"NOTHING IN THE PAPERS."

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 725, 18 October 1870, Page 2

"NOTHING IN THE PAPERS."

Referring to the indifferent interest of local subjects, and the paramount interest of the war news, the West Coast Times says : From one end of the colony to the other, when the war news is not in the process of distribution, there is literally " nothing in the papers." The season of " monster cabbages," of " great gooseberries," and of " prolific peas" has come considerably in advance of the vegetables themselves. In working out the destiny of the colony, our legislators have not so timed the sessions of the Houses of Assembly as to enable the public journalist, during the recess, to find pabulum for his readers in records of these interesting eccentricities of the vegetable kingdom. In their absence his occupation is almost gone. Earthquakes there have been, but in " balmy" form. One or two hail-showers have fallen, and the reporters who have had the privilege of witnessing them have been quite equal to the occasion—capable as they have been, by early acquaintance with Barcelona nuts and pigeons' eggs, to institute pleasing comparisons between these mundane productions and the product of the clouds. But in a professional point of view these atmospheric phenomena have been only meanly distributed, and have occurred where the small percentage of plateglass accessible has rendered them almost innocuous, and, as a consequence, of inferior interest as passing events. Even Te Ivooti and Tito Kowaru fail to be heard of, as before, as being "again in the field." As enemies of the Government, their place has been taken bv Messrs Barton and Gillon, who are often—too often—in the telegraph office. The very latest excitement—the discovery of the supposed "missinglink "in the progressive development of medusas into monkeys, and of monkeys into men—has degenerated into the discovery merely of one of those inevitable accompaniments of a North Island compaign—an " old woman." But for aggravated ugliness and age, and =from the fact of her being captured without the storming of pahs and clash of arms, the incident would only be a humiliating repetition of history. _ Thus generally, as locally, there is, in the interest associated with any domestic events of the day, a significant similarity of insiguificance.