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in many instances the answers say kill vast quantities of fish, as in the cases of the Allyn (tributary of the Dee), "where for 14 miles every fish in Dec, 1866, was destroyed by petroleum works,"[1] the Usk, of which it is remarked, it is so polluted that "unless some legislative measure stop the evil the objects of the Salmon Fishery Acts and the labours of the Conservators will he thrown away," the Exe, where paper mills "kill bushels of fish;" the Trent, where (at Burton) for several years past, "fish have been poisoned by tons;" the Aire, which is "so surcharged with immense quantities of coal dust and dye, that hundreds of salmon are choked and blind-folded by the poisonous salt;" and the Wear, of which the answer says, "it is dreadfully polluted by lead mines, collieries, iron, gas, and chemical works, paper mills, sewerage, and every abomination a thickly populated district can put into it."
This Report gives therefore a total of at least 32 rivers thus poisoned and polluted, very many of them horribly.
As to the pollutions by lead mines Mr. Buckland at page 4, says, "the measures taken to obviate this terrible evil have been but slight," he points however to the answer of the Tamar, page 54, where it is stated that—
"The Devon Great Consols Mine Company (whose good example was noticed in Mr. Ffennell's 4th Report, page 24, ante), have made catch pits, &c., and are
- ↑ Referring to this fearful case, Mr. Mostyn Owen, the honorary secretary of the Dee Fishery Board, told the great Salmon Fishery Congress at South Kensington, in June 1867, that a skilful analyst, after analysing the water, had declared to him that the river which was thus polluted, and which supplied all Chester with its drinking water, "might any day bring down such a quantity of deadly poison that half Chester might by killed by it;" Mr. Owen adding that the Fishery Board had done what they could to obtain a conviction against the offenders, but had failed from a mere technicality. And in reference to this same river, Lord Robert Montagu informed the House of Commons, in the course of his speech in moving the second reading of the "River Waters Protection" Bill in 1865, that "the honorary secretary of the Dee Fishery Association had preserved a bottle of pure paraffin made from the water taken from the Dee below the petroleum works."—Hansard, vol. 177, 3rd Series, page 1316.
