196 JULY 



English and Scottish streams, not less richly fraught 

 with historic and poetic association than the Doon, 

 have been turned permanently into doacce, sicken- 

 ing to gods and men ! Even in Ireland, where 

 there are no mines and few manufactures, hundreds 

 of leagues of splendid angling water have been ruined 

 by permitting flax to be steeped in the streams. 



They tell us that the Legislature has provided a 

 remedy, but apparently it is not one easily set in 

 motion. It is not much more than a couple of 

 years since the Board of Trade sent down the 

 Inspector of Fisheries to Leeds to receive a deputa- 

 tion from Yorkshire anglers on the subject of river 

 pollution. Delegates attended from Sheffield, Leeds, 

 Bradford, and Scarborough ; those from Hull, York, 

 and Wakefield were unable to be present. Heaven 

 only knows the aggregate number of anglers repre- 

 sented by these delegates ; but those from Sheffield 

 alone claimed to be the mouthpiece of no less than 

 seven thousand ' organised anglers ' seven thousand 

 contemplative men in one city ! 



These ' organised anglers ' claim to have as much 

 right to clean streams as to clean streets ; perhaps 

 they might have put it more strongly, inasmuch as 

 it is the nature of a stream to be pure and that of a 



