POLLUTION OF HAMPSHIRE WEY n 



Such, alas ! is the fate of many of our trout 

 streams. In my own river, once full of good 

 trout, the latter are year by year dwindling 

 away in numbers and condition, despite all my 

 efforts to preserve them and keep up a sufficient 

 stock. The stream is small, but there is still a 

 sufficiency of food for a good head of fish, and 

 such there would be were it not that, un- 

 fortunately, during the last five or six years, two 

 men have started watercress-growing about a mile 

 above my boundary, and by reason of the filth 

 which they are for ever sending down the river, 

 when making, planting, and cleaning the beds, 

 the channel is becoming blocked up, and where 

 there was formerly a hard, clean bed of chalk and 

 gravel, there is now, in many places, an accumula- 

 tion of foul, oozy mud, of a foot or more in depth, 

 overlying it ; and this, when disturbed, emits the 

 most disgusting stench. The spawning-beds are 

 ruined, the fish blinded and sickened, and fishing 

 is of course impossible. Last season, at such 

 times as the water was clear enough to use a fly, 

 I took out a few fish, but they were nearly all in 

 very poor condition, and of a mealy, unhealthy- 

 looking colour. The river, being a tributary of 

 one which is under a conservancy, is also under 

 the like protection, but I much fear that if, as 

 they have threatened, the conservators take any 

 decisive steps to abate the nuisance, one or other 



