96 BRITISH SPORTING FISHES. 



destroying every natural " redd." There is never 

 a spawning ground along miles of its reaches, 

 and the poacher has given up his trade. Even 

 among the jute fibres from the paper-mills, the 

 scourings from the woollen-mills, the fish manage 

 for a time to drag out a precarious existence. 

 Then the fine mechanism of the gill becomes 

 coated, and the fish sickens and dies is suffo- 

 cated, in fact. As the salmon and trout are 

 weakened, they gradually lose power to work 

 against the force of the current, and are washed 

 far down - stream. Hence it is that the dead 

 fish are never found near the source of pollu- 

 tion, and the blame is invariably cast upon the 

 wrong person. The kind of pollution indicated 

 is mostly done by private proprietors ; but even 

 worse offenders are Corporate bodies, who in 

 most cases are the only competent authorities 

 to set the preventive legal machinery at work 

 to stem the evil. It is often urged that to obtain 

 the purity of the rivers, a host of manufactures 

 would have to be curtailed. But this is by no 

 means necessarily so. Much of the pollution of 

 to-day is owing simply to the selfishness of the 

 polluter. Appliances there are in plenty which 

 would save the river and only lightly touch the 

 manufacturer's pocket. But why should he go 

 to any expense when the Local Authority connives 



