A Quill for Everyone.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 924, 26 September 1896, Page 11

A Quill for Everyone.

No wonder our New Zealand native forest treea disappear when settlers cut down the most beautiful and umbrageous trees for feeding cattle on the foliage. This has frequently been done in country districts in times of scarcity of water, but there was no exigency of this sort in the instance mentioned at the Supreme Court the other day in the hearing of the Kennedy's Bay trespass case. A Maori witness, one of the owners of the Harataunga Wo. 2 block, stated that the employees of the man whom he was sueing for trespass had cut down a large number of karaka and puriri treea in order to feed the working bnllocks (used for hauling timber) on the leaves and tops. They could have lopped off the branches if the need existed,

bat they cut down the trees themselves to provide a meal for a bullock. The growth of centuries perhaps is destroyed to fill a hungry beast'B stomach. There was plenty of grass about, bat those bullocks must have been epicures, for they would not be content with anything short of a karaka tree. Maoris are not very aesthetic as a rule, bnt the native owner referred to, Hikiera (' Standing in the Sky '), thought that working bullocks (or ' ng&kaumahi' as he called them) picknicking on his karaka tops was too much. One of his reasons for objecting to the destruction of the trees was that his people gathered the karaka berries in season for food. The karaka' is one of the most beautiful of native trees, but the vandal in remote districts doesn't bother much about appearances. It makes fairish firewood, and his cattle will chew the leaveß. ■• Some Handsome specimens of this tree are Btill to be i seen near Auckland in the vicinity of the Orakei Bridge. An Auckland police-constable, who is popularly known as ' Tennyson Smith,' had a funny experience with a ' drunk ' the

other day. While majestically parading Queen-street, and throwing oat his chest when a small nurse-girl and perambulator passed, the active . and intelligent officer spied the driver of an express cart looking very much as if he were under the influence ana were seeing two carts instead of one. The Law promptly arrested the drunk, but fonnd himself in an embarrassing situation, as the 'case ' was apparently too drank to walk to the lock-up. A happy thought struck the constable — he ought to be made a sergeant for that same. Why not put the ' drunken blackguard ' in his own cart and drive him to the station ? No sooner was the thought conceived than 'Tennyson' acted upon it. He bundled the driver into the bottom of the cart, then, taking the hores's head, he led it up Queenstreet with its master as cargo instead- of helmsman. 'Tennyson' looked not to the right nor to the left, but smiled serenely to himself as he thought of the kudos that would soon be his. At last, when he reached the corner of High-street, he looked behind to see how the prisoner was getting on. Presto 1 the ' drunk ' had gone, and was even, as the astonished constable gazed, making a bee-line round the next corner for Queen-street and liberty. He had come to his senses in the cart, it appeared, and was not too drunk to slide out of the chariot and strike for home and freedom. But Nemesis, in the shape of 1 Tennyson,' was on his track. Dropping the horse and leaving the vehicle to take care of itself, he did his hundred yards in en seconds and a-half, and finally unearthed his man down the street in the act

of getting outside of another beer. The expressman was so struck with admiration at the active and intelligent one's perspicuity in finding him again, that he informed him in a voice broken with emotion that he was a 'ver' shmart feller — hie,' and invited him to have a 'shandy.' But ' Tennyson ' was inexorable, and he got his 'drunk' up to the lock-up' safely at last. He says he won't undertake to "cart any more deceptive ' drunk and incapables ' np the street again unless he has Hutchinson or Denny Rowles to sit down on them hard. The public has a pretty appetite for shows of all kinds, from ' Trilby ' to a merry-go-round, and from an opera burlesque to a dead pig. A wild boar which was grandiloquently termed the • King of Waitakerei' was on exhibition in town this week and drew a bigger crowd of spectators, even though it was only pork, than the OvideMusin concerts. Waitakerei porker draws better than Mendelssohn— -a dead ' Captain Cook ' tusker rivals Bubenstein! Such is the taste of the good old British public 1

