CORRESPONDENCE.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1050, 18 March 1882, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

TO THE KHITOU. Sin,—l observe ;tn ai-tiele in your issue of March 16easting gratuitous reflee-i lions of a most insulting kind upon the professional capacity of the local ' engineers (as regards the much-vexed water supply for your town) to give I any opinion whatever of value. ' Editors are supposed, by a popular i fiction and a great, stretch of itnngina- i tion, to know everything, but in pass-1 ing judgment, on matters purely tech-1 tiical, and mechanical, sitcTi as en- ; gineering works, whether wet or dry. j 1. may be allowed to call in question i the edi.orial knowledge, and I join issue with you upon this head most ! emphatically. 1 By a parity of reasoning, it is suffi- : cieut for a professional man to take up I his residence amongst us, to lose all' I claim to consideration ; aud if he has, I had the misfortune to live half a life! I in our midst, it is more than enough ; i to damn him altogether. j j It seems to me a monstrous ami , I cruel shame thus to blacken the eha- i | raeter and reputation of a highly in-' l telligcnt and educated class of men,! i whose bread depends upon the sweat ; ■of their brain. And the more so when ! you call to mind that some time ago | an Engineer was sent down from Auelt-1 laud at great expense to the comma-1 nity to report upon this same subject,! and left us as much in the dark as ever, as far as he was concerned—it will be clear enough that we have ' little to bo thankful fur in that dii rection. j In pandering to the vulgar pn-ju-dice in favor of the imported article, I no matter what, from an Engineer to I a sack of potatoes, tou do incredible ! damage to the place and people whose guardian you loudly profess to be, and show as much wisdom as a certain storekeeper, who refused to buy the local cured bacon because it was locally cured, but greedily purchaacd the very aaine article after it had taken a trip to sea and back, and was labelled “ Canterbury,” or some such name. —■ Yours, &c., 0. AV. BotsfiEtii. C.E. [M r Bousfield has evidently mistaken the drift of our argument. We advocate the employment of a thoroughly qualified Hydraulic Engineer. We care not whether he come from Gisborne, or from Jericho beyond Jordan, so long as he possesses the knowledge of hydraulics so intimately necessary to the economical furtherance of the work.—Et>. P. I>. iS'.J