THE PRICKLY PEAR.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9672, 21 December 1909, Page 4

THE PRICKLY PEAR.

New Zealand has been unfortunate in some of its imported birds and plants, and it is to be hoped that the country will be spared the cuise of the prickly pear. In Queensland these outcasts of the vegetable kingdom are in possession of no less than ten million acres, and it is said that the pest is spreading at the rate of a million acres a year. Two yearF ago the Queensland Land Departmen sought to resume a small holding in a pear infested district, held under lease. The Land Court declined to recommend the resumption. A further attempt has ju«t Deen made, and in support of the application, the land being required for closer settlement, expert evidence was given by officials that in the two years the pear had advanced on the holding 200 per cent. The Government had another costly experience with the pear in the. case of the Warwick town common, which cost it over £5,000 a year to clear, and, in addition, the Warwick Town Council and other local bodies in the neighbourhood have expended over £3,500, without seeing the end of the trouble. As a set-bacK to these sins of the pear, it has been said that the weed proved of some value in the big drought of 1902, but the quantity used was infinitesimal when compared with the enormous area which is infected, any acre of which might easily carry 5U tons. Assuming that the prickly pear has any value as a stock food, the whole of the cattle of Australia, it is said, might easily be kept for ten years on the pear which is now growing on lands in Queensland.