Country Life
CLEAN RIVERS.
On the side of a steep hill leading down to the River Lea, I noticed this week that superfluous tar and pitch from the repair of the road was collecting in lumps and streams at every grid. This means that at the first heavy rain the tar will be carried in quantity to the thin trickle of the stream ; and within a few hours we may see high mortality among the fish. Very slight precautions, which I know the road-menders would be willing to take, if asked, would entirely prevent such a calamity. The rivers, of course, are to-day in a peculiarly dangerous state. A fast, free-flowing stream, of Which the bed is kept tolerably clean, can get rid of adventitious poisons so quickly that slight pollution does little harm. To-day the gravel streams are only less stagnant than the clay streams of the Midlands, of which some have clean vanished. Even the occasional pond in the bed has dried up. A dose of poison would hill every trout, where trout are, and perhaps even the coarse fish.
Previous page
