The Daily Telegraph. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1891.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 6135, 29 April 1891, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 29, 1891.

The sheepfarmers of the Hawke's Bay provincial district contribute to the colonial [ revenue £2,600 a year for the purposes of the Sheep Act, which include the inspection of their flocks. The expenses of the Sheep Department in this district amount only to £800 a year, and the intention is to reduce [ the expenditure by one-half. When the : reductions come into force the Sheep Act will be practically a dead letter. One inspector cannot examine the whole of the flocks in the district, and it is physically impossible for him to go over the country, attend to the examination of travelling sheep, and perform the clerical work of his office. In round figures, he has three million sheep to inspect, and three million acres of country to guard against disease. With the development of the frozen meat industry the numbers of travelling sheep have greatly increased, and no sheep can bo driven before receiving a clean certificate from an inspector. The consequence has been that the two inspectors have had their powers taxed to the utmost to keep abreast of their work The frozen meat trade brooks no delay ; as the sheep have bo be at the freezing works by a certain day, it will be seen that thp calls on the inspectors must be instantly attended to. These calls have been so numerous and constant, with the certainty of continuance to a still larger extent, that it was intended to apply for another inspector, two being insufficient for the full and satisfactory performance of the duties. It was in this position of affairs when the new Government came into office, and Mr McKenzie, a small farmer in Otago, found himself head of the Sheep Department. It is more than likely that Mr McKenzie knows very little of, and has still less sympathy with, sheepfarming. He has, at all events since he has been in the Government given no proof that he has either the one or the other, and which accounts, perhaps, for the creation of a new billet into which he has pitchforked one of his Otago friends. If Mr McKenzie had known anything about the requirements of the Sheep Department he would not have destroyed a system which was the outcome of the deliberations of practical sheepfarmers. But the Hon. the Minister for Lan<?s belongs to a rabbit infested district; he does know of the injury inflicted on pastoralists by tho rabbit plague, and ho has a lively appreciation of tho losses that agriculturists have sustained from it. It has been said that the Sheep Inspectors . of Otago have not given the attention that .hey should have done to the suppression of .•abbits, and as Mr Ritchie had been successful in keeping the run which he managed Tee from tho pest, so Mr McKenzie madehim Dbief Inspector of Sheep for the wholecolony. 3erein the Minister made a mistake. It was [uite within his power ti discharge the abbit neglecting Sheep Inspectors of Otago, md to have appointed his friend Mr Ritchie, md Mr Ritchie's friends, to all the vacancies hus created. But it was a blunder, and in ho nature of a job, to appoint him over the leads of the Chief Inspectors of districts who id their work, and who had no peculiar merest iv the suppression of rabbits where here woie Rabbit Boards to do that partiular duty. From what Mr Ritchie has one in this district since his appointment, ] I; is quite fair to assume that he knows no • lore of the requirements of a great pastoral i rovince like Hawke's Bay than his Minis- . ' arial patron, and, unless the order is peedily given, "As yow wore," there will > c such a mess and a confusion here that all ' :ie Messrs Ritchies iv tho colony will be ' liable to put straight, '