'FRISCO MAIL SERVICE. THE CARD PRICKED. SMALL MAJORITY FAVOURABLE. Wellington, September 11. NEW ZEALAND FISH. AN AUSTRALIAN OPINION.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 402, 14 September 1889, Page 5

'FRISCO MAIL SERVICE. THE CARD PRICKED. SMALL MAJORITY FAVOURABLE. Wellington, September 11.

NEW ZEALAND FISH. AN AUSTRALIAN OPINION.

Several Auckland members have been pricking 1 a card over the 'Frisco proposals. They say thoy are sure of a majority, though it may be only a small one.

Referring to ft- demand by the Victorian fishermen for duties that will do away with the offering of frozen blue cod from New Zealand ,in the Melbourne market, the ** Argus/' 1 , says: — "Accustomed as the public is to tariff vagaries, this last application will "probably come as a surprise. It is aßtonishing^ to^ be told that fish is so cheap tjhat strenupus resistance must be offered to designs for making it cheaper. The New Zealand cod is by no means given away. It iff- not sold at a price that enables it to compete with meat on the poor man's table, and yet that is the revolution which we want to bring, about in the fish trade. Victorian fish should undersell the New Zealand article easily enough, for it must cost the fishers of Coromandel and the Hauraki Gulf as much to convey their catch to Auckland as ifc costs our fishers to reach Melbourne, and then the extra charge of freezing and of freights have to be met. What we want in this trade, as in so many others, is clearly the better develipment.,of our own resources. We have indeed ventured to point out before now that it would be better if there were less indolent growling about rings and middlemen, and more energetic efforts to put the Victorian fish trade on a business footing. And it must be admitted that reform is necessary when wo see the most perishable of all goods conveyed to market in the most primitive of fashions, with disastrous results at every stage. Tens of thousands of tons of ice are used in Great Britain to preserve fish on its way to the market, and in this much hotter country not an ounce is co employed. Fish markets in other colonies have properly fitted up refrigerating chambers, and there is not the shadow of any such convenience here. The trade has been miserably apathetic, and it has suffered accordingly, and consequently the present competition will probably do good all round."

A woman woke her husband during the storm the other night and said, " I do wish you would stop snoring, for I want to hear it thunder." The number of wolves in European Russia is estimated to be about 175,000. These wolves destroy annually 180,000 head of ta1e50,560,000 sheep, 100,000 dogs, besides "human beings.