The Globe. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1875.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 192, 20 January 1875, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1875.

The wretched man who, under the idea that he would prove a benefactor to the colony, introduced into the streams of this province the seed of the water cress, must, we should think, have sunk long ago under the anathemas that have been hurled at his head. The annual expenditure rendered necessary by the presence of this obnoxious plant in the river Avon is very large, and we have now to complain that in spite of this expenditure the evil is fast increasing again. So long as the steamer Brighton was plying her trips down the river to New Brighton and back, that portion of the Avon river bed which lies between Ward’s Brewery and the New Brighton Hotel was kept very fairly free from the obnoxious plant —that is to say, that it made no headway, and the river was not choked by it. The steamer, however, has now ceased her usual trips and the plant seems too shoot again with fresh vigour after the battle between it and the steamer’s paddles. The contractor for keeping the river clear, we Jbelieve, works as hard as a man can possibly do to fulfil his task, but it would appear that, deprived of the aid we have mentioned as rendered to him by the steamer, he is unable to cope with the watercress. The state of the Avon below Ward’s brewery now is very bad and rapidly growing worse. It is high time that some steps were taken for the more efficient clearing out of the bed, or that the contractor should be required to show cause why he does not keep the watercress evil in proper check. Anyone who is in the habit of taking a weekly row on the river, will bear us out in our statement that the Avon is becoming rapidly filled with the plant which is such a curse to the stream, and they can also bear witness that the watercress prevents the passage of many obnoxious bodies that have found their way into the river, and which but for this plant would shortly be cast out into the sea. Dead dogs and cats, in a state of decomposition that renders them highly oderiferous, are commonly to be found entangled in the watercress, and it must be evident that a large quantity of matter which finds its way into the river from numerous drains in Christchurch, must also, through the agency of the same plant, be prevented from being carried down the stream, and safely discharged into the sea. If the contractor is unable to carry out the work he bargained to do, then some fresh arrangement ought to be at once entered into with competent persons, and the work should be done quickly, or otherwise serious illness may eventuate among the residents on the river’s banks from the unhealthy state of the Avon as it is at present.