THE THISTLE ACT.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVI, Issue 4060, 26 August 1870, Page 2

THE THISTLE ACT.

[Continued.] Mr. Macandrew was examined and stated • I am member for the Clutha, in the province of Otago, and also Superintendent of the province. There was a Thistle Ordinance in that province, but it is now repealed. I believe that the principal reason why it was repealed was that it was found to be inoperative, and that it waa impossible to keep the thistles down under it. — Mr. Curtis wa3 examined, and stated : I am member for the city of Nelson, and Superintendent of the province. "We have no Thistle Ordinance now. There was an Ordinance passed in 1859, which was amended in 1861, and repealed altogether in 1865. It wat repealed because it was found impossible to carry out its provisions. — Mr. Armstrong was examined, and stated : 1»m member for the district of Akaroa, in the province of Can. terbury. There is a Thistle Ordinance in that province, and it has not been repealed so far aa lam aware. Last year the Act became a dead-letter in my district, and waa not enforced so far as lam aware. I heard a great many complaints two yeara ago. I have always considered it oppressive that Crown lands should be allowed to be nurseries for thistle seed, whilst private parties were compelled to keep them down on their lands. I know one place, near Little Akaloa, where there is a block of at least 5,000 acres of Crown land which is nothing but amass of thistles. — Wednesday, 3rd August, 1870 : Mr. Cracroft Wilson, C.8., was examined, and stated : lam member for the electoral district of Coleridge, in the province of Canterbury. A Thistle Ordinance was passed in 1862 by the Provincial Council, in the hopes of preventing the introduction of thistles into the province. The Act was amended in 1866, and the amended Act is now in force. My estate at Cashmere is divided amongst four Road Distriots, One of those districts is call&d the Spreydon District. Within the limits of that district I have several hundred, acres of swamp, whiob, I have drained at an immense expense. The result of burning the Maori.heada and the flax in the reclaimed swamp has been, that showers of thistle seed have come down from waste lands of tho Crown on the hills above, and thistles have been sown broadcast over that land. On the 11th December I finished sowing with barley a field of twanty.two acres maiden land— ploughed up for the flrafc time— part of thia dried swamp. This land was ploughed up twice, and harrowed about ten times. Every weed was removed from the land. The crop was reaped in the month of March, aud I found in the atubble of the barley millions of tkistles about an inch high, that had been self-sown between the 11th December and the time of leaping, and of the existence of which I was altogether ignorant. Under the Ordinance, any neighbour of mine who was aware of the existence of these small thistles might have laid an information against me, and, under the plea of having the thistles eradicated, might have destroyed the whole of my barley crop. In my opinion the provisions of the Ordinance are oppressive, inasmuch as no penalty is inflicted on tho Government for having nurseries of thistle seed on Crown land.— Mr. Eyes wag examined, and stated: I am member for Wairau, in the province of Marlborough. A Thistle Ordinance was passed by the Proyincial Counoil, but it was never brought into operation, and has since been repealed. — Mr. R. G. Wood was examined, and stated : I am member for the district of Parnell, in the province of Auckland. lam the confidential agent of a gentleman who possessed a freehold property in the neighbourhood of the city of Auckland. He was a good deal troubled about the thistles growing on hia land , and he made an arrangement in the first instance with a neighbour to give him so much a year for keeping his land clear of thistles. As long as that airangement was carried out, the Thistle Inspector U3ed to give the gentleman regular certificates that the land was clean ; but the demands from the neighbour became greater every year, until I advised my principal to cease paying this stipend, and he did so. He had no sooner stopped payment than another neighbour turned up, and brought an action against my principal for damages, because he had allowed, as he stated, the thistle-down to get on his land and so propagate the thistles there. The action was first brought in the Resident Magistrate's Court, for ordinary damages, under the common law, and waa dismissed. He then appealed to the Supreme Court, and lost his case there. My principal, a very quiet and inoffensive man, who has no desire to quarrel with his neighbours or go to law, was so disgusted with the whole affair that he requested me to sell the property, and I disposed of it accordingly by exchanging it for land in another part of the province. — Mr. Stafford was examined, and stated : I am member for the district of Timaru, in the province of Canterbury. I am at present residing at Nelson. A Thistle Ordinance waa passed by the Provincial Council o£ Nelson. I believe it has been repealed, but I have no personal knowledge of the fact. The provisions of the Ordinance utterly failed to prevent the spread of thistles. I do not consider that thistles are noxious on inferior lands ; on the contrary, I think they are beneficial when those lands are first fenced in and not ploughed.— —The Chairman : It has been dep sed before the committee that there is land on the Waitara River about a mile in length by about a quarter of a mile in depth, which was so covered with thistles that a horae could not go through them, and that now, without any human agency, it is as fine a grass meadow as can possibly be. Is such a thing likely to occur ?— Yea, I know many similar cases. Two or three aorea of land at the mouth of the Ngaitai, in Nelson, were overrun with thistles. I have no reason to suppose that they were even stubbed off, certainly it was not ploughed nor dug, and now there is not a single thistle to be seen there, nor has there been for years. I rented a paddook in this town which was so covered with thistles that 1 could scarcely get through it. I got it cleared with a scythe, and now it is perfectly free from thistles. Within two or three years it became covered with grass and clover, and it is really a beautiful paddock. When I first saw the paddocks of Mr. Nixon, at Whanganui, in 1862 or 1863, they were one mass of thistles, 6ft. or 7ft. high, and stock could not move through them. When I was there in 1868 there was not a thistle to be seen, and Mr. Nixon told me he had never broken up the ground, but had merely out tracks through it for the stock. My opinion is that thistles, if left alone, wUI die out, and in many cases speedily.