The Press. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1893. LAND FOR SETTLEMENT.

Press, Volume L, Issue 8580, 6 September 1893, Page 4

The Press. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1893. LAND FOR SETTLEMENT.

The return of laud offered to the (jovernmeut for settlement is not as precise as could be wished, uor as it might have been made agreeably to the terms of the order of the House. In the case of some of the blocks offered the land tax value is not given, though the blocks in themselYe=> are complete and do not form parts of larger -properties. In the reasons adduced why certain blocks are considered unsuitable two are met with where the price is-described as-too high, yet the price demanded is not stated. Omisajons such as these are not creditable to the Land Department and should cot have occurred, especially in a paper intended to demonstrate by analytical comparison what are the relations of prices demanded to the land tax. values. Taere -are other blocks again considered unsuitable where the prices demanded are not shown. Whatever may have

been the difficulty in determining the laud "tax " value of some of the blocks through their counection with other parts of the same property there could have been none with regard to the price demanded. The value of the return to a large extent is destroyed by the omissions, and there is a suggestion of concealment which could have been avoided if more care or fraukuesa had been bestowed on the preparation. When the borvxfidrs of the Government in the matter of purchase ia in question no loophole ehould have been, given to the suspicion that information due to the public is being withheld. And we must say that some of the excuses put forward for not accepting the offers seem to us trivial, and some are certainly ungrounded. The excuse that the Laud for Settlements Act does not contemplate the purchase of high-priced suburban lands at once breaks down on reference to clauss 16 of that Act. That clause leaves no doubt on this point. Suburban and town lands are expressly mentioned, and the manner of their disposal defined. The acquisition of suburban land was distinctly contemplated by the Act, and in the opinion of cuany persons was to be the means of aiding the population of congested centres in supplementing their resources. That suburban land is high priced is due to its position, and Government have affirmed and upheld high prices through their appointed valuers and reviewers, frequently in opposition to private valuations, and it is not with good grace that a department of the Government now cavils at prices which that Government were partly instrumental in fixing. Though some of the prices demanded appear excessive, the prices asked for some of the blocks offered are clearly reasonable. One block of 3300 acres, though assessed for tax at £2660, was offered to the Government for £1850. In the excuse column of the return " price considered too high" is marked againet it. What a commentary is this observation on the tax assessessmeut I Here is a property offered at 25 per cent, beiow the assessment, and the price demanded is deemed by the Department too high. Other blocks have been offered at the tax valuation, or so nearly so thac the difference is only trifling. Personal knowledge of some of the land offered enables us t© go beyond the evidence of the return in making this assertion, and it enables us to Bay that some of this reasonably priced land is of undeniable quality. That the prices demanded have in some cases exceeded the land tax valuation is not a matter of astonishment. The valuations, except those disputed, were afriyed at generally by mutual agreement between the assessors and the owners, and the clause in the Land and Income Tax Act which allowed, or appeared to allow, a disputing owner a 10 per cent. addition to tixe assessed value in the case ol n\e having to force the hand ol the Commissioner, guided many owners to reduce the actual \a\ue by tuia amount. That provision in the Act haa since been declared of doubtful interpretation, but the Government evidently thought it operative, for they amended the Act last session so as to exclude the privilege. Further, the want of uniformity in the assessments, particularly as between district and disLrict, explains to some extens the relatively higher prices asked for some blocks as compared with others. The, reasons why blocks were couaidered unsuitable are such as these—"Not suitable for small farms." " Not sufficient demand for small farms ni the district." " Land not first rate quality." "Lund light," "Pastoral country," " Somewhat wet," '• Difficulties about water for subdivision," &j. All these objections should have been,considered when Cheviot was purchased. Cheviot it is true, was not purcbased.uuder the Land for Settlement Act, neverthless it was bought for settlement and not for the protection of the revenue, as it ought to *fcave been for the Land and lucorae Tax Act to have been complied with. Protection of the revenue had little or nothing to do with thepurchase. If protection of the revenue had been the object, the estate would have been realised when a premium of £50,000 on the purchase money was offered, as we are assured by the Minister for Lands was the case. Settlement was the object in view in, buying, unless the object is a hidden one. The Disposition Bill certifies to the fact, aud belies the idea of revenue protection. The motive having been settlement, the Government should have considered well whether the estate was suited to the purpose for which it was bought. The largerpart of the estate is admittedly nothing