NOXIOUS WEEDS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 355, 5 April 1910, Page 8

NOXIOUS WEEDS.

AN ALARMING INCREASE. At the Taranaki County Counuil meeting yesterday, Cr. Hopson moved that the attention of the Minister of Agriculture be called to the very serious increase of noxious weeds, especially blackberry, throughout the county, and that unless some other steps are taken than at present to prevent the spread of same, a great deal of land in a very short time will be useless.

Cr. Carter asked if Mr Hopson intended the wording of his' resolution to apply to the whole county, and suggested that it should be confined to the Moa riding. Cr. I-lopson said he had intended confining it to the Inglewood district, but, on account of the gorse in the Omata riding, he thought it just as well to let tlie motion stand. Cr. Tate s'econded. He said he considered the question one of the most vital importance to the district, for tlie growth of noxious weeds was increasing at an alarming rate, notwithstanding that inspectors' had been appointed ■under the Noxious Weeds Act. TheS* inspectors, he would like to say, were doing their duty, but they were practically no good. All their work was unavailing, principally because they were all too few. It was quite impossible for two or three inspectors to cover tlie whole district. Without the Department was prepared to take further steps than were now being taken, either in subsidising .farmers' in the purchase of goats, or any other way of eradicating the weeds. Cr. Hopson: Goats don't give enough milk.

Or. Tate, resnming, said that there ■was ragwort all' the way from Inglewood to the s'ea, the seeds having been brought down by the Waiongona river. Taking his own case, Mr Tate said that fire years ago a couple of hours' work w&s sufficient to clear his place of loxious weeds; this' year he had had two men working for five days to do it. He endeavoured to keep his place clean, but the weeds seeded on neighbouring farms and spread on. He' repeated that the Act as at present administered was doing no good whatever. The inspectors insisted on blackberries being cut twice a year. Each cuttning was merely pruning them for fi more vigorous* growth. Cr. Hopson contended that the inspectors did not do their duty, for they «lionld have the weeds cut to prevent' their flowering, but instead of that the weeds were in berry before any action was taken. The resfult was that this 'far there were twee as many blackberries about as ever there 'had been. Th<»re were vonng plants everywhere. The motion was carried.