118 SALMON FISHING 



streams; but these are supposed to be pretty well 

 watched. 



" The Dee, I believe, is very free of pollution above 

 Banchory. The Town Council of Aberdeen look 

 well after the river above that point, for the sake of 

 the purity of the town water. 



" Hill drainage is of so small extent about and 

 above Balmoral that it cannot appreciably affect the 

 flow of the river to produce sudden flooding in times 

 of rain or half-dry channels in protracted drought, 

 as is the case in some rivers. 



" Any record that may be kept of salmon caught 

 on the Balmoral water would be of no use from a 

 statistical point of view : angling is intermittent.' 1 



Of the Mar and the Glen Dee waters, Mr. 

 William Macintosh, the Agent at Banff, by desire 

 of the Duke of Fife, writes : 



"I have now heard from Ronald M'Donald, 

 Head Forester at Mar, with reference to your 

 inquiry. M'Donald, who speaks only for the upper 

 reaches of the Dee, is of opinion that there is very 

 little difference in the catch of salmon during the 

 last fifteen years. He thinks the salmon are rather 

 later in coming up the river. From the end of 

 March, however, the river seems as well stocked as 

 it was fifteen or sixteen years ago." 



Of the river as a whole Mr. Alexander Copland, 

 Aberdeen, who has been studiously familiar with it 

 for sixty years, writes : 



"The Dee has its sources in the Cairngorm 

 Mountains, and, after a course of about eighty-five 



