The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 1928. PAST ERRORS.

Franklin Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 40, 4 April 1928, Page 4

The Franklin Times PUBLISHED EVERY MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, AND FRIDAY AFTERNOON.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 4, 1928. PAST ERRORS.

Office and Works: HALL STREET, PUKEKOHE P.O. Box 14. Phone No. 2. Night Phone, No. 328

"We nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice."

IT is a good thing for us every now and then to have some outsider come and have a look at us and tell us what he thinks of what we are doing. People, if left unnoticed, are prone to fall into a rut of satisfied complacency, and believe that they are doing things in the best of all possible ways. it may be unpleasant, but it is decidally salutory to be 1 jolted out of one's satisfied self-Contemplation every now and then.

Dr A. W. iHll, the director of Kew Gardens, who has been in New Zealand the last few weeks is decidedly perturbed about the way we have upset the Lt'Jance of nature in New eZaland. Eighty or ninety years ago we began seriously to handle a country which contained no noxious weeds and no troublesome or destructive animals or birds, and the results of our efforts

ave been enough to make the angels

weep. We commend our readers to another column of the Times to-day to learn what kind of picture New' Zealand presented to the Rev. William Yate a hundred years ago, and then to ask themselves if we ought not. to he ashamed of much of our handiwork. The deliberate planting of noxious weeds, the heedless introduction of destructive animals and birds, sometimes by individuals but chiefly by our noxious Acclimatisation Societies, which cared not what, injury was wrought so long as a little so-called sport could be obtained, has done injury which can never be repaired, and can only be somewhat mitigated by an enormous expenditure of money and labour. And the unfortunate part of it is that we have

among us a class that experience cannot teach. The wanton planting of the National Park with heather is al-

most a thing of yesterday, and the demand of the Waimarino Acclimatisation Society's . to be allowed to destroy shags was only made last week. All modern observation, shows that the shag is the friend and not the enemy of the fisherman, and it is outrageous that in these days of enlightenment there should stil exist a controlling body capable of making such a demand. And what accentuates the temerity of the request is that the society seeks permission to invade the bird sanctuary at Karioi to carry out its objectionable plans. It is to be hoped the Minister for Marine will have the good sense to refuse the application. i With deer destroying our reserves and natural forests, with goats ruining the plant life on Mount Egmoni, with the destructive opossums spreading rapidly over the country, with rabbits hugely reducing our pastoral production, and with noxious weeds invading not only cur reserves and our Crown lands, but our farms, it is no wonder Dr. Hill was pained and shocked at what h=* saw here. It is no use to cry over the milk we have already spilt, but surely it is up to us to do everything we can to repair the damage, and determine resolutely that no more plants or animals sholl be introduced till their harmlessness has been established without a doubt.