In replying, Sir Charles Fergusson returned thanks for the welcome. He said it was a great pleasure to find themselves in a city of which they had such pleasant early recollections.
Bush clearances lamented
As in the United States and Canada and other new countries, there is wide-spread regret in New Zealand at the improvident use made of the heritage of the forest. Most of it in this country has been sheer waste. Only a comparatively small proportion of the native bush which in the past 60 or 70 years has disappeared from the land was milled for building material. Most of it was cut down by the settler and burned like a mass of weeds in a garden.
The bush has to be cleared, of course, on the rich plains and easy uplands, to make room for the settler, just as the country east of the Mississippi was cleared in America, but the process went much too far in New Zealand. Nothing could be more beautiful than this country clad in its native forest; nothing could be uglier than its bare-ribbed nakedness studded with stumps of dead trees littered with logs and gashed with landslides when the forest is cleared.
Crown loses flour cartel case
His Honor Mr Justice Sim delivered judgment yesterday in the Supreme Court in one of the most important cases that has been heard in New Zealand. This was a case in in which the Crown proceeded against Distributors Ltd, claiming a penalty of £600 from each of Crown Milling Co, Dunedin; Fleming and Co, Invercargill; the Atlas Roller Flour and Oatmeal Mills (Evans and Co), Timaru; Wood Bros, Christchurch; and the Distributors Ltd, Christchurch. An injunction was asked prohibiting each defendant from continuing to employ Distributors as its sole selling agent for flour, bran and pollard in pursuance of an agreement and from entering into any similar agreement in future.
His Honor’s judgment was bakers all agreed in saying that since the advent of the company the quality of the flour supplied was better than before, and that the public was getting a better quality of bread. In view of the satisfaction of bakers generally with the operations of the company, it is reasonable to conclude that the discontent does not justify the court in holding that the monopoly complained of is contrary to the public interest on the other grounds put forward by the Crown. The result is that the Crown failed to establish its case, and the defendants were entitled to judgment with costs.
Parents’ fears hard to swallow
According to the X-ray department of a big hospital in Sydney, safety pins are among the favourite food of the young.
One youngster was admitted to hospital with a two-inch nail tucked away inside of him, while cases of children having swallowed pennies, threepences and sixpences are not at all uncommon. An examination of one little boy's abdominal regions at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital showed that he had swallowed two ha'pennies.
But the doctors say that mothers are mistaken on 50 occasions in 100 when they rush a child to the hospital with a story that it has swallowed some thing extraordinary. A penny, for example that a child was supposed to have included in its diet last week was actually found in its boot.
— by ODT Sydney correspondent
— ODT, 17.12.1924 (Compiled by Peter Dowden)
