Sporting notions of present days and past

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IN THE OFF SEASON 287
synonymous with wicked waste on a wholesale
scale, and I do not mind saying that this is a
subject that ought to be vexatious. Half the
year there is not enough water in the greater
part of the Thames, partly because the supply
is insufficient without counting the excessive
demands of the water companies. These, who
help themselves on a hand-to-mouth system,
take just as much as they want for themselves, or
to sell to distant companies ostensibly fed from
other sources, and don't mind how low the river
is, how navigation is interfered with, or how their
excessive drain acts in bringing about epidemic.
If you are there at the time of the "short"
season, you will find their chimneys smoking
pretty well all night and all day, and may hear
the throb of the big pumping machines. Why
can't they lay up stock when it offers itself to be
taken in as it does every now and then ? Were
water treated rationally, that generously liberal
provider Father Thames ought, after a real good
spate " to be excused from taxation for many a
month to come, for we should have enough laid
by to last for years. While the river offers for
acceptance every now and then a tremendous
number of millions of extra gallons per day, it is
not to blame if the glut—a word I scarcely like to
use, though the most apt and expressive for the
purpose—has not been conserved and put away
for the (non) rainy day or time sure to arrive in
due course. At least, so we profess to believe,
though no olive branches appear to be brought
on board any of our craft so far. Then—I mean
while the shallows are poking their backs through
the stream, and small fry are being dried to death
in the emptied dykes and grips—then, as we
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