BOUGH ON NEW ZEALAND

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 177, 23 December 1892, Page 6

BOUGH ON NEW ZEALAND

From tho ‘Sydney Herald’ we clip: * It is too bad that,, just when New Zealand is recovering from a bad attack of the blues, the people should have been frightened at an invasion of snakes. It is not the first time that :i man has seen snakes, when, through certain complex conditions of the physical and mental systems, lie has got a i it tie off the equilibrium. But there is no improper insinuation in this case. The people of Timaru and the regions thereabout have seen snakes, and they feel that one of the charms of existence in the island colony is in danger of being taken away. It appears that American vessels trading with that port have been in the habit of discharging sand ballast on the beach, and among this a number of snakes carried all the way from America with the rubbish have been let loose on the people. The effect was electrical. The alarm spread, and not if a .Russian frigate had anchored off the town and cleared for action could there have been greater consternation than at the sight of the snakes. For, as everybody knows, there have been no snakes heretofore io Now Zealand "—-whether St, Patrick in

his peregrinations may have ever so far south, or his mantel had descended o£T some one of his race, among the early visitors to the land of winds and quakes, who banished all the vermin. It is known that a New Zealander, though he is quite at home if his bouse is rolling like a ship at sea, or a volcano is bellowing and belching boulders about his ears, feels faint at the thought of snakes. In fact, when walking up Pitt—street or George street while on a visit to Sydney, you find him with one eye examining the shop windows, and the other on the look out for snakes. Fancy, then, the state of things at Timarn when it was known that a cargo of American snakes had been discharged on the beach. That they met with short shrift from the terrified inhabitants goes without saying, and after such a providential escape we should not be surprised to hear shortly of some special legislation being enacted bringing snakes as well as cholera and smallpox within the provisions of the quarantine law*.