KAURI GUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 213, 7 September 1921, Page 6

KAURI GUM.

(To the Editor.) . Sir, —Since Mr. Bartram referred expressly to "a chip swamp, no matter how much dug out," so you merely waste your space in admitting "Black Gum's" pretence that "a piece of good gum land" was meant. 5«o one is so verdant or so exacting at this time of day as to expect any brand of politician to inform himself on what he talks about, and I used the menrber for Grey Lynn simply as a peg on which to hang an illustration of the sort of folly that rises rampant at any proposal to J bring the Far North within touch of twentieth century progress. Your correspondent quotes from the "Xew Zealand Farmer" figures which confessedly "bulk too large for ordinary comprehension," and asks why I did ' not "tackle" the author of the article in which they appear. Well, for the same reason I do not "tackle" the authors of "Little Red Riding Hood," "Jack and the Beanstalk." or the "Star's" leaders on the Bolsheviks. And surely one may smile at the claim that "an acre of dug-out swamp will yield £1500 net profit" without finding two or three thousand pounds' worth an excessive estimate of what gum an acre of rich swamp may contain. In presuming" to point out errors a wise critic will always confine himself to demonstrable inaccuracies, and will be specially careful not to challenge a disinterested authority whose means of forming a correct judgment far exceed his own.—l am, etc., BLACK WATCH.