A GOOD IDEA.

Observer, Volume 9, Issue 523, 29 December 1888, Page 3

A GOOD IDEA.

His Worship the Mayor has been to Sydney, and he says the Sydneyites' ideas respecting New Zealand are decidedly mixed. He dropped across one man who said : ' I have seen pictures and photos of your colony,, and judging by them it appears to be all hills. ISow do you manage to do your ploughing, anyhow, and how do you bury your dead — are they buried heels up, or heads up, or what ? Seems to me there is not a patch of level ground in New Zealand as large as the palm of your hand.' His Worship, of course, hastened to remove this erroneous impression. He explained that there was plenty of level ground in the colony, as level as the most fastidious corpse could desire. If he didn't say so in those identical words he might have done so. But while we had plenty of hills and dales, Hia Worship pointed out, we had also vast rolling plains and grassy downs. ' Very well,' said the New South Welshman, ' then why don't you get your artists to depict them, for the information of strangers and the advantage of the colony ?' tP ?(• tP This complaint is not ill-founded. And while New Zealand's plains are never seen on canvas, her industries are never seen represented in photographs. So struck was Mr Josiah Martin with this that some time ago he ' took ' a series of our local industries, showing the interior working of our shipbuilding yards, our factories and workshops, so that the inquiring stranger might realise that our stock- in-trade did not consist exclusively of mountain peaks, waterworn rocks, picturesque sea beaches, and tumbling waterfalls, but that we had resources employing thousands of hands and involving the outlay of hundreds of thousands of pounds of capital. With commendable public spirit, Mr Martin decided to forward this admirable series of photos to the Paris Exhibition. Thinking,however,that more importance would attach to the pictures if they were despatched under the sign and seal of that august body, the Auckland City Council, Mr Martin has put himself in communication with it, and now awaits a reply. Doubtless the Council will jump at such an excellent opportunity of advertising the city and colony.