The disaster has been more wholesale in Cardiganshire, famous for
the loveliest and merriest brooks in Europe. They are sterilized of life by every known process. The fish are killed, chemically by poison, mechanically by the weight of rolling refuse brought down in every flood, and if any remain they are starved for want of food, destroyed by the same agency. Some years ago horses that drank of the stream were thought to have been poisoned. Pollution quite so virulent as that is not a thing of the present; but the huge weights Of refuse from lead mines, many now extinct, continue to poison the fish, to choke their gills and smother the breeding beds. Of course a few fish—whatever fantastic price, may be, paid for the pleasure of catching them—are not to be set against the existence of an industry. But there is no good reason why an adjacent mine should spoil a river. It would be at, least
as easy for miners to keep the refuse out of the river as for sugar beet manufacturers to purify their waste liquids. If we cared enough for our rivers they would not be polluted.
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