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Dunstan Times, 6 May 1881, Page 2

The Otago Central Land League is progressing splendidly. There are now branches formed at Roxburgh, Clyde, Alexandra, Ophir, Tinkers, Bannockburn, and Bendigo. Everywhere the people seem united in demanding that the land shall be opened up for settlement, and not held by a few absentee leaseholders. The action taken has not been one day too soon, it we are to have bona fide settlement instead of impoverishing-sheep-farming by men who would suck the life-blood from the soil, and desert it after having contributed to make it a desert, by burning and by greedy over-stocking. If we prefer children to rabbits, apples to thistles, and cultivation to desolation, w? cannot lift our voices too often or too strongly in this matter. Fain would the present lessees and the Government of the day persuade us to " rest and be thankful " ; but it is to be hoped that the people of Central Otago will never rest until they have secured the settlement of themselves and their children on the soil of their adopted country.

The “ Cromwell Argus ” is an admirably consistent paper. In the last issue it conplained that there was too much “ Pyke ” in the literary menu of the “ Dunstan Times,” and then, mirabile dictu, prints eight other paragraphs worse than the first about “ Pyke,” What could, would, or should the Argus ” do without its Pyke 1 We venture to say that our contemporary cannot produce a copy of his precious paper printed within the last few years in which the name of Pyke does not appear once or oftener ; and we challenge him to pub lish it for a month without mentioning that gentleman’s name. In this connection we may say that Mr Stephen Noble Brown is in error in attributing our leader on hospital matters to Mr Pyke, but it is quite Cromwellian to hang a man first and try him afterwards, as it was at Jedburgh, where probably our contemporary emanated.