Matiere.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 258, 11 May 1910, Page 5

Matiere.

Our weather recently has been sublime, just enough frost to clear the air, followed by brilliantly fine days giving zest and vim to ordinary labour: The reads are better than I remember them at this time of year. Our friends, the starling*, too, are again migrating from distant habitats to this valley. Year - by year I have watched these birds in large flocks come in April to May and the majority leave again in late October, though this year some have nested-in the dead timber round Matiere township. The flocks may be seen coming from the east each morning at sunrise and returning eastward as the shadows lengthen in the evening. . In the interval these busy little fellows may be seen working from the centre of a gully uphill and givirg destructive grass grubs a very lively time indeed. The result of their industry is to be seen in a thickened and much healthier sole of grass. This particularly applies to cocksfoot, which, before the advent of the starling, never throve, bpt was tufty and perished, and I found on investigation that the ground was alive with the grub which prospered at the expense of one of our best grasses. So from any son of Scotia who has read that old-time, but ever new, story of Dr McLeod's, "The Starling," with its varying and homely pathos and flashes of caustic humour, I need not trouble myself to ask for a "hearing" for the bird. It is safe to say that to anyone who recalls the cry of the soldier-cobbler's bird with its familiar "I'm Charlie's bairn," and his struggle between the fiat of the "auld licbt" minister for it 3 destruction and his wife's pleading for the retention of the dead child's pet no plea is needed, and I hope the foregoing digression may, if not on a score of sentiment, then at least on that of utility, render the flashing little worker immune from molestation. Another factor in the improvement of our fern lands is the thistle, which is being doing an immense amount of gppd in the open lands of this valley. While I Dave known a Scotchman to "embrace" a bottle of whisky with the presentment of a Highlander on the ]aML I never knew a <'pawky laddie" toljpfar forget his dignity and comfort' as to cuddle his national emblem, and can only conclude that, like anything jocular, it is a matter #f "defeeeulty" and beyond the

bounds of decent decorum. However, there can be no doubt that the thistle may be reckoned a benefactor of mankind, since, in our case, it has "made two blades of grass grow where only one grew before." A bad weed which is getting about cur roads and pastures is pennyroyal, and the marguerite daisy is also in evidence, but I have not heard of any very serious patches of.Californian thistle, it is to be sincerely hoped that settlers will strive to check the nucleus of pests which may easily at a later date depreciate the value of their pastures by fifty per cent. Mr John Boulfc is busily adding to his dwelling arid we have been so accustomed to-the lively sound of housebuilding that we should feel very much the loss of what we have never ceased listening to since last spring. Messrs Burney and Reid made a start with the doctor's residence on the 2d May and have been busy in making preliminary arrangements. Chaff is at a price to delight the heart of local growers and none will grudge them the handsome price at present ruling for that commodity. Fungus, I believe, has been fetching a higher rate than for a long tinr.e and many settlers have found profitable employment in their spare time in collecting the Chinese equivalent of the "sailor's soupstone." It is not generally known that cattle are very partial to fungus, but a very good friend of mine assured me solemnly that three cows he had devoured five sack i of dried fungus he was airing, and he further states the cows are still living. Mr Hilder, Methodist Home Missionary, has left us and gone to Kawa Kawa and will be much missed, as he was a general favourite, as a firstclass horseman, indeed quite an ideal man for bad roads and any kind of a mount. Mr Edmonds, his successor, to the circuit, and the famous "Peter Mackenzie," the four-legged accessory of the same, hails from "up North," but is, I believe, also from the Northern county of Lancashire.