CORRESPONDENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 8965, 1 February 1888, Page 3

CORRESPONDENCE.

PROFESSOR PASTEUR AND THE RABBIT PEST. _ TO THE EDITOR. j ( ? u i! :,e cocur with your correspondent Old Colonist," that, the remedy M. Pasteur proposes would be rather worse than the disease. Probably if M. Pasteur had been [as your correspondent apparently supposes he is] a medical man, he would not) have proposed such si plan. M. Pasteur is not and never has been a member of the medical profession, and has only of late years pursued biological science as a study. M. Pasteur makes the very common error, which a very moderate acquaintance with the practice of medicine would have taughb him toavoid,of supposing germ which spreads rapidly from one to another of animals kept in (1) a large city {2) crowded together (3) in confinement (4) unable to select the food best suited to them, would spread in a similar way amongst animals living a perfectly natural life, amid environments most favourable to death. The probability is that the disease, if introduced, would rapidly die out in New Zealand. I happen to know something about the rabbit pest from those who have had to deal with it as practical men, and the opinion I have heard from all is that) there is no possibility of driving out the rabbits, except by the subdivision of the runs, into small farms on each of which the owner would reside. The rabbiters will never exterminate the rabbits, any more than the ratcatcher, whom you employ in England, will exterminate your rats. The rabbiter takes care to leave a few to breed and next season they are as plentiful as ever! Nor will fences keep them out. One of my informants, who was for years on a run infested by them, says that they will climb the fences. t "In fact," he said, "there's nothing will keep them out—they will swim the rivers, climb the fences, and I believe they'd learn to fly if they could get in no other way." They leave a pasture jusb like the macadamised pavement in Queen- ■ street— a blade of grass growing. 1 we owe something to the rabbits. Without them the depression would have , been more severe than it has been. Let us take one run as an example. Before the rabbits attacked it, it used to return , £15,000 a-year on an average to its owner, v who lived in Europe, and to whom every penny was sent. All that was expended in New Zealand was shearers' wages, the salary of a manager (£250), and the wbges of some half-dozen people at the homesEead. The whole run had been fenced years ago. The effect of the rabbits was to reduce the owner's net income to about £3000 ; thirty rabbiters were constantly employed; poisoned grain had to be used in immense quantities, and, lastly, the owner came oub to live on his run ! Rabbiting has given constant employment to thousands of men in the Middle Island, and the value of the ™ must be set against the loss of wool. I don't think any one who has been over the greater part of the Middle Island can even dream of the extirpation of the rabbit. The physical configuration of the country forbids such an idea.l am, &c., R. H. Bakewell, M.D. COSTLY CLERGYMEN. TO THE EDITOR. Sift, —I think, and with many others, that you have done a good thing by your leader of Thursday, and the letter of "E.H." and the remarks on it in to-day's paper. Perhaps you will allow me to give a _ very few reasons why the minister's stipend in many parishes does not come up to the sum required, and why the rents of pews are not paid. The "Home" and other " missions " fall off each year. Now, my remarks do not, I believe, apply to St. Matthew's. For more than one parish we have had out young ministers "fired with missionary zeal"very inexperienced, very unpractical, quite ignorant of £s. d. How can. they be otherwise? They had, perhaps, £80 or £100 a year they coma out here and get £400, a parsonage, all rates paid for them. It is a fortune ; they fancy everyone else in the parish rolling in wealth, because their own circumstances are so much improved, and they are quite ignorant of the fact tha there are very few in their parish with close on £500 a year. They look round and see some few handsome houses, and think the owners; millionaires, forgetting that the proprietors are only now enjoying what took them years of labour and privations to realise. These young parsons come out, most likely to a small parsonage (they had none at home in England). It wont suib them out here, their ambition is too great, and they talk over their new flock into building them a residence that makes No. 1 large debt. The church that had satisfied the congregation for years, and held them all, they are told will nob do at all. Land is bought. That is got by borrowing. A large church is started, that the p<arishioners are heavily taxed in numerous ways to raise money for. In their ignorance, the natives were satisfled with a plain altar-cloth, but that won'b do for the Rev. New Chum ; He must! minister at an elaborately-decorated altar, figuring before handsomely-draped curtains, and on the most expensive of carpets, procured from the most expensive London nouses for " ecclesiastical furniture." ha parish children are all persuaded that their offerings and pennies should be saved for a. new font, or cathedral glass for new church; and when the season comes for & school feast consternation is struck in their young hearts by being told that there are no funds for prizes ana feasts. So another collection is started, as it is for everything that is required by the never-satisfied parson. The annual meeting takes place, an6l all but the uninitiated are surprised thaii there is a deficiency in every department, and no one more amazed than the Reverend New Chum, who can never be made to either see, or believe, that there is both poverty and, in some cases, starvation in his parish, and that the congregations are nob sponges thab simply need squeezing to get money out of them, and until their own incomes are made to suffer will they cease to pose as suppliants, and pub their parishes into debt.—l am, etc., JO. R, Habrlngione,