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Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XII, Issue 81, 7 April 1877, Page 4

It seems tba't the Wellington people havs fallen upon an expedient to have oysters in the close 'season. A letter ia the Wellington 'Argus -sets forth the process : Sir, — A high authority haa declared that even, an ; oyster may be crossed in love. My object in writing, hewever, is not .to. make any amorous complaint, but to appeal to the police • for that protection which the, law . says we are to have, as well as to prevent people eating us and poisoning them- , selves. Sir, an Act passed in 1866 tenders any person "who shall sell, offer ! for sale, or have, in hie possession^" any I oysters during the close period, or , I spatting season, liable to a penlty of not more than £20. As this Act . only \ applied to my big 'flat 'brothers, another i Act was passed in 1874, taking care of ; my branch of tbe family, and enacting, ' with regard to rock oysters, that any ; person, who, during the close seaspn, ; should "sell, expose for sale, or buy"! any of us should be liable to a fine of £20. „ This is the close season, and yet ' every day thousands of us are sold, ex- ; posed for sale, and bought inrthis city. ; We are not wholesome to eat when we are spatting, but our condition here now is enough to poison any one. Some months ago, I was torn from my native rocks in Auckland and brought down here, where I, with cartloads of others, I wbb thrown into a pen below low water- ' mark, just where several sewers diacharge themselves. There we bavo' lain ever siuce, amongst disgustiug; green slime, enoagh to make an oyster sick. Garbage of every kind floats i around, and even tbe water we suck in is impregnated with the vile sewage. My beard has turned grey with what I ! have ''suffered, and I .don't enVy^ t^ej maa who eats me. There are,;! /am i told by a little. fish,, thjee or four such ! pens about. the foreshore, and all fed by j sewers. Every day some of us ore , taken out; washed free of alim&,Vand i then exposed for sale as lif we were good and wholesome. I was taken out /! yesterSayi and that is ; how I got thjsi .-chance of writing to you." Y"V'.' . '•' I A correspondent of' the ' Melbourne Arguswxite* aa follows with reference ; to -some of the consequences I of: tbe "bursting up" agitatiou in Victoria j^"l learn on the' ; authority- of "a'highly | respectable estate agent In this city, | that capitalists are already taking alarm \ at the^ crusade . which, is , bejng~ coin- i meiiced against lan ide'd property ia Vic- 1 toria by the up/ party. Onei gentleman connected with squatting! pursuits in Riverina, who was in treaty ' for the purchase of an estate (near' Castlemain, has relinquished his inten- i ' tiOjTi. ...p^t sjßttlin^ dbwn' ;l/ere^ r and -'has purchased a prope^tyir/o'r^rJp-.qpOfin Tasmania* where .ne the > summer months. Anotlier who ;w^s i accustomed to spend £4000 a year in i Melbourne, has bought an estate which i cost him £30,000in New Ztaland. In | both, instances the motive for in vesting i the money put of this colony was the i apprehension of confiscation. Selectors | who .wish to sell are already beginning j to suffer from the same cauße t bb t,h~e| market value of their property haa' declined in some instances ,30 per ■ cent." ;