LIBELLOUS PUMPKINS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4530, 27 September 1875, Page 5

LIBELLOUS PUMPKINS.

The Paris correspondent of the Daily Telegraph gives an account of a curious libel case decided in Paris some time ago, before the Eighth Chamber of Correctional Police. Is a man's garden a public place, in view of libel laws, and can the vegetables grown there be properly described as organs of publicity ? A market gardener of Clamart raised these inquiries. He owns a plot of ground, wherein, amongst other delicacies, lie had planted pumpkins. Last September it occurred to him that the fruit must be nearly ripe, and at early morning he went to examine. The first pumpkins startled him. Some hand as patent as malignant, had inscribed upon it his opinion that M. Bernard was, in fact, something which no gentleman would desire to be. During the pumpkin's tenderest age of innocence had these words been traced, and they had grown with its growth, relating their calumny larger and larger every day. M. Bernard turned up another, and found a like inscription. Every pumpkin in the plot bore its label. Furious, the market gardener sought his enemy, and served him with a summons. The case came on for trial, but there was want of proof. One of the witnesses cited, after listening attentively to the course of evidence, perceived on a sudden what it was all about, and exclaimed, innocently, "Why it was I who scratched the pumpkins.". Promptly he found himself -in the dock, and now we have had the second trial. Counsel for the defence argued that there had been no publication of the libel such as is contemplated by the law. The Court, however, decided otherwise, since the garden was proved to have no hedge about it, and the pumpkins had for months exposed their calumnies to any one who uhanccd to look at them—and so the engraver of vegetables was compelled to pay £8 fine.