The Star. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1883.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4855, 21 November 1883, Page 3

The Star. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1883.

<Ovb o» oira khw iooai nurtisraiK?,— the manufacture o* barbed wire, bids fair to occupy a firm position. At the recent agricultural show the industry was for the first time brought prominently before the public, and there oeuld be no doubt in the mind of anyone that the rival manufacturers were keenly «live to the conviction thit a big trade -was to be done. Our concern, however, at the present moment, is not so muoh with the making as with the use of thiß comparatively new fencing material. Ihere are a .good many "points" about it, as a rash visitor observed to ua ; and he wildly went on to say that ho considered it on excessively barbarous material for anyone to nse. That, it seems to us, dependß upon where the barbed wire is used, for this must deoide whether it is a defensive or an offensive appliance. Our readers will remember that a ooachacoident happened the -other -day on the West Coast road— upon a -Queen's highway, that is — and that the struggling hon es became entangled in a fence of barbed wire stretched alongside that road. How horribly the poor brutes mast have been torn before the passengeis could— by meant) of stones for hammer* — break tbe wires and -release them. But several complaints have reached us relative to tho use ef this materiel in populated districts. Here is a case : — In one of the Ohristohuroh suburbs a gjntle. moo, walking along briskly after Bunset, happened to turn a ooroer rather sharply, In doing so, he " engaged " with a barbed wire fence, and the fenoe did not suffer. The pedestrian did, bis coat being ruined. Now the corner referred to is at the junotion of a main read and a by-road; the footpath is much used, and in the absence of broad daylight it is almost impossible to see tbe wire ienoe. Some day the community will be horrified by the account of some severe accident in oonneotion with suoh a fence, and then everybody will deolare that it was flhamef v! to permit suoh a " barbarous " mode of fencing along suburban roads. Now we do not say that it is or is not legal to ereot a barbed wire fence in snoh a position. That is a question whioh will assuredly have to be determined by the Courts of Law sooner or later. The sooner the better. Meanwhile we do assert, most emphatically, that under the circumstances wo bave described, a bnrbed wire fenbe is an aggressive appliance.