OUSTED FISHERMEN.
The general neglect is not confined to the locks. Not sn many years ago the weeds were cut regularly, and the mill- owners did much to keep the current clear and unencumbered. All that care is abandoned. The weeds grow at their own sweet will. " We have quite given up fishing," one of the house-owners by the banks told me, " as the weeds make it almost impossible." But the river abounds in coarse fish : in pike, perch, bream, roach, carp, and many others. It would be a trout stream, and a very good one, if we cared for our streams as, say, the Nova Scotians care for theirs, continually restocking them from Government hatcheries. I do not know that it would not be a salmon stream. Two queer old records are known to me. One of a salmon trout (of all fish) being caught at Godmanchester, the other of a salmon " a yard and an inch long " being stranded, after a flood, alongside a neighbouring brook. Some fishing historian should make a list of the rivers that once abounded in salmon and trout, and are now fouled and obstructed. After all, there never was a time when fishing was more popular or fishermen so ready to spend great sums on their pleasure.
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