OF ENGLAND. 27 



ceded the public, who have been deprived of a vast 

 amount of valuable food and saleable property, can 

 never expect to see it restored. 



The question as to the effect of ordinary sewage 

 from a town 1 contend is not so destructive to fish as 

 is generally conceived, as wherever acquatic insects 

 are bred in, and washed out of the sewers into a river 

 of any magnitude, vast quantities of fish may be seen 

 hovering around the mouths of the sewers, and evi- 

 dently feeding upon this insect food washed into a 

 river, but there are, no doubt, cases where the quan- 

 tity of sewage may become a perfect nuisance when 

 cast into streams too insignificant to carry it away. 

 On the Avon, at Bath, the greatest number of ang- 

 lers are to be seen within 50 yards of the mouths of 

 these sewers. 



The most deadly pollutions are gas tar, lime, lead 

 washings, and poisonous matters, all of which should 

 be excluded from every river, as they are from the 

 Thames, under the Navigation Act, 1806. And it 

 would be most advisable for Governments in the first 

 instance, without waiting any further report from 

 the Commissioners of Pollutions, to adopt their sug- 

 gestion that all chemical matter should be confiued 

 to filtering; pits, when a large portion of the refuse 

 could be lecovered in a useful farm. 



The bag and stake nets and other fixed engines 

 have been justly abolished. In the instructions 

 contained in Her Majesty's Commission of the 

 31st July, 1860, it is stated to be " a Commis- 

 sion of inquiry into the Salmon fisheries of 

 England and Wales, with a view of increasing the 

 supply of a valuable article of food for the benefit 

 of the people." 



With these instructions the Commissioners pro- 

 ceeded to investigate the condition of all the salmon 

 rivers in the Kingdom, and printed the result of 



