The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1886. NOTES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1354, 29 September 1886, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 1886. NOTES.

The Press Association is a vety useful institution, and on the whole, performs its task of collecting and disseminating telegraphic news among its clients fairly well. Nevertheless, those clients have new and then just cause for complaint at the want of discretion which is exhibited by the agency, or the local agents thereof, as to what news to send in extenso, what to supply in abbreviated form, and what to withhold altogether. Twopenny half-penny race-meetings, for example, are often treated as matters of the first importance, while such important subjects as the Hall case at Timaru, receive but scant attention. Again, the evening papers are frequently put to the cost of wire charges, wholly I unnecessarily, for messages which (lave appeared in the morning papers oif the same day, and which can be much more easily set up from primed copy than from the pencil copy of the telegraphist on the abominable pink paper now, for some inscrutable how-nm-to-do-it reason, employed for messages received. This sort of thing is vexatious enough, but it is worse still to be asked to pay wire charges for news that is a full day behind the fair, and which is not worth the trouble of setting up. A case of that kind occurred yesterday. At two minutes to 2 p.m. the agency wired us from Wellington a message detailing an application made to the Government by Messrs Perry and Perry, solicitors for Thomas Hall, charged with attempted wife-murder, asking that on exhuming the body of the late Captain Cain the analysis should be made by a medical man not connected with the laying of the charge, and suggesting that Professor Ogstoun, of Dunedin, should be employed, and also that a medical man to represent the prisoner and the Inspector of Police should be present at the exhumation. This we were told, the Government had agreed to, and (if was gravely added) “as soon as the necessary details are prepared the body will be exhumed.” When this piece of intelligence reached us neaily twenty-four hours had elapsed since the exhumation itself, all the details of which had been read by everybody at breakfast-time. The very agent who took the message to the telegraph office in Wellington must have read those details in the columns c £ the Wellington morning paper and, for all practical purposes, he might just as well have informed us of the fact of the death of Queen Anne as have taken the trouble to wire such day-before-yesterday sort of intelligence.

The district of Wakanui must surely be the lawyers’ paradise, if haply there be any such thing as paradise attainable by the gentlemen of the long robe, sometimes, though very uncomplimentary alluded to as the L)’s O. Albeit that sounds a little like the terminal syllables of the Italian panuliso, so that there may, perhaps, after ail be some little hope for them. But not to concern ourselves with the future, Wakanui, if not a paradise, even from a lawyet’s point of view, must be a veritable Tom Tiddler’s ground, for it appears to grow the most fruitful crop of “ cases ” of any part of the district. What with disputed boundaries, confusion of ideas as to proprietary right in particular pigs, and what not, there seems to be a perennial succession of causes celebtes. For example, yesterday Bench and bar were occupied for six mortal hours in listening to or arguing claims and counter-claims to the possession of certain of those interesting animals, the object to be attained being to decide whether a lady or a gentleman had “got the wrang soo by the lug.” The point seems to have been decided to the lady’s disadvantage, but it is to be doubted whether the thrilling story of the case will he deemed worth the trouble of wadng through three or four columns of print by more than a select circle of our readers to whom it may possess the charm of local interest. To the lawyers no doubt the whole business will have

many golden recommendation, but we are sorry for the reporters, and Mr Baddeley is assured of our respectful commiseration. It is often very amusing to notice the blunders which are constantly made in the Old country by otherwise well informed people, including the editors ol leading journals, anent the geography and characteristics of this part of the world. Notwithstanding the large number of persons who have relations or friends in Australia or New Zealand, notwithstanding the books that have been published by travellers, and notwithstanding the tons of letters and newspapers that go Home by every mail, delightfully hazy notions seem to be generally prevalent as to the relative position of places and as to our surroundings, circumstances, manners,

and customs generally. A laughable instance of this sort of thing is thus related in the gossipy London letter of an exchange, in which, referring to the Colinderies, which is the slang ot the day for Colonial and Indian Exhibition, the writer says :—“ The gorgeous ignorance of people at Home concern ing New Zealand and its natural history was beautifully illustrated at the Exhibition the other day. A gentleman in the costume of a dignitary of the Established Church, an Archdeacon or something of that sort, was marching about the New Zealand Court discoursing very learnedly to a little girl on the various objects. Presently they came to the big moa skeleton from the Canterbury Museum. ‘That,’ said the Archdeacon, ‘is the skeleton of a giraffe, but it is not a very large one, and it has lost its hind legs.’ His lecture on giraffes was cut short by a fat good-natured burst of laughter from a gentleman at his elbow, who told him he was Sir Julius von Haast, and the skeleton was that of a New Zealand bird. It is said the Venerable one fled precipitately, exclaiming, ‘ Dear, dear, dear, what shocking fibs these Natives tell, to be sure !’ ”