MAY 145 



my impression is it will, that the Thames is already 

 accessible during ten months for salmon as high as 

 Teddington Weir, then the time is at hand when action 

 may be taken hopefully ; subject, of course, to the 

 understanding that the Conservancy see their way to 

 providing passes over the weirs. 



Meanwhile, salmon or no salmon, the whole com- 

 munity owe the conservators and the County Council 

 a deep debt of gratitude for the example they have set 

 to other administrative bodies in restoring the purity 

 of the river. What has been effected in the Thames, 

 loaded with a population of five or six millions, may 

 surely be undertaken in the Clyde, the Mersey, and 

 the shamefully polluted rivers of Yorkshire. 



XXXV 



' Any duffer can catch a salmon,' one hears the super- 

 cilious chalk-stream artist observe with some- 

 thing approaching a sneer, and the truth of 

 the observation could not be called in question if 

 ' may ' were substituted for ' can.' For, whereas a man 

 might as hopefully set out to catch a London sparrow 

 with his hands in the street as to attempt, without 

 some practice in the craft, to beguile a two-pound trout 

 in the Itchen with the dry fly, every salmon-fisher 

 knows by what flukes salmon are sometimes brought 

 to their doom. For instance, a certain well-experienced 

 angling friend of mine, coming towards the close of a 

 long day, during which he had carefully and fruitlessly 