but pastoral land, -and light too, if lightness consists ia'"not being rich. The ploughable portion is of most questionable qualify far agriculture. Suitableness for small farms is certainly not one of- its attributes. In parts it is somewhat wet—-very much so we should say. In other parts there are difficulties about water for subdivision. As to demand for small farms in the district that question Will be, tested so shortly that no opinion need be expressed on*it. Cheviot, at any rate, dees not come up to the standard the Department has set itself for settlement land. • . But does the Minister for Lands really expect nothing but first-class land to be offered him foe settlement ? Probably nob 10 per cenc. of the settled land of New Zealand is first-class land. Is none of the lighter land which old settlers have thought good enough for themselves fit for the new settlers who are to arise- Old settlers have occupied such land.with contentmeut and satisfaction till a meddlesome Government interposed. la it nothing but the very best which that Government propose to acquire by their measure of compulsion? But we do not believe that the Government are in earnest in this matter of close settlement. They have had land offered thenv—good laad and reasonable in price—which their officers have never looked at, and were probably never instructed to look at. Ministers with all their professed desire to meet this 4ueation have shirked it, aud tremble at the thought of fulfilling the promises they rashly made. Who can wonder ? Land brokerage and land transactions are' not the business of a Government. They cannot be undertaken without certain loss. lieacquired land may find buyers and lessees, but who will safeguard the

State against the inevitable failures ? Hitherto, with rare exceptions, a cash system has obtained in the sale of Crown lands, and the losses and failures that have occurred in connection with them lave been individual, aud thas ehould such losses and failures remain, TOPICS OF THE DAY. i ■ ______ j An institutiou which afc Hard Times tirst sight one would think in might possibly benefit from Sydney. hard times, instead of ~ suffering therefrom, is the sixpenny restaurant. It might be argued that people accustomed to giving a shilling or even half-a-erown for a meal in their prosperous days, would, when things went badly, turn with gratitude to the restaurants to be found in most of the Australasian cities—and probably in no other Englishspeaking country —where for sixpence you can take your choice from two or three kinds of soup, a score of entree*, half-a-dozen joints, and pastry galore. No doubt this process downward does take place to. a certain extent. According to investigations made by the Sydney Daily Telegraph, however, it is more than counterbalanced by the falling off of the old customers who are no longer able to afford so many sixpences as of yore. There is one eating-house in Lower George street, Sydney, which is cited by our contemporary as typical of the rest. Two years ago the proprietor served from 600 to 800 meals a day. He now serves on an average about 350. A good many of the working men who were his regular customers have had to go away. Dozens of men, who formerly had three meals a day at the restaurant, now content themselves with only one—and that one, we may be sure, does not leave much margin of profit to {he proprietor. " It 13 not difficult for mc" said the restaurateur to the reporter " to detect the men who have silently to suffer the loss of their three meals a day. You can see it in their haggard appearance, their melancholy demeanour, and their indisposition to talkMen who used to come here regularly for breakfast, dinner and tea, and pass the time of day, and stop and have a few words of conversation, now quietly drop in about midday, eat their meal hurriedly and go out. You don't require to ask them what is the matter. Their appearance indicates that a little too well." The picture gives ue a pathetic insight into what "hard times' really mean for the working man who is down on his luck from no fault of his own, and who bravely struggles on, scorning charity and-doing the best he can for himself till brighter days shall dawn again. As the wind is always "All Meals tempered to the shorn Threepence." lamb, so ifc is true that even in very hard times there is an effpit on the part of society to adjust itself to the altered circumstances and to lighten the burden where it presses the heaviest. Even the working man in J Sydney, unable any longer to afford a six" penny dinner, can now get a wholesome and ■substantial meal for hal£ that sum. At Brsb an attempt was made to give the regulation three courses for foiirpenee. That failed, however, as t\\e closed shutters emphatically indicated.whentheDa%TelP(7rnpfc reporter visited the establishment. It Aas ! apparently been found quite practicable however, to give a lesa pretentious meal for threejteiice. "A lady, stout, hearty, eloquent and foreign." was found presiding over a threepenny restaurant, and she pointed proudly to her bill-of-fare. She said—" We ]et you have a chop of a steak, or some curry aud rice, or a stew, with bread and butter and a pot of tea thrown in. And it's good butter, too. Don't you go away with any notion that it's not." Customers who did not care for tea, she addend, coxild have soup instead. IE a Sydney working man is able to buy such a meal for threepence, ifc is evident that lie has an advantage in the way of cheap food not to be met with in many other parts of the world, unless it may be Siberia. Of course if he is not able to earn the threepence his lot is still