TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3201, 29 May 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

CHECK ON DEERSTALKERS. The limit of "kills" is very rigid in connection with deer stalking, and to secure that the maximum is not exceeded regulations have been gazetted providing that each person authorised to issue licenses to kill deer shall also issue to to each license a number of metal labels or tags equal to the total number of deer such licensee is authorised to kill. These labels must bear the name of the acclimatisation district in which the license to kill deer is to be used, also the name of the licensee and the number of the deer-shooting license issued to him for the then current year, and shall be endorsed with the name of the officer issuing them. Authorised officers may seize any deer's head not provided with a label, and taxidermists be required, under penalty of £lO, not to accept for mounting any unla'oelled head. Particulars of their dealings in deer's heads must be kept in a register, and n the event of the sale of any head already in the taxidermist's possession,' the Minister for Internal Affairs must be informed of the name, address and occupation of the purchaser. A BORN SOLDIER. "There is no doubt that the Maori born soldiar/'said Lieutenant-Colonel Smith in the course of an address at Dunedin recently. For proof of this he referred to a practice which the Boers had successfully employed in the late war, and of which they were thought to be the inventors. The scheme was to entrench a position conspicuously on the top of a hill, thus drawing the fire of the opposing field artillery. When the British had shelled the position for what was considered a sufficient length of time, they would send forward the infantry, only to find themselves exposed to a heavy fire from the toot of the hill, where the Boers had really been entrenched all the time. That, said the colonel, was generally supposed to be a Boer invention, but as a matter of fart the Maoris had long before employed the same ruse on the Wanganui river on more than one occasion.