RIVER POLLUTION 195 



is the old story of corruptio optimi; just as there is 

 no more lovable, irresistibly attractive object in the 

 landscape than a clear running river, so there is 

 none so hideously depressing than a polluted one. 

 Grass may be grimy, trees cankered and smirched, 

 yet these renew their brief verdure every spring, 

 and for a while make brave show in the sunlight ; 

 but there is no kindly season for the poisoned 

 stream. Month after month it rolls its inky flood, 

 spewing tainted foam in the rapids and greasy scum 

 in the deeps ; no dancing ephemerids haunt its 

 sullen wave, no waterfowl its reedless banks; its 

 never ending office is to bear an obscene freight of 

 drowned puppies and cats, evil rags and (unloveliest 

 flotsam of civilisation) torn newspapers. It was 

 bad enough when, as happened in 1894, not for 

 the first time, the sudden release of mineral waste 

 from Dalmellington pits swept havoc down the chan- 

 nel of Burns's Bonny Doon. Thousands of salmon 

 and trout were destroyed in a single night ; but at 

 least that was a transitory calamity. Doon now 

 runs once more with a current as limpid, and sings 

 a melody as sweet, as she did when Coel Hen, 

 irreverently known among ourselves as Old King 

 Cole, reigned in that land. But how many of our 



