Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1882.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1231, 22 December 1882, Page 2

Poverty Bay Standard. Published Every Evening. GISBORNE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1882.

Last week, accompanied by one of the oldest dealers in grass seed in Poverty Bay, we made a tour through the country for the purpose of noting the quantity and quality of the forthcoming crop. We passed through a great deal of country, and found a large area of land shut up for seed, and generally looking well, but in many cases we were sorry to see a great deal of goose grass and clover in among the seed grasses which would render those crops hardly worth the cutting. On the Waerenga-a-hika racecourse there was a good crop which was purchased by Mr R. Cooper. There seems to be considerable difficulty in getting hands this season, to which is owing in a great measure, the fact of cutting not having commenced earlier. Taking the crop as a whole it is not likely that it will be by any means an improvement on past years. There has been a great deal taken out of the land, and it cannot last for ever at the magnificent rates of return which have been received from it in days gone by. Nor do people seem to have been so particular in preserving the quality of their grass ; paddocks which even last year produced seed of first-class quality are, in w.iy instances tins year clogged with goose gras* and clover. Tne weather is favorable to catting, and it is more than probable that every acre of seed will have been cut before any rain sets in. Sellers will have to be extra careful this year in cleaning their seed, for the market is glutted with inferior qualities and dirty seed. It appears to us that when a holaer has a lot or bad seed in other districts, he marks it “ Poverty Bay” and sells it for what it can fetch. There is at present in Northern and Southern holders’ hands more inferior grass seed, reputedly from Poverty Bay than Poverty Bay has exported during the past two years of seed altogether. It is tne ola story “Give a dog a bad name and hang him. ” Poverty Bay grass seed has borne too high a reputation to suit the books of holders in other markets. Waikato or Timaru seed would not sell where Poverty Bay seed could possibly be bought, so as they could not beat the seed in quality they have endeavored to damn its reputation by foisting off their own inferior seed as coming from the same place. The sample sent down South by Messrs J. & A. Davis, was a perfectly fair sample of their lot. It was taken indiscriminately by the hand from half a dozen bags, shaken up together, and a small post parcel weighing about four ounces made up as a sample. The first shipment followed, and Messrs. Davis receive?a telegram to stop shipping, and the post brought them a letter to ask whether they would have the lot re-shipped at their own risk, or would take a lower price, as the seed was not equal to the sample. On inquiry it turned out that the inequality laid in the number of bushels to the ton, calculated on the basis of the loz. which had been forwarded as a sample. Mr Wm. Adair had also a specimen of the way in which buyers at a distance can treat a seller. The seed in both instances was first-class seed, and thoroughly well cleaned by machine, and was fully equal to sample. There was left to these gentlemen the choice of going to law or accepting a less price than they had sold for. Wisely preferring to accept the first loss they let their seed go at a considerably less figure than that stipulated for. But these are merely two of the many instances where Poverty Bay seed has been depreciated without any other reason than that of knocking down the price. So for the sake of these huckstering gentry, and the few pounds of Srofit which they can make by running it own, one of our principal exports suffers in repute to an incalculable extent without a chance of redemption. So far as cleaning is concerned the machine used by Messrs J. and A. Davis is an excellent one, and their seed, every pound weight of which was run through it, was as clean as the choicest buyer could wish. The reason for the depreciation of Poverty Bay seed lays, not in any real fault in the seed, but from the artful dodges practised in other places with regard to it. A southern buyer told the writer not long ago that he could buy Poverty Bay seed either in Auckland or Dunedin, in larger quantities, and at cheaper rates than he ever could in Poverty Bay. The reason is obvious; growers in other districts having a plethora of bad, indifferent, or dirty seed, simply bag it well, mark it Poverty Bay, and place it in the market as such. These stocks are bought up more for their cheapness than for anything else, and simply hang as a drug on the market for months and months. Some unlucky wight is let in with them, sows the seed, and gets inYeturn a lot of rubbish and blames Poverty Bay for it; whereas that seed in all probability was grown in Oamaru, or further South. Verily we are a long-suffering community. We

have plenty to answer for in the way of sins, of our own ; but to be compelled to bear the burden of other people’s is decidedly rough upon us. How would it do to mark all our inferior seed “Waikato” or “ Oamaru” and so turn the tables ? We forget just now which of the prophets it is that makes use of the metaphor but one of them, Daniel most probably, says :—“Verily, he must keep his eye to windward like the skipper oi a Geordie collier coming down channel, who dealeth in grass seed.”