Defects in the Existing Acts. 295 



the Tay and many other rivers ; but this is un- 

 necessary: the facts are well known. It is en- 

 couraging to observe, however, that the importance 

 of the subject is now so fully recognised, that 

 Angling Associations and Fishery Boards are tak- 

 ing steps to obtain from the Government some 

 remedy for the defects in the existing law; and 

 that, in view of the wider interests to - which the 

 question appeals, a National Society has been re- 

 cently formed in London, in order, as its prospec- 

 tus bears, " to induce and secure immediate legis- 

 lation for the prompt and effective suppression of 

 the pollution of the streams of the country." 



The evils attendant on weirs and pollutions are 

 vastly increased by the excessive amount of land- 

 drainage. This has been alluded to in a previous 

 chapter as acting very prejudicially to the interests of 

 the resident river- trout ; but the migratory Salmon- 

 oids suffer from it even more severely. In the 

 case of both fish, the changes caused by drainage 

 tend to the destruction of the ova the greater sud- 

 denness and violence of the flood washing away the 

 spawn, and the greater height of the flooded water 

 inducing the spawners (which always seek the 

 shallows) to deposit their ova in higher situations, 

 where they are, on the subsidence of the waters to 

 a low level, exposed to imminent peril, if not to 

 certain destruction. But if the drainage system 



