be carried out by 

 the action of the river. It is, I think, idle to suggest a structure 

 to resist the action of the waves here. It is wiser and infinitely 

 less expensive to use the action of the waves to construct the 

 desired bank in a natural way. I believe the river Don mouth 

 has never shifted since the simple barrier to the .soutb of it 

 was formed many many years ago. Reference to this has 

 already been made on p. 127. The North Esk is another 

 example of altered month. 



So far as appears, the removal of the cruive dyke resulted 

 chiefly in the limited number of early running fish getting to 

 the upper waters before the netting came on. The year after 

 the dyke was removed a few such fish were taken by rod several 

 miles up the river. With a reduced stock, however, and a bad 

 river mouth, the number of very early fish was not great. 

 With the dyke still acting as a check to ascending fish all 

 through the year, the pool below the dyke was the chief netting 

 station, and I believe as many as 3000 fish were at times taken 

 from it in a season. Practically no fish got further up till nets 

 were off and the cruive-boxes opened. 



When the cruive pool was no longer in existence, the nets 



K 



