BIRD ROAD SQUABBLE

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 380, 4 May 1910, Page 7

BIRD ROAD SQUABBLE

DIRECT CONFLICT OF OPINIONS. MORE TROUBLE BREWING. j At the last meeting of the Education Board a letter was read from the secretary of the Bird School Committee, denying the allegation that Mere were noxious weeds growing on the school site, and stating that the committee had] in its possession a certificate from the* Inspector of Noxious Weeds stating! that the school reserve was exceptionally! free from weeds. The letter went on to: say that the person who had made the' complaint to the Boara had told a direct lie. This found its way into the newspapers, and came under the notice of a settler in the district, and he has written to the Education Board. "With! your permission," he says, "I will lay aj few facts before you, and you can then draw your own con-:' elusions." Then he explains that about), last December he received a couple ot, letters from Mr. Marchant (the School Commissioners' ranger), drawing ins at tention to some ragwort he had seen, ai he thought, on the Education reserve leased by the writer. As he had care fvlly burned all ragwort growing on the place he was somewhat surprised at receiving the notices. He wrote to Mr. Marchant, telling him of the mistake, and suggesting that he had seen it in the school reserve. At the same time he drew attention to the blackberry and ox-eye daisy growing there. Then he told Mr. Crowe, a member of the School Committee, about it. That gentleman agreed with the course adopted, and went further, informing Mr. Pattinson,! who leases the school site, that Mr. Mar-1 chant had reported the matter to the! Board." He got very angry, ana, to I prove what an energetic person he was] at keeping weeds down, set straightway, 'to work and cut down the blackberries and ragwort. I was there the day he! was cutting them, and noticed on some of the bushes cut plenty of ripe truit.i A few days afterwards he invited the inspector down and, after showing him over the ground, asked him for a certificate, which he got. Does it not strike you, Sir, as somewhat of a farce that that certificate should be given after some of the bushes had borne fruit for the blackbirds to scatter far and wide. .... 1 know of forty-five different clumps of blackberry (some of them yards square) growing on this ten-acre school site. Is it because they hold that certificate that they are given liberty to call people liars? . . ."