COLONIAL PRIZES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 569, 17 March 1870, Page 2

COLONIAL PRIZES.

The Volunteer corps of the head-quarter district competed yesterday at the Heathcote range, for the selection of members to represent them at the colonial prize meeting, shortly to be held at Dunedin. The diminution of interest, now becoming so general in civic military matters, was most unpleasingly demonstrated by the smull number of volunteers who entered the lists, and bad as the position previously held by Canterbury at colonial meetings has been, it bids fair to be considerably worse this season. In; the district referred to there are no less than six independent corps, exclusive of/ the members of the staff, and yet only fourteen men showed any desire to uphold the rifle-shoot ing honour of the province Of these -also several were held to be hopeles?, unless lucky enough to score a proportion of flukes, and when fairly dissected, the list of competitors scarcely numbered more than what the district was entitled to send, provided the minimum score was made, that is to say, if nine out -of the fourteen had made forty points or upwards they would have been entitled to proceed to Dunedin.. As it is; we regret to state that only one man succeeded in gaining the required num-

ber and / ttpon3lum '-; "aloh? '? iSrQl the onerous ;jrTdtity of ,> the head-quarter district at higher class competition. This is indeed unfortunate, and we cannot but think that the Defence Office made a great mistake in changing the mode of competing for representative honours since hist year..' On that occasion, the nine highest scorers ' above a . fixed minimum number of points in the District Prize -Firing,.of_the whole, province were taken, thus doing'in "one contest what will require two separate competitions this year, whilst the prizes offered possessed the further advantage of inducing a much larger number of volunteers to compete. The marksmen o£ the province .do not however.find fault with .this ! alone, but somewhat forcibly urge, that the | selection of representatives should be based either on more than one competition or upon the general average of the various marksmen for the whole year. In support of this, they point out that for two or three years past, a large per-centage of the men firing for Canterbury in colonial competitions, have been but medium shots, who by a happy stroke of luck succeeded for the one particular day of getting well up the list, to the exclusion of old and steady shots, who were on that occasion unfortunate. These causes of dissatisfaction account in a great measure for the small number of competitors yesterday, and are certainly worthy the attention of the authorities. The firing commenced at 10 a.m., under the immediate supervision' of LieutenantColonel Packe, Captain Bird, and Lieutenant Wolfe being successively in charge of the markers at the butts. The weather was far from favourable, but still scarcely so far out as to folly account for the bad shooting which was made. A light south-west wind | prevailed during the earlier stages of the ! competition, but veered round to the north- | east at the later ones. The sun also proved very annoying, being at one time bright and clear, full on to the targets, and then in a moment obscured by a heavy cloud, making the light very deceptive. The following are the scores made, and Corporal Paton it will be seen is the successful man.

CO 05 » T3 T3 -O fc.fc.lOS C 3 cfl x * >* ■£ Names. Corps, gg s § , * ia is H Bombardier Raven... Ch. V.A. 10 7*128 Gunner Fox ... „ 15 10 14 39 Sergt. Innea ... Engineers 14 13 734 Corpl. J. T. Strange No. 6 16 4 626 Corplßobt Beattie... Engineers 12 8 222 Prvt. John Waters... So. 8 16 12 230 Sergt. A. f lark ... So. 6 7**7 Sergt. J. Paton ... No. 8 17 15 13 45 Sergt. J. Dixon ... No. 8 .6 3 \>. 29 Sergt .-Major Morgan ■* taff 1 5 61 2 33 Lieut. Pavitt ... Engineers .3 14 532 Col.-Sergt. Brass ... No. 6 14 1010 34 Lieut. Morton ...■"" Royal Irish 7 9 2 18 Sergt. J. Nelson ... „ 13 12 10 35 Sergeant Clark retired from further competition after making two misses at the 500 yards range.