172 WATER SUPPLY 



of deep springs in the downs to supply the growing 

 wants of towns. 



Well, there is plenty of water in Scotland still, 

 though we have played, and are going to play, some 

 unhandsome tricks with it. Glasgow proudly bears 

 on her shield St. Mungo's salmon, which certainly 

 was caught in the Clyde, but she and her grown- 

 up daughters have so effectually denied that lovely 

 river that no salmon can pass up to Cora Linn and 

 live. When Colonel Thornton visited the Linn in 

 1786, hundreds of salmon were leaping at that im- 

 passable barrier. Glasgow knows better than to drink 

 the Clyde: she possesses an unrivalled reservoir in 

 Loch Katrine ; and her people being, as all men know, 

 mostly temperance folk, drink so much water and so fast 

 that, even now, works are in progress to raise the level 

 of the loch by further five feet, which is tantamount 

 to lowering Ben Venue by so much. Many an acre of 

 purple moorland and silver-stemmed birches will be 

 submerged; Ellen's Isle will be reduced to a mere 

 pimple on the bosom of the lake, and the famous 

 Silver Strand will disappear for ever. Edinburgh, on 

 the other hand, having lapped up every drop in her 

 own watershed, is about to cross the Pentlands and tap 

 the sources of the Tweed. 



Scribbling these notes while seated, as I have 

 explained, in a boat with a couple of rods dragging 

 about enormous flies, I am tempted to wish Glasgow 

 and Edinburgh would temporarily absorb some of the 

 superfluous moisture that renders all modes of fishing 



