THE WATER HYACINTH

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1832, 17 April 1907, Page 47

THE WATER HYACINTH

When a petit, animal or vegetable, becomes cotabiitshed in Australia, we- in our colony are,: a ts a rule, not long in giving evidence that'New Zealand is an equally hospitable home for it. The fruit-fly is the latent example of this, and probably next year will show that we have also managed to acclimaties the eel-worm, that moot destructive enemy of the onion crop, which is now pretty firmly established in Victoria. There is yet time, however, to prevent tho introduction to New Zealand of that riverine nuisance, the Water Hyacinth, already causing great trouble in the rivers of New South Wales and Queensland. Enlightened by the sad experience of Florida and other of the Southern United States, Australia might readily have kept itself clear of the Water Hyacinth, but everybody’s business was, as, usual, nobody’s business, and now there is. a fair prospect that many if not all the permanent rivers and lakes of the Commonwealth will, one after another, become mere matted masses of this pretty but pernicious usurper. It is a strange fact that despite information now available to everyone, and undeterred by the result of many similar blunders in the past,, persons are to be found in abundance wno transfer the noxious waterweed from - district to district for the sake of its fatal beauty. Introduced into the St. John's river, Florida, from Venezuela? in, 1880, the plant was- shortly distributed to other rivers of the same State, and soon proved that it had come to stay. It is now found to be not only an obstruction to, but a preventive of, navigation in many streams that formerly were open to craft of considerable draught. It puts an end to river fishing, and blocks not only the progress of small boats but of steamers and log-rafts. All this it does in situ. In flood time the huge masses of its tangled growth that are carried down by the currents form a new terror to all bridge-builders, except those that can keep their structures absolutely beyond the reach of flood waters. Experience with the Water Hyacinth in Australia, where it was introduced about ten years ago, is a repetition of that of Florida. As the rivers of New Zealand are among our best assets, and as their destruction by the introduction of this noxious weed would entail incalculable direct and indirect loss, the Water Hyacinth should be banned and barred at once and for ever. As evidence was adduced at a Queened and Conference to show that the plant is often transmitted through the poet, provision, should be made to meet the case of any amateur water-gardening idiot found introducing it into New Zealand. Detention in an asylum, would probably ’be the only just and fit form of treatment. The Agricultural Department or the Public Works Department, or both, should look into, the subject of the W(jter Hyacinth.