ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2493, 25 December 1901, Page 49

ANGLO-COLONIAL NOTES.

(Fkou Ov/b Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November 2. More than once of late there have been prosecutions here of provision merchants for selling colonial butter — Australian and New Zealand — alleged to be adulterated, the "adulteration" admittedly consisting ol mixing butter-milk with the butter for the purpose of doing away with the excessive "dryness" characteristic of imported butter. It has been contended that this " blended " butter, as it is called, was legally margarine. A case has now been decided in favour of the butter. At Richmond, Surrey, this week Messrs Pearks, Gunston, and Tee were summoned for selling margarine without a label. The prosecution was instituted by the Surrey County Council, for whom Mr Ricketts appeared. He submitted that Pearks's butter was not butter, but an adulterated substance and an imitation of butter. He stated that milk had. been added, to the butter, and the result

maintained that, according to the act, it was 'margarine. Mr Ricards, for the defenc% submitted that, although Pearks 3 butter might not be pure butter, it was not margarine. It contained 77.4- of butter fat. He pointed out that the act permitted the selling of adulterated or impoverished butter, provided it was stated what it was. The samples had been properly labelled in this respect. He submitted that there was no case. The Bench agreed, and the summonses were withdrawn. Mr H. C. Cameron this week gave evidence before the Parliamentary Committee appointed under the Food and Drugs Act, to inquire into this alleged adulteration of butter, among other things. The principal point inquired into was the fixing of a limit to the moisture allowed in butter. People on the South Coast are now troubled with a surfeit of New Zealand mutton. Portions of the Papanui's jettisoned cargo are being washed up along the coast, and the trouble is now what to do with these carcases. I hear that the statuary ordered for the Albert Park, Auckland, under the trust of the late Mrs Boyo*, or at any rate that portion of it from Mr Lachessis's design, is promised by the end of the year. That from Mr Drury's design will not be ready for five months, owing to an accident to the clay model. "It is close upon 30 years," writes Mr A. T. Quiller-Coueh, '' since ' Erewhon ' made what in those days was called a ' sen- '■ sation'; and it is. getting on for 40 since 1 Mr Butler wrote, 'In the Upper Rangitata - District of the Canterbury Provinve [as it : then was] of New Zealand,' the chapter out of which the whole work grew. The present reviewer was not alive when that chapter, headed ' Darwin Amonjr; the Machines,' appeared in the Press newspaper, of Christchurch, June 13, 1863. Nor was he, when, Mr Trubner published the book in 1872, of ~ an age to take much interest in. Utopias of any kind, least of all in satirical ones. But ' Erewhon ' keeps its freshness after 30 years because it found its theme, not in the follies of the sixties (which we have exchanged for different follies), but in the roots of human unreason. Aristophanes -himself might have been proud to 'invent a jest so universal as this State, where all physical ailments are treated as criminal and all moral ones as merely pitiable and calling for medical care." In the opinion of the Field, " with the United States and Canada and even far-off Australia and New Zealand maintaining the improvement in their herds and flocks, and Russia threatening to enter the arena, South Airieriea can scarcely hope to escape the just penalty of her short-sightedness in prohibiting- the importation of British live stock long after the colourable excuse has disappeared." A London paper remarks: — "That the Government of New Zealand should be urging the Colonial Office to appoint the Earl of Ranfurly for a further term as Governor of ' the Britain of the South ' is not surprising. His Excellency is popular with I all classes, and has won the hearts of the Maoris, while Lady Ranfurly is an ideal hostess at Government House. ... The f motto of the family is ' I mov& and prosper,' | and this is certainly what .the young Earl [ has done through accepting the offer of Mr t Chamberlain to be Governor and Com- | mander-in-Chief in New Zealand." j Mr Courtney has been lecturing lately in , I Sheffield, New Zealand being his subject. Considerable notice is being taken of the lectures.