After several years' trial with poisoned grain, purchased and distributed by the council, it was agreed last year to abandon the war on sparrows by this means, and so no poison was procured.
This year the birds are unusually plentiful, and in a like measure harmful to crops, and it was thought by some that this was on account of no poison being distributed last year.
Others, on the other hand, considered that the increase in the number of the feathered marauders was because the council had abandoned the practice of buying eggs.
After a good deal of discussion, in which the merits of poisoned wheat versus poisoned oats were weighed in the balance, the council resolved to procure a supply of poisoned bruised wheat.
This done, the question of who should pay was the next point. Some councillors thought that the cost of the poisoned grain (18s a bushel) should come out of the County Fund, while others said that each riding should pay for what it ordered.
A motion to this effect was carried, and councillors were invited to state the requirements for their respective ridings; and here another problem arose, for, while the majority wanted about three bushels each, one councillor did not see any use in poisoned wheat in his riding, for there the sparrows seldom saw wheat, and so would not go out of their way to sample a poisoned stray grain.
Then there was another councillor who said that in Maclennan Riding there were not many sparrows, and he saw no necessity for poisoning in his riding.
It has been declared many times and in many quarters that the United States Commission on Industrial Relations, before which Mr Carnegie, Mr Rockefeller, and many other captains of industry have been testifying recently, could not command the respect of the best citizens because its chairman was a demagogue.
And now this much criticised chairman (Mr Frank P. Walsh) has just expressed himself as follows:- ''Every great fortune is a fundamental wrong, who first gives bountifully to the poor must have first robbed them a-plenty.
Every man with a fortune must at some time have crossed the line of ethics and of criminal law.
The root of poverty comes because the workers do not receive the full product of their toil.''
This will not tend to make Mr Walsh any more popular among plutocrats.
President Hadley, of Yale University, declares that no man without private means should make politics a vocation.
He believes a man who has to depend upon a public office for the support of himself and his family must find it very hard to keep to the straight and narrow path, and that too often such a man has to decide between letting his family starve and betraying the interests of the public.
Dr Hadley's opinion is that those without private resources should content themselves with taking an intelligent interest in public affairs as a thing apart from, though near, the profession or calling by which they live.
Senator Blakey, of Victoria, who spent a holiday in Norfolk Island, returned to Sydney on March 25. He gave some interesting information respecting two new industries that have been started there.
Senator Blakey said several companies have started lemon-squeezing, and storing the juice, for export to Sydney.
The island grows lemons galore, and in the season the whole place is wild with the fruit.
The islanders have secured a market, and, according to all accounts, the prospects for an expanding trade in lemon juice are good.
Some of the men are also treating passion fruit in the same way, and as these vines are also plentiful it is considered likely that the juice of the fruit may become a paying marketable commodity. - ODT, 15.4.1915.
