22 THE PRACTICAL ANGLER 



taken place in the quantity of trout in our southern 

 streams, and any angler who has been in the habit 

 of frequenting regularly a particular stream during 

 that time must have noticed an almost annual diminu- 

 tion in the number, and still more in the size, of its 

 finny inhabitants. This is an alarming fact, and 

 well worthy the attention of the angling community, 

 as some of the most fruitful causes of this disastrous 

 result might be stopped. Some of them, however, 

 there is no help for, and the most prejudicial of these 

 is the drainage of the land, more particularly of the 

 hill-pastures for sheep. So long as drainage was 

 confined to the river's banks, its effects were not so 

 observable ; but now that it has extended to the 

 recesses of the mountains, whence most of our rivers 

 receive nine-tenths of their water, and every hill, 

 glen, and moor is drained, it tells severely upon the 

 streams and their inhabitants. The water, which 

 used to find its way to the rivers gradually, keeping 

 them large and full for a considerable time, is now 

 conducted to them very soon after the rain falls, and 

 runs off in a day or two, leaving them clear and 

 dwindled till the next flood. 



Several old residents on Tweedside have assured us, 

 that fifty years ago, when there was a flood, Tweed 

 continued the dark porter colour, so highly prized by 

 anglers, for a week or more, and then ran clear but 

 pretty full. Now the flood is very heavy for the first 

 day or two, and then falls rapidly, in three or four 

 days becoming quite clear, and for weeks scarcely half 

 the size of what it used to be when at its smallest. 



