FINCHES OR SPARROWS?

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13909, 7 December 1910, Page 8

FINCHES OR SPARROWS?

No doubt it was with perfectly unconscious humour that, in searching i for a new name that should contain ' the magic word "finch," certain prospectors on the new West Australian go'dfiejd named their property Flatfinch. It may turn out to be a second Waihi, but the name is not happy, and is calculated to make the experienced smile. Warnings are being continually written in the boldest characters in the book of mining experience, but the public are either blind or •will not see, and go on hoping for fortunes and losing their money just as their fathers and grandfathers did in the past. The Australian public, dazzled by the reports of gold being dug like potatoes in the West, have been in a most expansive, mood, and apparently ready to put down money for shares in properties they have never seen and of which they know next to nothing. The Chaffinch may be all that its owners claim for it, but the latest developments in connection with the property are enough to make people careful. Doubts cast en the value of the, mine led to the dramatic scene wo described in yesterday's issue, when the sceptics were given ocular proof of the wealth of tho lode. As a result of this a number of Pressmen issued. a statement testifying to the genuineness of the "proposition." Now we are told that gold values have yet to be found in the Chaffinch ground, and the Melbourne Stock Exchange wants an enquiry held. Those who lose money in the Yilgarn "boom" have only themselves to blame. Warning after warning has been given to investors to "go slow," and it is significant that the plainest speaking has come from the Press at Southern Cross itself. But as the Sydney "Daily Telegraph" remarks, "Men " who would not for a few pounds buy " a horse or a boat without the most '• careful examination will rush to pur- " chase mines at hundreds of tbous- " ands of pounds, which neither " they nor the people who ad- " vise them have ever seen or would " know anything about if they did." The pains that have been taken to coin numerous combinations of "finch" and other words to adorn new properties, is instructive. The object, of course, lias been to keep the glamour of the parent mine, .the Bullfinch, over all. One has heard, however, of sparrows being painted to resemble canaries, and time may show that the attractiveness of some of the West Australian "finches" which look bo handsome from a distance, does not extend beyond the "colour."