12 ROD AND RIVER 



of the owners of the watercress -beds will sur- 

 reptitiously lime the river, and so destroy every 

 fish in it, and it would be a matter of extreme 

 difficulty to detect the offender, especially in the 

 chalky colour of the water after rain. 



The laws relating to fish and fishing are not 

 only not sufficiently stringent, but they are not 

 enforced as they should be. In the river I speak 

 of there are nowadays not ten fish, where, before 

 the watercress-beds were made, there were a 

 thousand. Such work is heartbreaking and 

 sickening, and in the course of a very few years 

 there will be no fish at all. Formerly there was a 

 good stock of mayfly ; now such a thing as a 

 mayfly is unknown. I conclude that this also 

 is due to the same foul work. As I say, I fear 

 the result of any decisive steps being taken by the 

 conservators, but at the same time I very much 

 doubt the latter having sufficient energy to do 

 more than threaten, since, so far as this portion of 

 the river is concerned, their own personal interests 

 are not involved in the pollution of the stream. 

 When the fish do spawn (such few of them as 

 have the pluck and strength to do so), they work 

 up to the head of the river where the water- 

 cress-beds are situated, and suffer hardly at the 

 hands of the labourers employed in the latter, 

 and but very few survive to drop down stream 

 again. 



