OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 April 1939, Page 4

OTHER PEOPLE’S IDEAS

DEFENCE OF THE MAGPIE (To the Editor.) Sir, —I see by the report of the Wellington Acclimatisation Society's meeting that the members of that body are against the magpie. I am not going to say that magpies are not killers. I hold the view that the starling is the farmer's best bird friend. I do not know whether the magpie or the lark is the next best. They both beat the starling in one respect, because at night as the grass-grub beetle comes out they are about when the starling is on the roost. I have known magpies to worry a lamb, but the bird is easily shot. One thing in their favour is their size. They can get rid of a lot of grubs. There is no doubt that the lark is fast disappearing. You see very few on the roads now, and hear very few singing. The stoat has reduced their numbers. I have found under a heap of ironstone the feathers of perhaps twenty-five larks and a stoat bed in the centre. A bird that should be killed is the sparrow hawk We shot one a few days ago. He was seen to catch either a sparrow or a lark. All birds do harm; the starling eats fruit and oats when they are short of other food, and the lark devours grass and rape leaves. I suppose the magpie catches a few larks too. I am, etc, Wm. RAYNER. The Cliffs, Masterton, April 15. BATHS & A CREMATORIUM (To the Editor.) Sir, —A short while ago (in your correspondence column) referring to tepid baths, Mr Lethaby said: “Who wants a Crematorium?” Well, Sir, I personally think that a crematorium is needed in Masterton just as badly as the baths are. With our increasing population our cemeteries are filling fast, and it is time we conformed to more modern, and cleaner methods of burial. We all (or the majority of us) have been taught to believe that, when we “depart this vale of tears,” our body represents nothing (in fact, “ashes to ashes, dust’ to dust” seems to signify the church’s agreement on this point). It is the soul that is the essential thing. If this is so, why not all conform to the idea of universal cremation, if only from a health point of view to the living? Re those tepid baths. I heartily endorse “Plunger’s” ideas, expressed in his letter of April 10. If you buy a dozen rotten eggs in Auckland it’s surely not logic to say that all the old hens in Masterton are laying them that way too? As to “That Hole in the Wall” by “Procrastination” (of Grey town), there is something radically wrong with this gentleman. He has been looking so long at a wall (cement or otherwise) that his outlook on life' has become warped, but when Mick Savage gets going (with Bob Semple to “dish out the rough stuff”) “Procrastination” will get a chance of having a peep through the biggest and best hole he ever put his eye to. Thanking you, I am, etc, JIM FOGAN. Masterton, April 14.