THE HIKURANGI SWAMP.

Northern Advocate, 20 March 1931, Page 3

THE HIKURANGI SWAMP.

'(To the Editor.) Sir.—ln your issue of March 18 appears a letter under the above heading signed by “Swamp Hen.” I have no idea who “Swamp Hen” is, but I consider that, if his letter is a fair sample of his intelligence, he could not have chosen a more fitting nom-de-plume. His letter from beginning to end is a jumble of incorrect statements, and a proof that he has no knowledge of the subject about which ho writes. 1. would livstly draw his attention to the fact that the drainage rate on the money already spent on the Hikurangi-Swamp amounts to 12s per uefe per annum, jaml not 12s per farm, as “Swamp lien's’' letter suggests. 1 have not suliieient knowledge of Hie habits of “Swamj) Hons” to say definitely whether they hibernate during thp $ winter months or otherwise, but Hie particular one which wrote the letter to which 1 refer miidt have indulged in a somewhat lengthy slumber, if it did

not see water •on the Jordan flat for more than throe days at a time last winter. To say that the farmers on tin l Jordan flat have no fear of floods mid are simply fattening on the Government's work is worse than an incorrect statement —it is a lie, pure and simple. T think 1 speak the truth when 1 say that the £200,000 already spent on the swamp drainage has not put Os extra profit into the pocket of anv farmer on the .lordan flat, and never wUI, uni 11 considerably more moiiev is spent between Lewis’s Bridge and the Falls. T am sorry, Mr T’.dltor, to have to use mich strong terms as 1 have used in this loiter, but to mv mind it is positively stupid and unfair to go to the press with I statements which are totally coiittart

to fact, as arc those contained in the letter written t»y “ Swamp Hen.'-—I am, etc-., feed. c. flliott.