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 
pollutor. 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 
