TIMBER MILLING.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 17

TIMBER MILLING.

SITUATION IN AUCKLAND. MANY HANDS OUT OF WORK AUCKLAND, May 10. The timber milling industry is pass* ing through a quiet period, and the decrease in home building in Auckland is aggravating the unemployment situation. In one city mill employing scores of hands, it has been possible to keep plant running only four days a week during the last’ few months. It has now been decided to work five days a week, and there was no alternative but to dismiss a number of workers. This arrangement will efiable the men who remain to earn a reasonable wage at the sacrifice of the superfluous hands, whose retention necessitated the four-day week for all. Most of the other mills in Auckland have beep working a bare five days a week for nearly a year, and there is no immediate prospect of a resumption of Saturday morning work. Sufficient hands are employed to attend to Saturday morning deliveries, but machines are not manned even under these conditions. • Timber production is in excess of demand, and mill yards are in some cases being stacked to capacity. “ We have no reason to be very optimistic, but I suppose the tide will turn,” said a city mill manager.

THE HABITS OF EELS. TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The eel is always a very interesting subject, and anything regarding it is always regarded with much interest. In the early days the eel was considered as a valuable occasional food item, and when anyone caught one there was rejoicing. A number of Maori shearers used to come to Wanaka. at the end of the ’sixties and beginning of the ’seventies, and they always went eeling on Saturday nights, camping out, and coming back on the Sunday afternoon. The first eel would be cooked at once. It was rolled up in flax blades split open longways and wrapped round the eel. each pair of blades having a, good lap, and tied with several strands of flax about 6in apart. Sometimes the eel would be gutted, sometimes In all cases the skin was left on. The whole would be laid sideways in front of the fire, and when cooked the skin came off, and the eel was very appetising. A jew years ago I called on the last of the Maori shearers and his family at Moeraki—good old Henry Rahu, who died about five years ago. With shining eyes be spoke of the fine fat eels in the big bakes, and the girls looked a bit scared, but I saved the situation by speaking quite enthusiastically and saying that I hoped to eat several during my forthcoming visit to Wanaka. I found that the eels in North Otago were dry and tough and tasteless, therefore uneatable. There was once an aged Maori woman of the old tvpe who used to camp at the mouth of the ’ Shag River and sleep under a rock with a few bags hung up. in the front of it. and she used to catch eels and dry them for winter consumption, and as' she had a good vegetable garden living was very economical.

For about the first 50 years of settlement the eel was caught during the three or four summer months only, unless it might be an occasional stranded one I visited Wanaka in January, 1924. remaining there 18 months, and was considerably astonished at the changes there in ever sq many ways, in eel life especially. They were at the latter date often caught m eel boxes in the Chitha River in midwinter opposite to Mr James Smith’s farm. I caught 13 there in three sittings. and there were three sizes, and the eels in each size seemingly did not vary in weight, the largest being about 141 b live weight. A very fine one was seen swimming about as early as the middle of August, and the muzzle of a pea rifle was pushed Sin or 4in into the water and fired off, and the concussion stunned * ,lm > so he was easily secured and then brought to me, and’ I found him excellent. They were often seen switcirnmg about late in the autumn. But the condition was not equal to former yiars. The row of yellowish white fat which is on each side of th c backbone

was not so large. In the coast eel it is only a skeleton. We are told that this is the spawn, and numbers 9,009,000 in each 61b eel, but I am inclined to think it is just fat. In Wanaka in former years three or four were caught that weighed about 301 b, and this seems to be the limit. An eminent scientist says that such an eel would be tterhaps 150 years old. His skeleton is cartilage, and he hibernates all the winter, and always swims very slowly, and when chased does not seem to exceed three or four miles an hour, so-that there is very little wear and tear on the constitution. Bnt there was a very big eel caught in the Wakatipu in the early days, and it was stuffed and put in the Dunedin Museum, and I saw it there. I think it was 371 b weight. Perhaps someone interested will inquire. Fr.sm time to time new items of interest crop up about the eel. There are several land-locked mountain tarns in Canterbury, and there are plenty of eels in them; they can’t get out. and the ouestion is. How did they gep there? The early-time Maori was far-seeing, and would put tiny eels in. Ducks might swallow them in the low country and disgorge them in these tarns. But it has lately been ascertained that tiny eels can get up _a precipice over which water is dripping by creeping through the moss that always grows in such places. Before I went to Wanaka the Cromwell DevelopTTiont Coiupau\’ , s water race broke away, and the machinery was stopped. Between’ the jmwer house and the river and under the stones there were thousands of little eels the s’ze of a pin. I saw a similar lot of same size in a dried-up stream in Temuka in 1888. There were also a numopr of larger ones, the biggest being about 141 b.

How the eel breeds is not quite settled yet. The young British eel is called an elver, and is about the size and thickness of a goose quill and nearly transparent. The young New Zealand eel is about the size of a pin and is the same colour and shape as the adult eel. The difference is not yet explained. I wrote to the U.S.A, making inquiries how their eel breeds. The parent eel remains in thc sea two rears till the spawn is developed and then deposited And it requires the sea water to develon it. The cel cannot live in salt water till the mysterious promptings of the dominant instinct of every’ living thing on the globe to increase and multiply begin to be assertive, and the eel's constitution is changed to enable it to live in its new element. About 25 years ago a big lot of eels in the Kakanui River got into the flourmill race and blocked the machinery, and the same thing occurred somewhere else quite recently, and it was supposed that the eels were trying to reach the sca_

In Australia there ar c a number of rivers that lose themselves in swampw.

and therefore never reach the sea, and there are no eels in any of these. —1 am. etc., Richard Norman. Lawrence, May 3.