MR SADD AND THE RABBITS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19476, 11 May 1925, Page 7

MR SADD AND THE RABBITS.

10 THE KDITOB. Si Ri —It is in no spirit of depreciation of Mr Sadd's evident sincerity that I am once more unable to discover that he has anything .new or valuable to tell us about the rabbit pest. Can anyone to-day remember anything he wrote a few days ago? There was a good deal of vague denunciation of the sufferers, but on the whole the general effect of Mr Sadd's very discursive composition was suggestive of his having arrived in New Zealand last week and discovered to his amazement that there are an awful lot of rabbits about, and nobody attending to them anvwhere. The explanation lies perhaps in just the point he particularly stresses—namely, his long, and, I am sure, excellent service as a Commissioner of Crown Lands. He was so long the overlord of most of us, instead of among us, that he still honestly feels himself in the right place when he is directing us how to conduct our holdings to his satisfaction. One instinctively looked to see the familiar "I am, etc.," at the end of his letter (it had an end, though a long way o2) superseded by the—to tho writer —still more familiar "I have the honour." ~.,., If Mr Sadd had been on the land, instead of over it, I am sure that anything he wrote would have afforded more evidence of a practical .knowledge of the subject. Inci dentally, I am presumptuous enough to fancy that under such circumstances possible contact with "A Victim" might have consider ably modified his contemptuous dismissal of myself as a no-account commentator who no't only knows nothing about how to deal with rabbits, but would not do it if he did know. , ~ , , , . 1 have only to add that I quite looked for the effect of Mr Sadd's almost lifelong association with officialdom in producing an advocacy of a Government netting factory. It is extraordinary how, in 'the face of every kind of recent experience here and in Australia, Governments and Government people still hanker after this almost sacred and solemn cult of Government shopkeeping as the ultimate cure for all human ills. Mr Sadd would be genuinely shocked if the truth were suggested to him that tho cost of netting manufactured under Government methods would be far ahead of the highest figure at which it is landed here by private enterprise to-day. It is much less surprising that among the things Mr Sadd does not know about rabbits i s that there is not a single river in Otago that is capable of being of any effect as one the boundaries of Ids airy "10 to 20 miles" apart netting divisions of tho country (be has forgotten that some of them have bridges, but even those the enterprising rabbit does not need); and there is no indication' in the plan that people do occasionally want to get from one part of tho country to another without stopping to open and shut a dozen netted gates. That tho existence in this country of numerous Rabbit Boards, composed entirely of practical farmers suffering under the pest who are out to apply in thoir own protection the best known methods under supervision of their own officers and the Government inspectors, is apparently ignored by Mr Sadd, must be due to" the fact either that they lack his pathetic faith in 'rivers" and in cross fences between them at "ID or 20 miles," or that they have failed to gubroit themselves humblv to a superior intelligence.—i am, etc., " , A. Viraot,