Flat Earth: Rats to Milton

EVEN worse, if it's possible, than onion - what an odious word 'heritage' has become, now that it's more or less owned by the bureacucrats. The latest example comes from New Zealand, where the Treasury announced that it wanted to sell off that nation's collection of Milton manuscripts for millions of dollars. After all, said the accountants who now run the Dominion, the books were 'non-New Zealand heritage'.

Apart from the question of the extent of non-non-New Zealand heritage, you may like to know how this 17th century trove ended up in Wellington. The benefactor was a Victorian merchant with a passion for Scottish history, Milton and cocaine. When he died, perhaps of too much of the last, the country inherited his books. So snorting coke and adding to the common weal, as the next Mayor of Washington's supporters may agree, are not always mutually exclusive.

The Kiwis have got themselves into another terrible tangle over, of all things, rats. It seems that the native rat, being almost the only mammal in pre-European NZ, is regarded as a 'Maori cultural treasure'. Unfortunately, being a normal red-blooded rattus as well, it likes to eat rare birds' eggs.

The Department of Conservation has, as far as I can make out, reached a wonderfully even-handed policy: while one group of employees protect the rat heritage by releasing them in reserves, another team saves the bird heritage by trapping and killing the treasures.