OURSELVES.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2996, 10 June 1893, Page 2

OURSELVES.

Seven years have elapsed since the Mail and' Guardian passed into the bawds of the present proprietary, and considering the times of depression which Ashburton, in common with all the rest of New Zealand, has gone «i*~,,gh, imt from winch during the past two years the colony has been steadily emerging, we have experienced a very satisfactory measure of support; for which we are very grateful to our numerous readers and advertisers There are few places, indeed, in the colony with a similar population capable of maintaining a daily as well as a tri-weekly journal, and the fact that Ashburton does so speaks well for the energy and enterprise of its people. Indeed so many and various are our public organisations, so active and go-ahead the people of the county and borough that it often taxes ingenuity to find space for the record of all the day's doings and local events. It ia our desire to wive special prominence to the record of the latter—which is indeed our chief function as publishers of local journals, but the demand upon our space in this direction is increasing, and latterly has rendered it necessary to ask indulgence for the crowding out of more general news as well as not infrequently for the holding over of contract advertisements. It has therefore become apparent that something must, be done in the direction of enlargement, and we have accordingly made arrangements which will enable us to give several additional columns of reading matter in the Guardian weekly, and to add about thirty additions! columns per week to the Mail, embracing a wide variety of well-selected reading. This will comprise serial tales, anecdotes, farm | notes, scientific notes, useful information, and miscellaneous articles, and will, we hope, make our issues inireasingly acceptable to our readers. If, as we confidently anticipate, this proves to be the case and results in extended support, we look forward to being able to still further improve both journals, and in the case of the Mail to make it an eight page paper. We must, however, creep before we gang, and we trust our readers will accept our present effort as an instalment with a view to still better things in the future. We take this opportunity of inviting our country readers especially to forward to us any items* of information of an interesting or useful sort as to matters transpiring beyond the radius of our reporter's ken or items of their experience as farmers. They will thus aid us in fulfilling our function as the local chronicle, and at the same time confer a benefit on their fellow-settlers. In order to facilitate this we shall be happy to supply any of them who will undertake this with the necessary material in the shape of paper and stamped and addressed envelopes.