a hard one, bub even in. these hard times there can be few, one would tiiink, reduced to such a desperately low level as that. This Mar3 r lebono pricket A Famous Club—the most famous in Cricket Club, the world—is now in its hundred-and-aixth year. Ifc has 3851 members, and its income from all sources amounts to £17,500 a year. It takes so long to get elected, unless you are a very brilliant player, that you have very little r;bance. of being admitted during your playing career unless a thoughtful father was sufficiently ■practical to enter your name while you were yet a puling babe, lying unconscious in your cradle. Mr Henry Fumiss, indeed, is responsible for a story to the effect that ifc once occurred to one of those men to whom cricket seems the only thing worth living for, that he would take time by the forelock, which he did, by having the consummate audacity to put an imaginary son's name down as a candidate for membership. Some day, he thought, he might marry, and have cause to congratulate himself upon his foresight. Well, continues Mr Furniss, he did get married, and some years afterwards received an intimation from the Secretary of the Club to say his son was elected. Son ! He had, it is true, been blessed with a child, but, alas, it was a girl! A few ye»rs ago when the pttrcbase and enlargement of the ground necessitated a large sum of money being raised, advantage was taken of the difficulty of admission to admit a hundred men at £IQQ apj* o3 ! * n 4 was ao difficulty whatever in obtaining the requisite number on these terms. The ordinary subscription; is £3 a year and £2 entrance fee, and even at this low rate, every cricket which he see? coete many a member a sovereign at least. All this, and much more interesting information about the premier Cricket Club in the world, may be found in a recent number of the St. James' Gazette. It. does not look as if crickeb had entirely, lost its popularity in England, at any rate. Among the miscelNew Zealand Plants laneous assortment for England. of cargo which the Ruahine will take to London, on her nexts voyage will be a collection of native plants, ahrabs, and I trees which lias probably never been rivalled in point of variety or interest. Mr James Veitch, a member of the well-known English firm of nursery gardeners, James Veitch and Co., has epent several months in this colony, which, he has made the point of departure for England after havine; been travelling aver the world for several years in search of rare andstrange plants. As the result of his stay in 2few Zealand, Mr Teitch has filled twelve Wardian cases with choice native plants, and Use Otago Daily Times gives an interesting account of their contents. To begin with, the term Wardian j case 3 must not he taken to mean pretty ! fragilities such as occupy places in many drawing rooms. Mr Veitch's case 3 are monstera of their kind, weighing over half & ton each, measuring' four feet in length, thirty inches Lα width, and the same in height, and looking, it is said, at a distance like small houses. Them are glass panes in

their roofs and they are fitted with a narrow lid by whiah a complete view of the contents "can be obtained.. A lovely sight is disclosed when this lid is removed. One case is described as being full of celmiaias, in which there are some giant daisies in full bloom. "In another, ranunculi are also blooming in full vigour, and these have been out in the open air all the winter till a few days ago. In other cases are olearias, senecios, veronicas, ourisias, pittosporoms, ratas, astelias, beeches, ribbomvoods, cabbage trees or cordylincs (of live or six species), anil ferns, including the only two species which have not been successfully introduced at Home so far—viz., Gieichenia cunninghaini, or the umbrella fern, and Lomaria fraseri, the rare walking-stick fern. Aspidhun cystostegia, a rare and hardy alpine shield fern, is also in the collection." It is indeed a mystery, as the account says, how these beautiful plants have not been sold to local purchasers (for it must be explained that Mr Veiteh drew largely for his collection on the resources of a Dunedin nurseryman.) Bub it is a fact that in the matter of plants and trees, as in a good many other things, the imported rather than the colonial article has the preference. New Zealand rejoices in a remarkably rich flora, few specimens of which are to be seen except in their native haunts. We shall be proud of our beautiful shrubs and trees some day, but the chances are that when that day comes a good many of them will have disappeared, except from the fastnesses of the Fiord country or similarly out of the way localities, under the ruthless axe of the settler. Then we shall have to fall back on local nurseries, or may even have to go home to those of Messrs Veltch and Co. to gaze on some of our lost treasures. CLIPPINGS. It is reported at Masterton that a party of Forty-mile Bush settlers iutend leaving shortly for Paraguay. An Irish paper has discovered that the now famous Indian cricketer, Ranjitsinbji, is blessed with a father who " is a more or less barbarous Indian chieftain." 