CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 93, 28 July 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

KILLING THE FORESTS. We have repeatedly contended that the wholesale destruction of New Zealand forests is wasteful, expensive and dangerous. In support of these obvious conclusions, the remarks of Mr. Turner, Inspector of Reserves, are interesting. If possible, lessons should (he says) ae given in the schools explaining the value of bush as a reservoir for the supply of water for streams, its action in preventing or lessening floods, its climatic influence, etc. Mr. Turner proceeds to say that engineers are experiencing the utmost difficulty in railway-making in China, owing to the liability to floods of the low country, which liability has been caused by the reckless destruction of the forests at the sources of the rivers, in ' Hawke's Bay and the Manawatu districts it is found even now that the raising of the river beds by detritus brought from the deforested mountains by floods is causing very serious trouble. The observant traveller may see in most districts in New Zealand steep hillsides (which have been deforested), after having lost their surface soil through :.i>Uslips, fast becoming covered with ti-tree and fern, and often noxious weeds, which, in such situations, are almost impossible to eradicate. In other localities where there are rills flowing all the year from step hillsides there are now in wet weather rapid torrents, and in dry weather waterless ditches. Our pioneers (who now, of course, are doing the most damage by destroying forects) are difficult to convert; in fact, often they do not wish to be converted, as many have not taken J up the land with the idea of making a! permanent home of it, but for the pur-j pose of selling out at a profit, after oohijr -the improvements required by the Act. It can lie understood that such ones would not trouble about the evils resulting from wholesale denudation. The present Land Act encourages a settler to clear all his holding. It would be ; well (adds Mr. Turner) if it were amend-1 ed so that every future selector of sec-1 ond and third-class rural lands be com- j polled to leave in forest 10 per cent, of j his holding. He should not be charged any rental for the percentage left, but should be called upon to fence it with a cattle-proof fence. Tie could get his firewood and some fencing material from part.

IDLE LANDS. In the course of his remarks on the land question in the House on Monday evening, Mr. Massey said native ownership of land in its present form was a curse to the country. So it is, but it is not the only form of ownership that is a curse to the country. The progress of the country is not kept hack by the native ownership of land anywhere near the same extent as it is by the pakeha speculator and trafficker. Private Europeans hold at the present time in occupied and unoccupied freehold lands 18,5!)1,563 acres; in lands leased from the Grown, 18,264,083 acres; and in lands leased from natives 3,206,01)0 acres, making, without lands leased from local | bodies, a total of 40,000,000 acres. The | improved land of the Dominion at the i present time, including surface-sown grass lands, total 15,(i70,!)43 acres. There-! fore Europeans are holding in idleness more than 24,000,000 acres, an area over three times as great as the whole of the Maori lands put together. These unworked lands are not, as might be supposed, situated in newly, settled districts, where settlers must be allowed reasonable time to reclaim their holdings. In Waipa county the unimproved lands amount to 38 per cent of the total area; in Mokau they amount to 48 per cent.; in Waikato to 64 per cent.; and in Piako to 69 per cent. Almost all the lands in these counties are composed of open country; the counties have been settled for half a century, and these lands are almost entirely in the hands of Europeans. The Year Book shows that there are few counties in New Zealand that are not burdened with fifty per cent, of idle land, held for purely speculative purposes. While dealing with Maori unproductive land, sight should not be lost of the pakeha Unproductive land. The remedy? Such taxing or rating of the land as will make it unprofitable to hold. In a young country like this, with but a handful of people, it is nothing short of scandalous that there should be a scarcity of land. Mr. Massey would be doing a Teal service to the country if he attacked this scandalous condition of affairs, a service not the less real because in its performance tie must necessarily injure the interests of many of its chief henchmen and warmest adherents. CLOSING EST. Science is closing in on the wrongdoer. Granted that he is unable to do right, ordinary people have to be protected; add protection measures are frequently accidental. Crippen, of whom the cables have told us much, is probably a sexual decadent of the worst kind, and, under old time circumstances, unless he was caught at once and summarily dealt with, the possibility I 'is that he nnght carry his mania far and disastrously. But science has not only studied the reasons for the defects of the Crippens of Society, but has brought to the detection of crime methods, not originally intended for the purpose. Thus it is seen that although Crippen was on the high seas, it was possible for the authorities, by means of wireless telegraphy, to be cognisant of his whereabouts and to make reasonable uispositions for his capture. The usetulness of wireless tetegraphy as a means of crime detection cannot be overestimated, and: will lessen the chances of the criminal, much to the relief of society at large. The 'ancient method of detection by finger or toe print has been revived by modern authorities with extraordinarily good results. There are innumerable cases in New Zealand in which, but for the finger print evidence, wrongdoers must have continued vnedr career of crime. The branch of tihe science of anthropology which decides, by careful examination, comparison and measurement, the presence of human abnormalities, has assisted more uian anything else to an understanding of the essence of wrongdoing, and probably with the expansion of learning on the subject it may be possible to specifically determine, while the subjects are young, their predispositions either for good or ill. It is obvious, for instance, that a Crippen must have shown definite predisposition in his childhood, and that if science had so far advanced at that 1 time as to understand his predilections, the crime he. is alleged to have com-, mitted would not have occurred. 'FLOGGING HORSES. One afternoon a "News" man set out to discover whether the horses of New Plymouth were treated with greater fairness than the horses of otlier towns. He found that, as a general thing, the horses to be seen in the streets were! used much as if they were made of, steel, fitted with steam power. Nearly 1 all the horses were poor and undened —| many were lame and had serious leg defects. Standing at the corner of Currie street it was noticed that the majority of carters whose horses were haul-j ing heavy loads pulled right heartily up Devon street. In every case the beasts naturally lagged at the "pinch"! turning into Currie street. With the exception of a clergyman, who drove a' horse in an empty buggy, every driver flogged his horses up the "pinch.'' In no case was it necessary or desirable or useful. The fool who got the best pull out of his horse, not only flogged him round the corner, but jerked his mouth all the way. No constable and no society would have a "case" against any of these ignorant drivers, because it is generally held that a whip is the proper medicine to prescribe for lack of equine strength. The flogging of a hoTse at the top of a steep "pinch" is as i sensible as punching a man in the back' iust as he is heaving a sack of corn off his shoulders on to a dray. There are' branches of the S.PjCA. iii other parts of New Zealand which do fine work in controlling ignorant and stupid horse-' drivers, and it is certainly high time' that some citizens who understand the value of horses and do for man should unite to teach the men with the whips a lesson. There are plentv of underfed and illused horses in New Plvmouth that are worth the attention of anyone who knows the difference between a delicately constructed animal and a steam-engine. I