FERNS STOLEN

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 45, 21 August 1931, Page 8

FERNS STOLEN

FROM CITY RESERVE

VALUABLE PUNGAS CUT DOWN -

Pleading guilty to three charges of stealing twenty black puhga ferns, valued at £100, Ernest Henry Pileher was fined £10 by Mr. E. Page, S.M., at the Magistrate's Court to-day. .Tho City Solicitor (Mr. Z. O'Shea) said the defendant, had been supplying fern stems to a man at Lower Hutt. He had taken at least twenty from the Memorial Beserve given to the city by Mr.-George. He had received £5 10s or £6 10s for the stems he Jiad supplied. Mr. Page: "Are these ferns worth £5 each, as it is stated?" Mr. O'Shea: "Yes, that is the value Mr. J. G. MacKenzie, the Director of Beserves, places on them." Mr. O'Shea said the stumps left in the reserve corresponded with the stems in the man's garden. The act had been very extensive, and the amount-received by Pilcher was not at all adequate to the value of the ferns. The matter was a serious one, as the reserve was going to be one of the beauty spots-of Wellington, and if the plants were mutilated in that way it would very soon be spoilt. : The defendant said-he had only cut down ten trees, but had tut each of the stems in half. He told the Magistrate he was on relief.work getting 18s per week. ...■■■■

Mr. Page gave him one month in which to find the money.