THE BLACKBERRY PEST.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1816, 31 July 1913, Page 10

THE BLACKBERRY PEST.

A DIFFICULT PROBLEM. Sir Walter Buchanan asked the Government in tho House of ltepresentatives yesterday whether they would take the necessary .steps to ascertain tho extent to which tlio noxious weed" known as blackberry is spreading over tho lands of the Dominion and endeavour to discover some effective means to arrest the alarming rato of its increase. Tho l'rimo Minister replied that the Government was fully aware of the seriousness of the blackberry pest, but tho law. in regard to it must be administered with discretion, as a drastic enforcement of the Act would drive many peoplo off their holdings. Good work in eradicating the plant was being dono in many districts, and large areas of land had been cleared in recent years which were, previously infested. The difficulty was, however, that in many places broken and vegetated land was occupied by blackberry, and .in such conditions tho work was'much more arduous. It was obvious that the inventor of an effective and practicable- means of coping with the pest would reap a large reward from the sale of his discovery. Sir Walter Buchanan said tho reply was evidently a Departmental one purely. Ho ventured to say that the.Prime Minister. as a practical farmer, knew that all that had been done was next to useless. His own opinion was that the only effective method of eradicating blackberry was by fencing in the areas growing blackberries and by putting stock such as grats on the enclosed area. He had had several opportunities of noting the effectiveness of this method of dealing with noxious weeds. Mr. .C. A. Wilkinson (Egmont) drew attention, to tho danger of blackberry plants being sold as they were by nurserymen, as the bramble soon got out of control and verv often spread all over the country.-...