146 SOME NOTES CONCERNING ASHIESTEEL 



I was one of the, probably, very few people concerned 

 who refused to subscribe to the Tweed hatchery ; thinking 

 that whether or not the water of the river is diminishing, 

 the stock of salmon is ample. 



That there was a suflftcient stock, with the apparently 

 diminishing water of the river, was the reason given by the 

 Tweed Commission (I think) for not taking it up. Whether 

 the water really is diminishing it is impossible to be sure, 

 it varies so much in different seasons. 



One does not see why it should be, for ploughing the hills, 

 and, to a great extent, draining, almost stopped when the 

 bad times began in 1880. While it is impossible to say 

 exactly what the effect will be of the great reservoir at 

 the head of the river. 



As regarded the hatchery, it certainly neither had the credit 

 nor the blame, for it was only started in 1899, I think; but 

 not only was the salmon fishing season of 1900, in the upper 

 waters, about the best remembered, but the salmon-disease 

 has since broken out again, after an absence, it is said, of 

 six years, from the over-crowding of salmon in the shallow 

 waters where the spawning beds lie, within reach of the 

 sun's heat. 



While the healthy full-grown fish are arrested, to an extent 

 that there is certainly some mistake in allowing, by the stake- 

 nets, of which there are actually more than one for every 

 quarter of a mile of coast between Berwick and John o' 

 Groats. 



The curious fact that ground which has been wooded will 

 produce young trees after being pastured for an indefinite 

 length of time, if not ploughed up, has been demonstrated 

 almost as clearly, on a small scale, at Ashiesteel as in Cyprus, 

 as described in what is really a book of travels Mr Eider 

 Haggard is publishing in the weekly Queen, under the title 

 of " A Winter Pilgrimage." 



He says, the mountains of Cyprus were " as bare as a 

 plate " when he was there fourteen years before ; and now, 

 where protected from cattle, they were covered with young 

 wood. 