Things are surely not so bad with the Northern Steamship Company that it should require to work itß deck hands twenty-one hours out of the twenty-four, and that, too, without any allowance for overtime. Imagine the Eoto's men at it 4 am. on Friday till 1 a.m. on Saturday, and then at it again at 4 a.m. on Saturday. Three hours for rest. It is this sort of thing that produces strikes. There is one girl in the Salvation Army's Rescue Home in Auckland who is only 13J years of age. And yet we Bend missionaries to China ! Hamilton, Waikato, is at present running two newspapers, the Times and the Argus, in keen opposition to each other. The B.N.Z. Estates Company 'chucked' George Edgecumbe out of the Tines, and he has started the loathsome contemporary across the road, and is making things warm for the Bank and the Government generally. George isn't of the right colour now. But how long will sleepy Hamilton run two papers ? A Whakatane correspondent, who is distressed at the idea of that sequesteredtownship becoming 'a second America,' writes us on the subject of ' sudden deaths ' and ' coroner's 'quests.' He says : — A resident of this district died recently. He had seen no doctor, and as a general thing an inquest is necessary. But no. He died on the Monday evening and was buried on the Wednesday, and no more was said about him. His people, not knowing what he died of, only knew he was dead. Could not any person commit a murder, aay slow Soißoning, and then, saying the peraon had ied, bury him, and say no more about it ? We have a Justice of the Peace, but rather than be bothered, he might possibly let it pass. If something is not done or some comment made about it, Whakatane will be a second America, where life is a mere nothing. If a sudden death took Elace in Auckland, it would not be long efore it was sifted, and the cause found. ! We have no doctor here, but in case of death surely a coroner could be found and a doctor. The nearest doctor won't come to Whakatane under £5 ss, without medicine, the money to be placed in a trustworthy person's possession before he'll leave to see the patient.' Well, anyhow, we think we can allay our correspondent's fears as to Whakatane becoming a second America. It won't be for several months to come, at any rate. What he says about the ease with which murders could be concealed if inquests were not held is true enough ; half the murders unearthed are first detected at the inquests on the victims. Now, here in Auckland we have, if anything, too many inquests altogether. For instance, an infant is taken ill with convulsions or croup or something, and before a doctor .can get to it it dies. In the absence of a doctor's certificate, six jurors have to be summoned to ' sit on ' the body, and the coroner gets his fee, all in order to pronounce the verdict that the deceased ' died from natural causes.' In some instances an inquest is a perfectly unnecessary farce. In the case of this Whakatane resident it ia assumed that the death is from natural causes, but as doctors are not so readily available as in town in cases of sudden sickness, we agree with our correspondent in the opinion that the greatest care should be taken in country districts to see that due inquiry is made into unexpected deaths which occur in localities remote from a doctor's services. At the Juvenile Depravity meeting in the Municipal Buildings the "other day, Mrs Hutchinson, of the Salvation Army, told a deeply-interested assemblage of social reformers that there was in Melbourne Gaol recently, when she was engaged in rescue work in that city, a young woman who had just had her thirteenth child, and she was unmarried. Surely this is breaking the record ! Maori names are veritable barbed-wire fences to the average lawyer who has to mangle them in occasional Court cases. During the hearing of the Aitken's freehold mining case in the Warden's Court in Auckland the other day, the native name of the block was variously mutilated by the counsel engaged. It was Pukemaukuku, and there should be no difficulty in pronouncing it, but the Warden called it • Pookmakook,' and Tom Cotter called it ' Pooky-mycooky,' while another of the 'devil's own ' thought ' Pookermerkookah ' was the correct thing to say. Then the name of a Hauraki native tribe cropped up in connection with the original ownership of the block. It was Ngatitamatera ( ' The Descendants of the Child of the Sun '). Warden Kenny ventured ' Nartytarmaty ' as his version of the name ; Baume considered it was * Natty tammy terry,' while the all-knowing Cotter smiled his usual sweet Bmile and informed His Worship that the only and correct pronunciation was ' Naughty-tomato.' This even made James Macky" smile, andh'e was particularly careful to pronounce the name slowly for the information of the ' learned fiends '— we mean friends — when giving his evidence.