Sixty Years Ago

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLVIII, Issue 21735, 17 August 1940, Page 6

Sixty Years Ago

“ The Timaru Herald ” August 17, 1880 Consultation of the C.J.C. Handicap In another column Mr P. J. Bell advertises a £3OOO consultation on the C.J.C. Handicap to be run in November next. This is the seventh Mr Bell has undertaken, and as the prizes in previous ones have been promptly distributed. we have no doubt the present one will be well patronised. Mutton Birds It is probable that the Native Industries Commission paid no attention whatever to one of the most unquestionable and oldest established of “native” industries, the curing of mutton birds. Nevertheless, this is an industry of greater value than might be supposed. A Wellington Maori recently bought a “line” of 1600 birds at Riverton, paying Is each for them. Otago Central Railway At a meeting at Dunedin last evening a resolution in favour of the construction of the Otago Central railway was carried unanimously. An amendment. which recommended that no extension of the line beyond the point mentioned in the motion should be made but that a metalled road to the interior should be formed, did not obtain a single vote beyond the mover. Messrs Stout. Fish. Shand. Bell and Matheson were the principal speakers The Cable Service "Baron Reuter and his agents as caterers oi public intelligence are singularly inefficient,’ states the leading article. "We have had occasion before to iioint out that the character of the news sent to New Zealand through Reuter was nut so interesting a.s it might be. and that newspaper proprietors had a right to complain in the interests of their clients, the public, that the money paid to the Agency did not produce moneys worth. Little care seems to be taken by the London department of the Company as to the value of the news transmitted. Instead of being little but good, it is little but bad. . . . Proof of how this consideration is lost sight of Is to hand by the news wired to us on Wednesday that ‘the Right Honourable Mr Gladstone had gone to Windsor Castle as the guest of the Queen.’ But this remarkable bit of intelligence was corrected next day. when we were informed that the English Premier had gone to Windsor as the guest of the Dean, and not of the Queen. Such domestic news may be of interest to a certain class of Englishmen ‘n England. but to expect that anyone in New Zealand cares a button for such sluff augurs a weak intellect. For their own sakes we wonder at Reuter cumbering the wires with rubbish. . . The combined newspaper Press of this Colony contributes annually a very handsome sum to Baron Reuter, but Baron Reuter does not handsomalv respond. A bargain is a bargain all the world over, and we fear that New Zealand newspaper proprietors have decidedly got the worst of the bargain with Baron Reuter.”