THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1892.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XIII, Issue 4111, 12 May 1892, Page 2

THURSDAY, MAY 12, 1892.

' .nun The Wellington Acclimatisation So- [ oiety (with which, as many of our readers will know, the Wairarapa is associated) has just held its seventh annual meeting, We gather from the • Report that the Society is now selfsupporting, a total of £405 having been reoeived from fishing and shooting licenses and sale of fry. "Hopes are not held out of the Executive doing muoh successfully to introduce more game, and we can hardly expect their efforts to result favourably in • this district, as long as " bunny " is to the fore: poison, imported ver. j! min, traps, and rabbit packs aro too detrimental, We are much, inclined to think that as regards the quail tliis is rather a blessing in a distriot where so much grass seed is sown, as iii parts of the Nelson country this opera- ;, tion has often to be repeated on their account, The outlook for the shooter is certainly not very bright in Northern Wairarapa—ducks are a rara . avis indeed, and pigeons steadily a diminish as tlie bush falls, both being also undoubtedly subjected to much nut of season shooting, In the matter of stocking our.rivers and streams • the Society has done good and permanent work, with a large field still open to them, as there are many 3ne e streams barren, or but thinly steed, As a protective body muoh oannot be said in favour of the Society, if . only half of the ourrent reports of une sportsmanlike destruction 'A fish can be believed-of dynamite, of midnight 1 netting by torchlight, of spear and 0 gun and wire. Indeed, ourrent bet lief has it that an organised system '„ of supplying a surreptitious market ir exists almost bare-faced in our midst, e The suffering of'this state of things ! c is much to be regretted, militating as it must against the taking out of licenses and curtailing the legitimate indulgence of ooe of thp few sports to be had in New Zealand; To be regrett3d also, from the fact that the moral tone of anyone of the rising - generation should suffer from slinb. ing about in an unlawful pursuit. As to the wholesale slaughterers, all < members of the Society must hope that the Executive will act with some vigor in this matter, which must, be well known to them, and by spreading a net ypt Fflpre secretly than the po'aphers do theirs, tun in fr-bftul of these unprincipled pikes.