Ruined Rivers Hardly a week passes in which I do
not hear some ill news of one or other of our rivers. The latest concerns the Usk, where in certain reaches every salmon—and a great number of them—has been killed br poisoning from an unknown source. In some places poisoning (as on the Lea, Gade and Usk) is to blame ; in some the water-supply is tapped too low down in the chalk and so the source of the river is dried ; in some, spawning grounds are wholly destroyed by the dumping -of mechanical grit. Will not the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries justify the latter part of its title by taking active steps to protect our rivers? As things are, nobody seems to think itself responsible ; and conservators, appointed for this special work, have proved singularly incapable of exercising their function with success. Coarse fish of the most robust nature are destroyed along with the salmon or trout.
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