EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27572, 14 December 1950, Page 6

EIGHTY-FIVE YEARS AGO

FROM THE FILES OF THE ®taqo 2>aU£ {Times

DUNEDIN, DECEMBER 14, 1865.

The report of the discovery of gold in the Whangarei district, Auckland, geems to have been without foundation. The man who professed to have discovered the original specimen, it is said, maintains a very suspicious silence as to the locality in which he made the discovery; and as none of the prospecting parties have found anything as yet, the whole thing is beginning to be regarded as a false alarm. One Auckland paper states that the nugget which caused such sanguine expectations, has been examined by an expert, and he declares it to be Victorian gold.

An extract from a letter that appeared in the Inverness Advertiser of September 16 appears m today's paper. The letter appears in that paper as an anonymous one, and care has evidently been taken by the writer ' that his name should not be appended to the communication. Slander is at all times reprehensible, but anonymous slander is both degrading and contemptible The editor of the Inverness Advertiser states that: “ writer lias been some years in Dunedin, and that, from his position there, and from his general intelligence, he is a thoroughly competent judge.” It is, unfortunately, not ‘the first time that letters, both anonymous and otherwise. have attempted to injure the interests of the province by utterly false represenia- * tions. It is to be lamented that the editor of the Inverness Advertiser should have been misled so as to insert the communication in his columns, and to draw the attention of intending immigrants in an editorial note