24 
Appendices to Tenth Annual Report 
I am further of opinion that the town sewage, when the water is low, has 
filled up the salmon pools. The ' Hole of the Wood' and * Round Pool' are 
now quite level, and others are nearly filled up. When drawing our nets in 
these latter they are literally closed up with stinking dirt. 
The other great cause of deterioration of the fishings is the whammel-nets. 
They come as far up the river as the southmost house at Kenneth Bank, 
and when stretched across the stream scarcely a fish can get past them. These 
whammellers have licenses from Mr Adam Edgar, the tacksman of Arbigland 
Fishings. It is only these who come so-far up the river. They are the worst, 
but others who whamniel more in the channel of the Solway are bad enough. 
The nets are floated up and down with ebb and flow, and little escapes them, 
and it is not only what they take, but fish coming in contact with them turn 
and .flv seawards. 
(Signed) CHARLES TURNER. 
Dumfries, 14£/i August 1891. 
John Turner, Kelton Bank, Dumfries, aged 33, says : — 
My father, Robert Turner, Fish and Game Dealer, Castle Douglas, and I are 
joint-tacksmen of the salmon fishings at the estuary of the Nith, belonging 
to Mr Maxwell Witham of Kirkconnell. 
This is our fourth year on Kirkconnell Fishings. 
The fish have been getting scarcer every year during our tack. They have 
been dying in considerable numbers. 
At first it was the month of June before we began to find dead fish, but last 
year we found them dying in the last week of April. 
The fish come up with the tide, and after the ebb, if they happen to be left 
in a pool, they become sickly and float on their sides, and after a little we can 
see them waggle, turn up their bellies, and die in a minute or two. 
I attribute this to the pollution of the river by the dye and other poisonous 
and deleterious substances which come from the mills and factories at 
Dumfries. 
The pollution from this source appears to have increased during the last few 
years. 
When the mills are stopped on Sundays, the water bocomes quite pure, and 
I have never seen any dead fish in the river on a Monday morning. 
During the dry weather there were some dead fish found every day. The 
people at Glencaple and Kelton make a practice of going up and down the 
river-side when the ebb begins, looking for the dead fish, which they either use 
or sell. 
The fishings are getting much worse every year, and if something is not done 
to prevent the pollution, they will soon be so poor that they will not be worth 
fishing. 
1 am not aware if the dye is let off from the mills every day, but at any rate 
it is much worse some days than others. Where the water is stagnant or 
sluggish we can see it quite blue — almost black — with the dye, and when we 
come out of the water, after wading, we find our leggings of a mauvish colour at 
the water-mark. 
I have seen a sheet of dye — a kind of scum — 6 feet in diameter and 6 
inches thick above water, coming floating down the river. 
(Signed) JOHN TURNER. 
Paidle-nets ^ Annan, Pow-foot, there are several paidle-nets which I inspected, 
at Annan, They have leaders, the stakes of which are about 5 feet 6 inches high, and 
Pow-foot. pockets like those of a fly-net. T was informed that the codlings and 
flounders caught in these nets bring but a very small price, namely, lOd. 
per stone for codlings and Is. per stone for flounders. It was low water 
when I inspected these paidle-nets. At this part of the Firth there is a 
great extent of muddy foreshore, and some of the paidle-nets are placed 
quite close to the low-water channel of the Firth. Here there is a very 
large portion of the foreshore — I should think at least a square mile — 
