Page 2 Advertisements Column 5

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2280, 27 August 1908, Page 2

At a public meeting held in Hastings, Hnvke’s Bay, recently, to consider the small birds’ question, the chairman, Afy N. Kettle, said that lie was not a farmer, blit in going about the country he saw a good deal of what was taking place. When in 1878 he had gone round the district buying wool for the linn he then-re-presented, he hid found that the whole country was swept of everything green by the caterpillar and the grasshopper; even the leaves on tho willow trees had been devoured, and one man told him that they had started on the gum trees. The small bird had been tho salvation of Hawke’s Bay; it was the best friend tho farmer had ever had. No doubt the sparrow had become a nuisance, and the object was to keep them and other small birds in check. As to rooks, he believed the owners of lands upon w-liicli there were rookeries should periodically organise shooting parties, and those parties, lie believed, would lnve the desired effect in reducing the numbers of those birds.

The old habits, and customs of the Maoris die hard, and even the younger generation''appears to be to some extent bound by them. A story comes from the King Country of an East Coast Maori, well educated, clever, hard-working, and eager to do well for his family. His little son died recently, and he wished to hive the body interred in European fashion some twenty miles away, but the ‘Tirana” of "the rangatira compelled him to bury it where lie was. and. to leave his comfortable house and go to live, with his wife and family, in a damp, unhealthy tent. He was also obliged to nearly ruin himself in feeding the crowds who flocked to the tangi. When spoken to sympathisingly about it lie said : “What can a fellow do ? So long as the old generation lasts we must just put up with it.” A decided refusal would have meant loss of work if the chief had chosen, as Tie certainly would have done, to exercise his power over the company which employed the bereuved parent.