20 SOUTH COUNTRY TROUT STREAMS 



ultimately they must be reduced, no doubt by 

 shortness in the rainfall, probably in the following 

 season. But both the rock and the chalk streams 

 have been in many cases lowered of recent years 

 by the operations of water companies. An angler 

 whose experience and knowledge in regard to the 

 chalk streams of the home counties are possibly 

 unique — he has fished them for upwards of half a 

 century, and has founded various angling clubs in 

 several counties — tells me that he is absolutely 

 certain that the springs of, for instance, some of the 

 Hertfordshire and Kent rivers have been, and are 

 being, surely and steadily lowered by the v.^ater 

 companies. The chalk through which these rivers 

 flow is like a great sponge. The water company 

 proceeds not to exactly put its pipes into the river, 

 but to extract the precious fluid from the chalk in 

 the neighbourhood of the river, and in this way the 

 springs are inevitably lowered. In other parts of 

 the country the depredations of the water 

 companies and of corporations are on a much more 

 open and avowed scale. An owner of two very 

 noted salmon fisheries in the west of England tells 

 me that all his best water has been taken, so that 

 angling with a fly is now a snare and a delusion. 

 Has not Dartmoor itself been threatened .'' Even 

 confirmed anglers will admit that water is desirable 

 for other purposes besides that of fly fishing, but 

 one doubts whether there are many people 

 sufficiently philanthropic to regard with pleasure 

 the tapping of their choice trout streams in the 

 interests of the water company shareholder, and 

 incidentally perhaps of humanity. 



Another rather constant cause of indifferent sport 

 in south of England streams in various counties is 