5 On the receipt of the.news recently of a big score made by his son, the chief wired to London iii reply, " Allah be praised ! Three slaves have just been, sacrificed !" A story, which will be appreciated by every agriculturist and University man, is just now going the rounds in Edinburgh. A number of examinations are being held at the University, and at one of them a student, bearing the name of Meadow, who had answered the printed papers, was called up for his "oral." "Ah, Mr Meadow," said the Professor, a genial man in his way, " fine old name yours." "Yes, Professor," responded the student, "it would be a great pity if it were ploughed." The coffin iii which the remains of Lady Wheeler, wife of Sir Trevor Wheeler, were interred at Leamington, was probably the largest ever seen in Great Britain. It was rectangular in shape, and made of polished oak, the panels being strongly bound with massive bras 3 furniture. It measured over 7ft long, nearly ofb deep, and 4ft broad. No hearse sufficiently large could be obtained, and the coffin was taken to church on a carriage, owiug to its immense size. A long platiorm had to be constructed to avoid the descent of the church steps, and 14 men were required to lower it into the grave. Lady Wheeler ia said to have weighed 39 stone. The invention of the screw-propeller is cVavmed. iov several \>evsou3, and lately the centenary of the birth of Joseph Hessel, who is credited by the Austrians with its invention, was celebrated in Austria by the , unveiling oE a monument at Mariabrunn, ! where he lived when a student of forestry, by the inauguration of memorial tablets in the various towns in which he stayed, and by a great commemorative, festival around his statue in front of the Polytechnic Institute in Vienna. The hitter was erected in 1863, six years after he had died, in' poverty and neglect, at an inn at Laibach. His claim to priority in the invention of the screw-propeller, says the English Mechanic, is disputed in England and. elsewhere, but in Vienna it is supposed to be well established by various documentary proofs which have just been published. Hessel is said to have described his idea of using the. Archimedian secew for the propulsion of ships aa early us 1812. Some Americans assert that the first use of the screw-propeller was by Stevens, of Hoboken, who tried twinbladed screws in 1804. The use of the screw was, however, suggested by many writers, even by Hooke as early aa 1680. Mr Andrew Carnegie says:—" The eighth wonder of the world is this—2fb of irohs.drie" purchased on the shores of Lake Superior and transported to Pittsburgh; 2lb of coal mined in Coimellsville and manufactured into l£lb of coke and brought to litts- ,- burgh; ilb of limestone mined east of the Alleghanies and brought to Pittsburgh ; a little manganese ore, mined in Virginia aid brought ito Pittsburgh, and these 4glb of material manufactured into lib of solid steel and sold for one cent. That's all that need be said about the steel business." The crowding of the House during the last fortnight, says the Wvstminster Gazette, has drawn attention once more to the immense size of onr House of. Commons' in comparison to tho Assemblies of other nations. Our Parliament, with 670 members in its House of Cotomons "and 520 in its Upper, is far and away the largest in the world. France comes nearest with 557 in the Assembly and 300 in tne Senate. Spain comes next witn 431 in Congress and 36u in the Cortes. Then comes Germany with 397 in its Reichstag and 58 in its Bundesrath, followed by the Austrian Reicharith with 353 and 246 in the Lower and Upper 'louses respectively. The United States has 325 representatives in Congress and 76 Senators. Not unnaturally the philosophic Englishman asks—why so many ? A buried city has recently been discovered in Guatemala, on the estate of Don Alvarado, at the foot of the Yplcano Aqua, about three kilometres eastward from Santiago do los Caballeros. On several occasions during the preceding few weeke, the proprietor noticed articles having a strong resemblance to i the, domestic uteasib of the North American Indians at the period of the discovery of the New World. H* decided on an excavation, and at a depth of from two to five metres found a number of interesting articles, such as domestic utensils, Fayence vessels, engraved and brightlypainted glasses, rases and kitchen-pots, all in, a state of good preservation. Also onyx axes, hammers, swords, knives, and lanceheads ; in fact, the whole series of weapons in use in pre-Columbian times was fully represented. Along , with these were * great number of painte<| clay god 4 fine pearls, turquoises, and' other ■preeiooa atones. Among the stones -was one of a magnificent green colour, called by the natives chaicletviil, and worn only by praacea. "Oie of the f lasses was ornameatecl with symbols and ieroglyphic inscriptions in brilliant colours. The statues carved in black basalt display great artistic skill, and are the more remarkable from the fact that their sculptors had only stone'implements. So far at least no trace of metal has been found in the excavation. This last fact renders it possible that the buried city pertained to the stoae age, wfaieh- UaU4 longer ia America than in the Old World. At a depth of only one and a half metre the workmen came ontfie walfe of tse fiqases of the buried city. At the level of the floor of the houses they discovered a. con fused mass of human skeletons, some in sitting postures, some lying oa tfieir backs, some on their faces.. Tghe fireJuatorla people who occupied the city araehtrwn by the skeleton* to bate fceea a very fidi eeme ol toe skeletons measuring up to t»o inettea (six feet seven inches nearly}. Tiei position of the skeletons, and in fact the whole condition of tha ruins, point to the eoncfosioß that the city was swallowed by an earthquake. Malt Digestive Bread, invaluable as an addition to the food of cfiffifreii and invalids, and also ho highly recommended by the medical ptofessiion, caa now t>e obtaiqed frgnv W. TaojiPSO?;, Colombo street, or the Canterbury Jiread Company, Vic.oria street, where oidaw(t> Will also be received.—[Adyt.J "