ESTABLISHED 1875. Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Conducted by E. D. HOBEN, Editor & Proprietor. Published Every Morning. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1907. SATURDAY MORNING.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 283, 7 December 1907, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1875. Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Conducted by E. D. HOBEN, Editor & Proprietor. Published Every Morning. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 1907. SATURDAY MORNING.

" Watchman, what of the Week ? "

n Most outstanding of all the events of the week has been the arrival of tha Hinemoa with those shipwrecked mariners from the Aucklands. Eight months on desolate, if scientifically interesting islands, seven of those on what was to them also literally Disappointment Island where they lived the lives of primitive man, building coracles, sewing skins with bone needles, digging with a stick and their hands—returning, in fact, to the Stone Age. No wonder the scientists were entranced and accepted for their museums the crude articles fashioned by £the castaways and which energetic showmen are now eager to secure at fancy prices. But the atavism that the scientists saw in coracles and bone sewing tools was after all nothing very remarkpble. They did these things because they had to do them. They couldn't help Not because remote ancestors did them. They were the Crusoe type of sailors, hardly quite Swiss family Robinson, and certainly not the scientific wreckees of Jules Verne. The greater interest, however, lies in the romantic side—the hardships bravely borne, those plucky six-mile ocean trips in the cranky make-shift craft, the broken-hearted mate, the humorous and daring young A.8., Eyre, who ought to be secured by a publisher of sea yarns. It was all a whiff of the sea and its storms, and of humanity with the lid off—and looking the better for the glimpse within.

The Premier has been animadverting on the criticisms of "legislation by exhaustion" and says that it would take a six months session to get through any other way. "Would it take a competent Board of Directors, plain brainy and experienced men,"that time of continuous sitting to govern this little country? Methinks not. The whole trouble with the Parliament is that it has so many members who think not of how public business can be best accomplished, but of the sound of their own voices and the pretty figures they cut before the ladies' gallery and their constituents. The qualities they most assiduously cultivate are those which would disqualify them for any practical Board of workers. It is impossible to imagine such performances in a Board room as go on in a Parliament or such a waste of time on a Board that know its business. Of course, there are Boards of Directors who don't know their business and flounder, but picture to yourself some great business like the Steel Trust, or, to come nearer to us, the Union Steam Ship Company, governed by Parliamentary methods. Unfortunately, publicity is necessary in the interests of the people, but it is the publicity the press gives the poseur which necessitates the long sittings with the "legislation by exhaustion' 'at the end.. The ideal of the Board and not that of the Debating Society is what we need. -

*•* * . The bother among tue bookies has been quite a feature of the week, and the Manawatu Club has agreed to asses l ' the harmless necessary clerk at £5 as against the Feilding Club's £20, while retaining the £20 for the bookmaker—£7s for the meeting. Each club is making regulations of its own. The Waitara Club, for instance, wants to inspect the books made to soe that "tote odds" are not laid as expected. But lam satisfied that the best solution of all was that of the "Manawatu Times," viz, to take the Attorney-General at his word and accord them precisely the same privileges as the totalisator. And that should include a nice little hou«e with a little window for each, and the privilege of having that window shut down by a racing official five minutes before the race and paying out immediately after. The club that adopts that method will settle the problem.

I see that the prohibition of betting at sports meetings has killed the Auckland "gaslight" sports. This may be taken as merit to the Act. Athletics that can't live without betting had best die. At the last meeting of the A. and P. Committee there was a request for the Show Ground for similar meetings at Palmerston.

All over the world the pinch of shrinking forests is being felt.

France and Germany for climatic reasons, aud now for economic, hav? long been successfully efforesting. New South Wales, once covered with fine timber, is faced with a shortage aud the Forestry Commission is recommeudiug that the export of certain hardwoods! be prohibited. Then President Roosevelt is dropping the protective barrier becauso the supply of wood pulp, and therefore of paper, threatens to give out in the States, and we know how timber is soaring up as our own forests come down. At Dunedin it has ,iust gone up four shillings per 100 feet (to 32i). The sooner we enact a law compelling every man to plant so may useful tree 3 per so many acres the better it will be for the future, for surely a timber famine is ahead of the world. If, for instance, through the wind-swept Kairanga country hardwoods were planted, they would not merely givo valuable shelter to stock and so pay while growing, but they would also presently bring in large direct revenue. Had hardwoods instead of blue gum 3 been planted in tho Bangitikei, for instance, 20 or 80 years ago the trees might have been worth £20 to £30 each now for bridge work. etc. Prseently, too, it may be necessary to replant belts of timber on the hills to check the sudden rushes of storm water to the rivers. As for the wood-pulp question, the enormous development of the modern newspaper press has outrun the supplies and though forests are daily disappearing -in the insatiable maws of the paper mills the price of paper is going up so rapidly that half-penny papers that once threatened to become as, numerous as the "penny" article are doubling their price. There should be room for an inventor to convert the so-called rubbish of our swamps—the toi toi, raupo, etc., into the current news sheets.

Palmerston nearly lost its new curator of reserves, to whom we are looking for the future of the Square and the Esplanade, and other possessions. It was a great catcli to secure a man of the standing, abilities, and accomplishments of Mr W. W. Smith, who is at once skilled gardener, and landscapist, scientific botanist and entomologist. Mr Smith has few enemies but no successful man is without them, and he had one at Ash burton. There, however, the magnicfient fashion in which Mr Smith had created the splendid Ashburton Domain had made everyone whose opinion was worth having his friend and when this man sought to belittle his work the balittlement got short shrift. On Mr Smith arriving here yesterday, however, he found that his old enemy apparently had secured the publication of untruthful and malicious attacks in the correspondence columns of our contemporary, and lie was so disgusted, that he wanted to throw up the Palmerston position and go where he knew his services were appreciated. But Mr Park, of the Beautifying Society, and others persuaded him against this, and were able to assure him that the Borough Council and all the best elements in Palmerston were unshaken in their faith in him, and that no one took notice of such splenetic outpourings—that, in fact they were already forgotten.