THE SOUTH AUCKLAND CATTLE BOARD.

Waikato Times, Volume XIV, Issue 1220, 24 April 1880, Page 3

THE SOUTH AUCKLAND CATTLE BOARD.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — By your report of the meeting of the South Auckland Cattle Board on the 17th instant. I was extremely corry to learn that a majority of the Board had decided to prevent any discussion on inoculation for pleuro-pneumouia, and that a gentleman lately settled in this district and possessing great experience of this fatal disease, had been treated with very scant courtesy. It is all very well for the majority of the Cattle Board to attempt to cram their crude ideas down the throats of persons who know nothing about the benefits of inoculation, but euch will not go down with people who have had years "of Australian experience or the good sense to read some of the many excellent articles on the subject which can be found xn Australian papers. The settlers in this district have 4 great reason to thauk you for publishing 'in your issu;e of the ?Otb, that splendid article from the Qnecnslander — a paper second to none in the a ustralian Colonies —and if sucu an article fails to open some ?eople's eyes they must be blind indeed, n New South Wales, Victoria, Queens-, land and South Australia, inoculation is as firmly believed in, as is a future state of existence, and when we see three or four Waikato farmers ignoring the experience of four great' Australian Colonies one feels perfectly amazed at their audacity. I have the greatest respect for the indi^vidual members of the South Auckland Cattle Board— the chairman of which is one of the oldest friends I have in New Zealand — and I urge npon them the common fairness and decency of permitting full and fair discussion on the subject, and giving an early opportunity for such. I wish it to be clearly understood that I am no advocate for half measures. Igo quite as far as Mr Fanthain as regards slaughtering every animal which clearly has the disease, of isolating every one which seems in the slightest degree suspicious, and of inoculating every sound beast in the herd, and if such is done properly the disease will be very speedily stopped. Some benighted individuals here have taken it into their thick heads that inoculation is recommended as a cure. Death is the cure .: inoculation the preventive. Permit me to say a few words as to anonymous writers on this subject. If those persons who have not the common courage to sign their own names to their effusions — too often scurrilous — kne\v the opinion which honest, straightforward men entertain of them they would either cease writing or screw up their pluck sufficiently to father their literary productions. — lam, &c. Patrick Leslie.