The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1867.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume II, Issue 200, 27 August 1867, Page 2

The Nelson Evening Mail. TUESDAY, AUGUST 27, 1867.

The avowedly unsatisfactory character of the meat with which this city is now supplied calls for some dispassionate inquiry into the causes to which such a state of thibgs may be attributed. "We have -reason to believe that the want of nourishment and other ill qualities, to which reference is made by Dr Cusack in his "..Report, as characterising the mutton supplied by. the carcases of the sheep from the Wairau, do not arise from "the fever produced by tbe frequent dippings in irrigating and poisonous liquids," as he states in that-documeut, which has since called forth so much discussion, any more than the pale looks, reduced condition, and skin-and-bone appearance, weakness, etc., of an;y of the worthy doctor's own patients recovering from a serious illness, could be fuirly .attributed to the medicines and remedies he may, have administered for their.relief. .- In one case as much as in the other, it is not the remedies that are to be blamed, but the disease that rendered the application of the remedies necessary. .._-T)ie.Colonist some time ago endeavored, in a leading article, to put the whole blame of the inferiority of the mutton supplied ' j)v .'NeTson oir -"the stringency of the" Scab Jkc^and: dragged in Dr Cusack's remarks as confirmatory evidence. The fact howeverps^ihatr the Wairau runs are at the ;presellt time;; so.. bverstocked and ill managed^ thai the" sheep are left to breed io-and-in,yand. have: hot sufficient food to . keeptheiii fn ' anything. like .proper con-. • .-^iibn^'-'"Tjh"e-;''^onsequence,,;is that the. anomal^jexists. that there are hundreds* of ;: thousands-of sheep, and yet little or no , 1 'hiibd, • sheep are sold .':'.- at in'aTf-a-c'rowii "apiece, raid, even.driven. f£.oy^i'ipi^cipiceSjapd otlierwise.destroyed, in rid, of.-them, while, on the '<cq|E^ry^heWp]^i n^ny thin g ;«1 rke/gpodj' con'f W^if"MS^t^X' vi•:;:;'."- ■":<:-: ' .'■'": ■-; "■'"■" '"' :^' ■■• "■•"^''''

The disease called "scab closely follows.., on the: hlejs!of the overstocking and mis-; management to which we have..referred, j and rages, through the whole length and breadth of the runs, favored as it is by the bad condition of the sheep and the neglect or careless treatment by which it is met. Dr Cusack says that he is not satisfied with looking only skin deep, but if he will look a little deeper still than he appears to have done at present, we believe that he will fiud that the ill qualities of our mutton are not to be rectified by doing away with the frequent dippings of which he complains, but that they can be remedied by the Wairau sheep-farmers reducing their flocks to something like a due proportion to the feed their run can supply, and by so frequently dippiug their ! sheep, and doing this so thoroughly and so efficiently as to exterminate the scab, so that their sheep can spare the time from scratching and rubbing and biting themselves to graze, and thus allow their bodies to thrive in peace on what they eat. It stands to reason that sheep afflicted with a tormenting"disease like the scab cannot thrive, and the doing away with the frequent dippings that Dr Cusack condemns, would certainly make them thrive, although it is equally clear, and none will deny the fact, that wethers taken from a clean flock and that require no dippiug, are infinitely preferable to wethers that do require dipping, such as those which are brought from the Wairau, and which are all drafted from scabby flocks and before dipping are in a very iufectious state l. . But let the Wairau sheep-owners do away with their rams, and stop their increase for a year or two; let them get their Provincial Council to pass a Scab Act, and see it well and strictly enforced. The Amuri has done this, and Jis consequently clean, and all the impossibilities suggested by run-holders, such as the "rough country of which the runs in Marlborough Province are composed, " wild sheep, efc, are only bugbears. The scab is bad euougb, but not so bad but that ordinary care and perserverance can exterminate it. Then the old ewes that now die and rot by thousands soon after lambing -will stand a fai»' chance of picking up and of making as good meat a* any rate as many of the so-called fat wethers that are sent to market; the wethers will be something like what they should be, and will not require the frequent dippings, nor call 'forth the denunciations so justly hurled by Dr Cusack against the sort now sent into the market. Moreover, neither the meat "question" nor the wool "question" will then need Dr Cusack's study, however much the yeast and .bread "questions" may do so, for the scab will be a thing of the past as far as the people of Nelson are concerned, and the wool will be in plenty on the backs of the sheep, and at shearing time will quickly fill the bales instead of strewing the fern and bushes all over the runs with this valuable commodity. Let the Marlborough sheepfarmers, we repeat, look to these things as they should do, and they will find the golden days of the past in some measure returning to them. We would ask, is it not better to have ten thousand ewes on a not overstocked j run in good condition, with strong-healthy lambs by their sides, frisky and playful as lambs should be, and with a full fleece on their backs, than twenty thousand on a greatly overstocked run, which are just able to keep body and soul together, and not able to rear their lambs, or rear them stunted and diseased, with not a frisk or a run in them, themselves scabby, born in scab, dying of scab, and leaving a scabby progeny behind them? What meat or wool or anything else can be expected from such a Ptate of things as this? And yet it is a true and not overcharged picture of the present state of aheepfarming in Marlborough. But unfortunately people think so much of the tyrannical provisions of the Scab Act, and so little of the much worse tyranny of the scab itself, oblivious of the fact that ten thousand sheep well fed and kept' clean will yield more wool, • and that five hundred sheep properly kept will yield more and better meat than : twenty thousand kept as the sheep are farmed at the present time in Marlborough.

..Mr. Justice > .Richmond, accompanied by Mrs Richmond and the junior membersi of •' ; his family, arrived in the Raugitoto yes•terday. „ We- understand that the .Judged ,: is residing at the house in Niie'-street^ ■ lately occupied,.by ;M.r. Rawson. '